The Functional Nature of Behavioral Categories

To define each unit of behavior experimentally would be an enormous task. Even for an individual pigeon or rat it may not be possible because there are an indefinite number of such units in its behavior and new ones are always being formed. Behavior analysts do not however propose to study behavior unit by unit, animal by animal. The main objects of study are the principles by which units come into existence, undergo change, and go out of existence. Skinner assumes that each different kind of unit has its own such principles. His research strategy calls for intensive study of only a few carefully chosen representatives of each kind in a few representative species. If the dynamic regularities of a given kind of unit are consistent from one instance to another, and from one species to another, one may (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) reasonably proceed on the assumption that the regularities generalize to all units of the kind under study, for all species that possess the unit.