The Role of Contingency Adduction in the Creative Act
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THEORETICAL ARTICLE
The Role of Contingency Adduction in the Creative Act Nolan Williams 1 Accepted: 8 October 2020 # Association for Behavior Analysis International 2020
Abstract This article discusses the potential role of contingency adduction in creative behavior. Some have characterized creativity as the study of generativity. Generativity is the investigation of procedures that result in the occurrence of untrained, often composite, patterns from earlier trained components. An increasing number of applied programs are attempting to apply generative procedures in their design. Headsprout Early Reading®, for example, explicitly employed generative procedures to teach reading. There remains a lack of understanding about the role contingency adduction plays in the generative process. Contingency adduction is defined when patterns shaped under one context are recruited by contingencies in another context for which the pattern was not originally shaped. Adduced patterns may be new sequences of repertoires, the combination of repertoires, or the repertoire may acquire a new function. The moment of reinforcement of these new patterns from previously established patterns marks the moment of adduction. Thus, procedures that make such selection more likely may be fundamental to encourage what might be called creative behavior. Examples and nonexamples of contingency adduction involving both verbal and nonverbal procedures in both animals and humans will be described, and their implications noted. Keywords Adduction . Contingency Adduction . Creativity . Variability
Most societies value creative, novel, and innovative solutions in art, sport, business, entertainment, and science and technology. An adequate theory of human behavior must address all aspects of human functioning—including behavior called creative. Of course, creativity is an important topic to behavior analysts. By extension, if behavior analysts could reliably engineer such behavior, the social value of our science would increase. To guide behavior analysts’ efforts in developing procedures to encourage creative performance, behavior analysts must first determine what sorts of behaviors qualify as creative. This determination may be aided by an analysis of the conditions which control the use of the tact “creative” in our society. To establish the boundary of the tact “creative,” it may be useful to first identify the conditions which do not occasion the tact’s use. When do verbal communities reinforce the use of tacts such as “uncreative,” “application,” or “derivative?” For example, saying dog in the presence of a
* Nolan Williams [email protected] 1
University of North Texas, 103 East Park Place, Jeffersonville Indiana 47130, USA
new dog, even though it has not previously occurred, is not typically considered creative. Popular media provides numerous examples of uncreative behavior. Critics pan screenwriters for recycling plot lines. Fans of well-established bands, authors, and comedians groan when their favorite entertainers repeatedly produ
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