Can you say "Controlled Variable"?

[From Rick Marken (951128.1000)]

Me to Bruce Abbott:

Anyway, you didn't answer my question: why are there no studies done by
reinforcement theorists that can even be construed as being about
determining what organisms control?

Bruce Abbott (951128.1140 EST) --

Ah, but I did answer your question. If you don't accept the answer I gave,
that's another thing entirely.

Could you run that answer by me again?

Me:

Do you want to be the one to tell the reinforcement theorists about this
[that there is no such thing as reinforcement] or should I.

Bruce:

I believe you already tried. Let me do it this time.

I can hardly wait. Could you tell me wnat you are going to tell them and how
you are going to say it?

Me:

I would like to know how you would go about telling them that they are
not studying behavior properly.

Bruce:

I have a strategy in mind, if someone else doesn't beat me to it. As I
recall, you have expended quite a bit of effort trying to talk me out of it.

What is your strategy? Why in the world would I try to talk you out of
telling reinforcment theorists that they should be testing for controlled
variables?

Note that you have given the "conventional" researcher nothing but the
values of these two variables to work with.

Actually I gave them the values of the controlled variable too. The
regression rejected it as a significant contributor to variance in the DV?

But the "control" researcher evidently has been given more

No. All the control researcher has (that the conventional researcher
doesn't) is an awareness of the possibility that the organism is controlling
some variable that is a function of both the IV and the DV.

And there is nothing to prevent the "conventional" researcher from
discovering the true relationship.

The only thing preventing the conventional researcher from discovering the
"true relationship" is the fact that he has no idea that there might be a
variable under control; therefore, the conventional researcher would not
guess what variable might be under control and would not apply various
disturbances and monitor their effect on the hypothetical controlled
variable; that is, the conventinoal researcher would not (and does not) do
The Test. (Actually, there is no "true relationship" to be discovered in this
experiment; just a true "controlled variable". Is there something that keeps
you from saying "controlled variable"?)

Researchers often look for the constancies in an experiment.

This is not the same as looking for controlled variables.

None of which obviates the main points of your nice example, which are that
the correct model explains the data better than an incorrect one, and that
researchers following conventional practices are unlikely to discover the
correct model.

This was not the main point of my example. I don't think you will get the
main point of this example until you understand how the Test for controlled
variables (which looks for controlled variables, based on LACK of an expected
relationship between variables) differs from the conventional IV- DV
approach (which looks for the cause of variance in a variable, based on
the EXISTANCE of a relationships between variables).

1. What have we learned about the pigeon?

That a pigeon can vary it's actions appropriately in order to get fed.

2. What is the method used (control or IV-DV)?

Conventional IV-DV; not The Test type of IV-DV. There is no hypothesis about
what the pigeon might be controlling and no monitoring of that variable given
different types and amounts of disturbance. So you have learned nothing
about what variable(s) the pigeon is controlling (though you can glean some
hypotheses about what the pigeon is controlling; but these hypothesese must
be tested -- and, of coursed. they never are tested by conventional
researchers).

3. Based on this result, did Herrnstein have any reason to consider
jumping out of the window of his Harvard office?

Of course not. He didn't know that he was observing a behavioral illusion;
like the rest of conventional psychology, he was happily ignorant of the
behavioral illusion. Unlike some behaviorists I know, who want to have their
conventinoal psychology and their PCT too, he didn't even have to
go into denial about it. And he managed to become relatively famous by
writing about this illusion as though it told us something about how behavior
works. And he had a girl friend (proving that there is someone for EVERYONE)!
I'm sure he (like Skinner) died a happy man.

Best

Rick