An intentional interpretive perspective.
Only say ‘intention’ when you can point to the outside events that make anyone say the act was on purpose.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Neuman (2004) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment.
He asked: can behavior analysts ever say ‘intention’ without sounding like we believe in little minds inside the head?
He mapped when the word is safe to use: only if you can point to real-time cues that make an observer say ‘that person meant to do it.’
What they found
The paper finds ‘intention’ is just short-hand for a public pattern.
If you can spot the past reinforcement history and current setting events that lead an observer to credit the person with purpose, then the term is allowed.
If you can’t, the word is mentalism and should be dropped.
How this fits with other research
Capaldi (1992) made the same move with ‘history.’ He said history is not a stored ghost; it is the present interaction you can see now. Paul does the same trick for ‘intention.’
Stemmer (1990) defended Skinner’s 1957 grammar account against mentalism. Paul extends that guard duty to the word ‘intention.’
Pratt (1985) sorted ABA work into four clear jobs. Paul adds a language rule: no matter which job you do, check your ‘intention’ talk against visible cues.
Why it matters
Next time you write a report, test yourself. Can you name the environmental reason you just wrote ‘the client intentionally hit’? If yes, keep it. If not, delete it and describe the trigger and consequence instead. This small edit keeps your language scientific, your reports cleaner, and your team focused on what we can change.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To the extent that the concept of intention has been addressed within behavior analysis, descriptions of intention have been general and have not specifically included important distinctions that differentiate a behavior-analytic approach from vernacular definitions of intention. A fundamental difference between a behavior-analytic approach and most other psychological approaches is that other approaches focus on the necessity of intentions to explain behavior, whereas a behavior-analytic approach is directed at understanding the interplay between behavior and environment. Behavior-analytic interpretations include the relations between the observer's behavior and the environment. From a behavior-analytic perspective, an analysis of the observer's interpretations of an individual's behavior is inherent in the subsequent attribution of intention. The present agenda is to provide a behavior-analytic account of attributing intention that identifies the establishing conditions for speaking of intention. Also addressed is the extent to which we speak of intentions when the observed individual's behavior is contingency shaped or under instructional control.
The Behavior analyst, 2004 · doi:10.1007/BF03392092