The convergence of behavioral biology and operant psychology: Toward an interlevel and interfield science.
Share lab tools with biologists, but keep your behavioral language clean.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Martens et al. (1989) wrote a theory paper. They asked: can operant psychology and behavioral biology become one science?
The authors looked at shared lab tools. Things like rate of response, reinforcement schedules, and feeding protocols. They argued methods, not big ideas, should glue the fields together.
What they found
The paper claims the two fields are already merging. Shared data methods make the merger smooth.
They call the result an "interfield science." Biology supplies mechanisms. Behavior analysis supplies environmental laws.
How this fits with other research
Furrebøe et al. (2017) updates the same logic. It swaps biology for behavioral economics. Both papers say: give us your odd findings and we will test them with operant tools.
Morris et al. (1982) sounds like it fights the 1989 paper. The earlier work tells us to keep cognitive language out of behavior analysis. The 1989 reply says selective sharing with biology is fine, just stay picky.
Otrebski (2005) extends the caution to neuroscience. It warns against saying "the brain decides." The theme matches 1989: share methods, but keep psychological words tied to whole-organism behavior.
Why it matters
You can borrow tools from other labs without selling your soul. If a biology study uses the same reinforcement schedule you do, pool the data. Just keep your talk behavioral. Describe what the animal does, not what its brain supposedly thinks. Monday morning, open a journal from another field. If they plot response rate over time, you can replicate or extend their work while staying inside a behavior-analytic frame.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one behavioral-biology paper that uses the same schedule you run and graph both data sets together.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavioral biology and operant psychology have developed in parallel but separate paths since their origins in the 1930s. In the first three decades, both fields dealt with microscopic (or molecular) controlling variables and qualitative data. Since about 1960, both have primarily focused on macroscopic (or molar) controlling variables. Their shared interest in foraging in the 1980s suggests a limited convergence beween biologists and psychologists in data, methods, and theories. We draw on accounts of intertheoretic relations from the philosophy of science, including both interlevel theory and interfield theory, to understand this convergence. However, our greater emphasis on methods of data collection and analysis leads us to characterize the convergence as not only one of interfield theory but one of interfield science.
The Behavior analyst, 1989 · doi:10.1007/BF03392490