Behavior, process, and scale: Comments on Shimp (2020), “Molecular (moment‐to‐moment) and molar (aggregate) analyses of behavior”
Graph behavior as a continuous stream at the time scale that shows its natural rhythm.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Baum (2021) looked at how we slice up behavior. He said counting lever presses or tallying discrete responses hides the real action.
Instead, he argued behavior is a flowing stream. We should measure it on the time scale that matters to the organism, not to our click counters.
What they found
The paper found no new data. It found a new lens. Treat behavior as a continuous process, not a pile of separate events.
If the process repeats every 3 s, graph it every 3 s. If it unfolds over days, graph it across days. Match the ruler to the rhythm of the behavior.
How this fits with other research
Iversen (2025) picked up the same beat. He said each trial is a mini-replication and told us to graph moment-to-moment data within sessions. Together the two papers push us from static bar graphs to moving pictures.
Davison et al. (2005) set the stage earlier. They treated scientific publishing itself as a behavioral process. Baum extends that idea to the subject matter we publish about: the behavior stream.
Manolov et al. (2022) seem to tug the other way. They offer tidy visual tools to judge replication across separate cases. The tools still treat sessions as discrete boxes. Baum would say the boxes are artificial; draw the data continuously instead.
Why it matters
Next time you run a functional analysis, try graphing response rate in 10-s bins instead of counting each response as one. Watch the pattern emerge. If you see a smooth rise and fall, you have found the process. If the numbers jump around, zoom in or out until the curve makes sense. Your treatment will target the process, not the click.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one client, graph their target behavior in 5-s intervals instead of per-response counts, and look for smooth trends.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
If we study the behavior of organisms, we must understand the ontological status of both "organism" and "behavior." A living organism maintains itself alive by constantly interacting with the environment, taking in energy and discarding waste. Ontologically, an organism is a process. Its interactions with the environment, which constitute its behavior, are processes also, because the parts of any process are themselves processes. Processes serve functions, and the function of a process must be part of its identity. A process, by definition, extends in time. Time is the fundamental and universal measure of behavior. All processes have the property of scale. Activities of an organism have parts that are themselves activities on a smaller time scale. Scale varies continuously, and behavior may be studied on as large or as small a time scale as seems necessary. When researchers refer to the "structure" of behavior, they refer to smaller-scale activities. Attaching a switch to a lever or key is convenient, but one should never confuse operation of a switch with a unit of behavior. Shimp's (2020) "molecular" measures are small-scale measures. The molecular view based on discrete events has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced by a multiscale molar paradigm.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2021 · doi:10.1002/jeab.668