21/07/2013
Subjective operants
보낸사람: Steven Brown 13.07.20 12:52
The term 'operant' can be traced to Skinner, but the concept preceded him as well as Bridgman (in The Logic of Modern Physics, Macmillan, 1927), the Nobel laureate who was the father of operationism. Stephenson attributed the concept of operantcy to Spearman, whose concept of 'g' was not dependent on the instruments used to measure it. (General intelligence, or 'g', was the general first factor in R methodology on which all sorts of measures of achievement were loaded, which is comparable to the overwhelming first factor in some Q studies that has been the topic of recent postings.) A pigeon in a Skinner box, when left alone, will occasionally peck the blue key and occasionally peck the red key. The pigeon's pecking is 'natural' in as much as it has not been encouraged to engage in this behavior, other than having been placed in an experimental space in which such behavior is possible. The class of pecking behaviors (and not any single event) are referred to as operant, and the number of peckings within a specified time frame is referred to as the organism's operant level, which (within Skinner's methodology) is then reinforced to demonstrate the effect on behavior of reinforcing consequences. Similarly in Q, the person operates with the statements in the Q sample, and the comparison (via factor analysis) of several such performances results in natural categories of operant subjectivity. There have been a few publications on this matter, including the following, which are not exhaustive:
Brown, S.R. (1999). Psicología política desde el punto de vista de la subjectividad natural. In G.A. Mota Botello (Ed.), Psicología política del nuevo siglo: Una ventana a la ciudadanía (pp. 41-58). Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Psicología Social.
Brown, S.R. (2006). Q methodology and naturalistic subjectivity. In B. Midgley & E. Morris (Eds.), Modern perspectives on J.R. Kantor and interbehaviorism (pp. 251-268). Reno, NV: Context Press.
Brown, S.R., & Mathieson, M. (1990). The operantcy of practical criticism. Electronic Journal of Communication/La R***e Electronique de Communication, 1(1). Available: http://www.cios.org/www/ejcmain.htm
Delprato, D.J., & Brown, S.R. (2002). Q methodology and the operant construct. Operant Subjectivity, 25, 139-147.
Smith, N.W. (2001). Operant subjectivity: Objectivity of subjectivity. In Smith, Current systems in psychology: History, theory, research, and applications (pp. 319-343). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
Stephenson, W. (1976). Q-methodology: Conceptualization and measurement of operant effects of television viewing JCATS: Journal of the Centre for Advanced Television Studies, 4, 17-18.
Stephenson, W. (1977). Factors as operant subjectivity. Operant Subjectivity, 1, 3-16.
Watts, S. (2011). Subjectivity as operant: A conceptual exploration and discussion. Operant Subjectivity, 35, 37-47.
Delprato and Brown (2002) have listed various features of operants in Q methodology:
Operants are subjective: the statements are typically unprovable opinions and their Q sorting is a representation of the person's own subjective viewpoint; the factors that result are consequently categories of subjectivity.
They are independent of constructed effects; e.g., the factors that emerge are not dependent on the 'meaning' of the statements (as asserted in the Q-sample structure) or on the particular set of statements used, any more than the pigeon's behavior in the Skinner Box is dependent on the color of the keys.
The factors have no a priori meaning in the same sense that rating scales have meanings that have been established beforehand: factors cannot be assessed as right or wrong.
Concepts follow operations; i.e., the operations (Q sorts) and the resulting factors are obtained first and then are conceptualized. Similarly in the Skinnerian experiment: the pecking of the blue key increases in frequency as a function of reinforcements, and 'learning' is attached to this phenomenon. In R, by way of contrast, concepts come first and are given an operational definition, and then responses are gathered.
Q factors are natural categories in the same sense that a pigeon's pecking a red key is natural.
At the level of the single case in particular, factors in Q methodology are in a relationship of complementarity, all factors being required in order to account for a person's behavior (in the same way that both particle and wave are required for a complete description of light).
Factors relate to one another in an interactive field, no one taking causal precedence, any more (as Skinner remarked) than the golfer's backswing is the cause of the ball being struck.
The implications of all of this run counter to mind-body dualism, metaphysical distinctions between objectivity and subjectivity, hypothesis testing in the narrow statistical sense, the a priori meaning of behavior, the presumption of mental or other internal causes of overt behavior, classical conceptions of causality, and other presumptions of conventional approaches to the explanation of behavior. Little wonder, then, that Q faces tough sledding in the contemporary intellectual market place.
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* _____ ______ ____ __ __ ____ ___ _ * Steven R. Brown
| | ___||_ _|| _ || | || _ || | | | Graduate School of Education
| |___ | | | | _| | | || _| | | | Kent State University
| |_____| |__| |____| \___/ |____||_|___| | ([email protected])
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