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There is a vast amount of research to be done in education
and educational psychology. PB has shown how problems of education
can be solved by using its principles and methods, for example,
with dyslexic children. Others have used these advances in
applying them to other educational problems, for example,.
Sylvan Learning Systems employs methods similar to PB’s
token reinforcer system and tutorial training. But much research
is called for, for education does not generally use these
principles or methods. Moreover, there should be specific
study, within the PB framework, of what the BBRs that are
learned in school—such as reading, writing, arithmetic,
math—and thus how best to teach them. This basic research
is not being done.
PB work provided founding pillars for the development of
behavior modification, behavior therapy, behavior analysis,
behavioral assessment, and cognitive behavior therapy. So,
in addition to its own works, its early principles, methods,
and procedures have been used many times. But PB has continued
to advance greatly since those early contributions and has
made many developments that establish new avenues for research
and application for clinical psychology waiting to be used.
To name one, PB’s framework for analyzing psychological
tests in terms of the BBRs opens a vast field for development.
Imagine, for example, if an intelligence test would tell the
clinical child psychologist what BBRs the child was deficit
in and there was knowledge by which to train the child in
those BBRs such that the child’s scores would rise and
the child would do better in various learning tasks. Producing
those possibilities in various personality areas would enormously
valuable. As another example, language, or cognitive, behavior
therapy is generally accepted now but a fruitful research
program on the therapy awaits full utilization of the PB theory
of language that involves both classical and operant conditioning
principles and various language behavior repertoires.
Continue to Looking to the Future:
Unified Positivism
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