#covert behaviour

Hi again

Not exactly.  The very basic survival value of covert behaviours are as the side effects of the consequences in our environment.  It was the experiences of pleasure or satisfaction we kept seeking through our behaviours while avoiding the things that caused us pain discomfort that helped us survive; pleasure and satisfaction coming from very basic necessities of live.  But I think covert behaviours’ survival values have evolved further by the fact that we can describe them; not that they existed so that we can describe them.  Because of that, we as humans are able to survive longer and with considerably less pain or consequences that shave away years of living.  Otherwise we would all have to go through the same trial and error of the things that potentially threaten our life and more of us wouldn’t make it. 

I’m not sure if fish experience pain (or pleasure) in the way we talk about pain. They must have life-sustaining signals and experiences that keep the species alive. In comparison to fish, however we have much more complex behaviour chains and an enriched environment to survive in because of our ability to tell stories, share experiences and provide rules for living.   

*As an aside, I’m also not so quick to assume fish don’t have their own form of verbal behaviour.  Who knows if and in what form it exists or how sophisticated it really is? 

A lot of what we still do comes down to accessing pleasure while avoiding pain and discomfort.  Our primary reinforcers can be categorized as one or the other.  Through hundreds of years of evolution and conditioning we have a larger repertoire and an enriched environment that provides us with those experiences, even when we don’t need them to survive - e.g., eating a doughnut brings be much pleasure but I don’t need doughnuts to survive. 

Now your second question…

Precurrent behaviours are those that we perform that make some other response (and its reinforcer) more effective (Polson & Parsons, 1994).   An example is when asked, “What’s for lunch?” we look at the menu to find out.  If we can successfully label what we see, we can then answer the question.  I suspect a lot of that labeling occurs covertly - i.e., privately within the person. 

When we take time to “find the answer”, to problem solve or “talk our way through” a series of steps we are engaging in precurrent behaviour.  There is a lot of verbal behaviour involved in those responses, some of which may occur as covert behaviour.  How many times have we counted the number of people coming over for dinner in our mind to then set the correct number of settings at the table?   Ever recite a phone number over and over in your head while you look for a place to write it down?  Precurrent and covert behaviour all at once. 

And they say behaviourism was too simple…

Hope this answers your questions.  If nothing else, it got my verbal (and precurrent) behaviour going.    

Cheers and R+

~ Tricia-Lee

References:

Well hey there anonymous and thanks for the thought-provoking question.  My answer probably won’t do the research and philosophy on this subject any justice but I am also going to try to keep things fairly simple for my non-behaviour analytic readers.

First a primer: covert behaviours are those that occur within the person. They are our sensations, emotions, thoughts.  They are private and only experienced by the person.  They cannot be observed by an outsider; though some medical tools do allow for measurement and monitoring.   

While covert behaviours cannot be seen, they are conceptualized by radical behaviourists as operating under the same principles of our overt behaviours - i.e., the behaviours that can be observed and measured.  For more details, please see my previous post on covert behaviours. 

Seeing covert behaviours as “just side effects” of other behaviours and consequences seems to indicate they have less value.  The sensations and emotions we experience become part of the learning - either conditioned with consequences or they become the motivation/antecedent event for the next behaviour.  When we started to ‘talk’ about these sensations and emotions, we gave ‘thought’ to them  (i.e., verbal behaviours). We were then able to share with others what we had learned. Others learned from our verbal behaviours what to do (i.e., to gain access to reinforcers) and what not to do (i.e., avoid punishers).  

Imagine the first person to discover that fire - while it produced heat and cooked food - burns the skin and that the burn hurts a lot. The next generation learned through the sharing of experiences that fire burns and can hurt.  In the presence of fire now come thoughts of “hurt” “pain” (or however it was described to them in the language/vocalizations/gestures of the time).  Their behaviour changes in order to avoid possibly being burned and experiencing the same fate.

Now imagine the first foragers learning which green leafy substance is a tasty and energy sustaining piece of food versus those that taste awful and cause stomach issues. In order to teach others what they have learned, they would have to note the sensations experienced with certain features of leaf; features requiring some kind of label.  They tell others what to bring back and what to leave on the ground.  

Due to today’s modern technologies and conveniences, it is hard to see the survival factor in many of our behaviours - whether overt or covert.  Yet, what we continue to do over time is seek out positive experiences and avoid negative ones.  We have so many things in our environment that bring us joy and pleasure outside of our basic reinforcers like food, heat, shelter etc.  They entertain us. They occupy our time (especially since we have to do very little to survive at this point). They allow us to be social - to give and to receive.  At the same time, we engage in plenty of behaviours that successfully avoid aversive consequences thanks to the rules handed down by our ancestors.  These rules and our environment have evolved over time because of the unfortunate experience of others before us. One only has to look at road signs and traffic control methods to see how we have learned to make a city move more efficiently yet safely at the same time.

Sure I can Anonymous!

All of our behaviours are categorized as either overt or covert.  Overt behaviours are those that are observable by someone else.  Covert behaviours are that those that occur within a person’s skin. They are the thoughts, emotions and sensations we experience.  They cannot be seen or heard by an outside observer.  

An example:

I see my neighbour and think to myself, I should say “Hi.” (covert behaviour)

I wave and say, “Hi” (overt behaviour).

We know operant (i.e., the three-term contingency) and classical conditioning explain many of our overt behaviours; as demonstrated by hundreds of empirical studies that define and measure overt behaviours through a series of experiments. Since covert behaviours cannot be seen they are near impossible to explain empirically. However, radical behaviourists apply the same principles of operant and classical conditioning to give explanation to covert behaviours.  

What can occur is a covert behaviour accompanied with other overt behaviours which we have learned to discriminate and label as likely being representative of the covert behaviour.  Pain is often accompanied by certain bodily movements and facial expressions.  If I see someone wince, I typically assume they are in pain. Experiencing something funny is often accompanied by laughing. We typically relate laughing as, “something is funny” and confirm the source.  We may never be able to measure “funny” but we can measure laughing and relate to other behaviours from there.  

And then come relational frame theorists who work at experimenting with principles of behaviour to empirically validate covert behaviours. That’s a whole other wave of behaviour science requiring another post for me to go there (and likely not written by me as my knowledge is very basic and limited).