Behavioral contingency analysis.

Full Abstract

This paper presents a formal symbolic language, with its own specialized vocabulary and grammar, for codifying any behavioral contingency, including the complex multiparty contingencies encountered in law, economics, business, public affairs, sociology, education, and psychotherapy. This language specifies the "if, then" and temporal relationships between acts and their consequences for the parties involved. It provides for the notation of the probabilities, magnitudes, positive or negative valences, or time delays of the consequences for the parties, and for the parties that would perceive, misperceive, not perceive, predict, mispredict, or not predict events. The language's fractal-like hierarchical and recursive grammar provides for the flexible combination and permutation of the modifiers of the language's four nouns:
acts, consequences, time intervals, and agents of acts; and its four verbs:
consequate, prevent, perceive, and predict-thereby giving the language the ability to describe and codify various nuances of such complex contingencies as fraud, betting, blackmail, various types of games, theft, crime and punishment, contracts, family dynamics, racing, competition, mutual deterrence, feuding, bargaining, deception, borrowing, insurance, elections, global warming, tipping for service, vigilance, sexual overtures, decision making, and mistaken identity. Applications to the management of practical situations and techniques for doing so, as well as applications in current behavior analysis research and neuroscience, are discussed.

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Author information

Author/s: Mechner, Francis (F);

Affiliation: The Mechner Foundation, 200 Central Park South, 18E, New York, NY 10019, United States. fmechner(-atsign-)penix.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Behavioural processes (Behav Processes), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jun; vol 78 (issue 2) : pp 124-44

Dates: Created 2008/04/28; Completed 2008/07/25;

PMID: 18329187, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Behavioral Research - methods; standards
Choice Behavior
Conditioning, Operant
Cooperative Behavior
Decision Making

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