Predicting maintenance of behavior

[From Bill Powers (961124.2330 MST)]

Bruce Abbott (96112x) --

Well, I gave it a rest, about 3 hours. I woke up with my brain nudging me on
the shoulder, saying "Wake up, stupid." It was all very messy, but I'm back
together, now.

What my brain wanted to tell me was that we have had the means all along to
let you tell me exactly what you mean by Process X, reinforcement, or
whatever you want to call it: 260 days'-worth of data on the behavior of 10
rats, with a time resolution of 1 day.

In your car analogy, you said this:

At some point you make some measurements and create graphs
showing the relationship between throttle setting and fuel consumption, and
between throttle setting and engine RPM. Then you start loading the engine
down to see how this affects these relationships, etc., etc. You end with a
good understanding of how the various factors affect the engine's RPM. You
have conducted a functional analysis of the engine, and from the
relationships discovered, you know what you have to do to make the engine
run and to keep it running at a given RPM for a give load.

Let's consider our rat data. We now have graphs showing how total food
intake is related to weight over time, and how weight is related to
home-cage and experimental-cage intake over time. Putting aside the problem
that rate of pressing seems unaffected by anything, we at least can say that
the amount of food actually eaten in each location each day does vary.

I'll leave it up to you to say what measures correspond to "behavior,"
"contingent events", and anything else you think important. And I'll leave
it to you to say what it is that is supporting the behavior (the initial
acquisition is long past). From this description we should be able to
formulate the purely empirical law that describes the manner of this
supporting, so we can predict future behavior on the basis of observations
made so far. And then -- assuming that such an empirical law can actually be
formulated -- we can see how well it predicts.

And one warning, Darth Abbott. It will avail you nothing to reveal to me
that you are my father.

Best,

Bill P.