The Internal Clock: A Manifestation of a Misguided Mechanistic View of Causation?
Drop the ‘internal clock’ talk—look at the last environmental event that shaped the pause.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Eckard et al. (2020) wrote a conceptual paper. They looked at how behavior analysts talk about timing. They asked, 'Do we need an inner clock to explain why pigeons peck after 30 seconds?'
The authors say no. They argue the 'internal clock' is a made-up ghost in the machine. They want us to drop the clock story and look at real environmental events instead.
What they found
The paper finds no evidence for a tiny clock inside the brain. Instead, it shows the clock idea pulls attention away from things we can see and change.
When we say 'the clock ran fast,' we stop looking at what just happened in the room. The authors say that hurts good ABA practice.
How this fits with other research
JM (2024) just built a new 'Active Time Model.' That model uses a steady inner timer to explain choice. Eckard et al. (2020) reject any inner timer. The two papers clash head-on. The clash is useful: it forces you to pick—model the unseen clock or drop it.
Griffith et al. (2012) point to cortical-basal ganglia circuits to explain repetitive behavior. That sounds like a brain cause, not an environmental one. The papers seem to disagree, but they speak to different audiences. Neurologists need brain talk; BCBAs need environmental talk. You can read both without contradiction.
Meyer et al. (1987) attacked the old 'perceptual reinforcement' myth about stereotypy. Their logic matches Eckard’s attack on the clock: don’t stuff an invisible gadget inside the learner. Together, the two papers give a long, clear thread—stay observable.
Why it matters
When a child waits 20 seconds before hitting the button, skip the phrase 'his inner clock is off.' Look at what happened at second 19. Did an adult walk by? Did the light flicker? Change that event and you change the wait. That keeps your intervention where you can see it.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Across various subfields within psychology, mechanistic causation is invoked regularly. When the temporal contiguity of the typical cause–effect relation is violated, mechanistic causation often assigns causal roles to mediating hypothetical constructs to account for observed effects. Two primary consequences of mechanistic causation are that 1) the proposed hypothetical constructs add what many behavior analysts consider an unnecessary step in the causal chain, and 2) these constructs then become the focus of study thereafter diverting attention from more accessible “causes.” Constructs do not contribute directly to determining the control of behavior; thus, their reification as “causes” often distracts from variables that do fulfill a causal role. In this review, these consequences are discussed in relation to theories of interval timing proposing an internal clock. Not only has this clock been said to be a cause of behavior in experiments on temporally regulated behavior, but also the clock itself has been a frequent subject of study within the timing literature. Despite descriptive accounts of this sort initially serving a heuristic function for model development, the promotion from descriptive aid to causal factor has the potential to limit much of the heuristic value that mechanistic models of causation can provide to the analysis of behavior. Problems related to construct reification are less likely to be at issue when functional relations and the processes of establishing such behavior are emphasized as alternatives to mechanistic causation alone.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2020 · doi:10.1007/s40614-018-00189-5