ABSTRACT
Early personality theorists, such as Baldwin (1946) and Fiske and Rice (1955), advocated investigation of the functional relations which characterize intra-individual variations in behavior across time and/or settings. A similar emphasis upon intra-individual studies is found in the work of some writers who espouse a functional analysis viewpoint (Bijou & Baer, 1961; Sidman, 1960). However, most of these investigators have focused upon only a narrow range of variables. For example, within the functional analysis paradigm, the emphasis has been limited to manipulations of reinforcing contingencies as determinants for intra-individual variations in performance. This writer hypothesizes that in natural settings, variations in reinforcing contingencies account directly for only a small proportion of the variance which characterizes intra-individual variations in rate over time and settings: Rather, the assumption is that rates of many social behaviors vary primarily as a function of covariations in the densities of the stimuli which control the initiations and maintenance of children’s social behaviors. Presumably, these controlling stimuli are in turn determined by reinforcing contingencies.
