Post-session verbal reports and the experimental analysis of behavior.
Treat post-session talk as more behavior to study, not as proof of why other behavior happened.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mazur (1986) wrote a short theory paper. It asked: what are post-session verbal reports?
The paper says these reports are just more behavior. They are not secret causes hiding inside the head.
What they found
The finding is a rule of thumb. Treat what people say after a session as data you still need to explain.
Do not use their words as the final proof of why they acted a certain way.
How this fits with other research
Heinicke et al. (2012) give a live demo. Rats that ate right after a session worked less the next day. The study shows postsession events matter, but it looks at feeding, not talking.
Tanious et al. (2026) pick up the same worry about loose data rules. They warn that serial dependency can trick you when you read single-case graphs. Together the three papers push one message: watch what happens after the last response.
Hobson (1984) sings the same tune two years earlier. That paper tells us to study individual quirks, not erase them. Mazur (1986) repeats the move for verbal reports: keep the data, study it, do not sweep it away.
Why it matters
Next time a client says, "I was bored," after a work trial, write the words down. Then ask: what bored looks like in next session’s data? Treat the sentence as a new response to shape or reduce, not as the hidden reason performance dropped. You stay scientific and you keep control.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Experimental analyses of the performance of verbal subjects often include verbal reports, obtained during post-session interviews, about within-session covert verbal behavior (e.g., hypotheses about the contingencies). But such post-session reports are not necessarily accurate, and procedural details of how the samples were obtained are typically inadequate. Even when the post-session reports are accurate, the within-session hypotheses do not have the status of causes of within-session nonverbal performance. In an experimental analysis, it is important to treat such reports as instances, not causes, of behavior.
The Analysis of verbal behavior, 1986 · doi:10.1007/BF03392811