Rider D P
School of Allied Health Professions, 1100 Florida Avenue, Building 119, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.
Behav Anal. 1991 Fall;14(2):171-81. doi: 10.1007/BF03392567.
The relationship between the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB) and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has been the subject of several editorials and commentaries in recent years. Various authors have argued that researchers in these two fields (a) have become isolated from each other, (b) face different requirements for survival in their respective fields, and (c) possess different skills to meet those requirements. The present paper provides an allegory for the relationship between EAB and ABA in terms of biological speciation. The conditions that have changed the relationship between EAB and ABA are parallel to those responsible for biological speciation: (a) isolation of some members of a species from the rest of the population, (b) different contingencies of survival for members of the two separate groups, and (c) divergence in the adaptive characteristics displayed by the two groups. When members of two different groups, descendants of common ancestors, no longer are capable of producing viable offspring by interbreeding, the different groups then represent different species. To the extent that members of the EAB group and members of the ABA group interact with each other only trivially, they each represent allegorically different species. Changes in the relationship between EAB and ABA are part of a natural process that takes place in many other sciences, and the course of that process can hardly be reversed by us.
近年来，行为实验分析（EAB）与应用行为分析（ABA）之间的关系一直是几篇社论和评论的主题。不同的作者认为，这两个领域的研究人员：（a）彼此孤立；（b）在各自领域面临不同的生存要求；（c）具备满足这些要求的不同技能。本文用生物物种形成的比喻阐述了EAB与ABA之间的关系。改变EAB与ABA之间关系的条件与导致生物物种形成的条件相似：（a）一个物种的一些成员与种群的其他成员隔离；（b）两个独立群体的成员有不同的生存条件；（c）两组所表现出的适应性特征出现差异。当两个不同群体（共同祖先的后代）的成员不再能够通过杂交产生可存活的后代时，这两个不同的群体就代表了不同的物种。就EAB群体的成员和ABA群体的成员之间只是微不足道地相互作用而言，它们在比喻意义上各自代表不同的物种。EAB与ABA之间关系的变化是许多其他科学中都发生的自然过程的一部分，而且我们几乎无法逆转这个过程的进程。
