EFEITO DA CLASSIFICAÇÃO DIAGNÓSTICA NO COMPORTAMENTO EXPLICATIVO

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The science has as its objectives the prediction, control, interpretation of behavioral phenomena and a meta-analysis of science itself in a Radical Behavior’s perspective. Skinner (1957) claimed in Verbal Behavior to explain the phenomenon of language based on these objectives. It is in this work that the explanatory verbal behavior is explained, which is understood as verbal responses in which individuals relate events in nature. The aim of this present study was to analyze whether the participants' speeches about the educational achievement of a student in a hypothetical situation would be different among those participants who had contact with the description whose student has a diagnosis of a specific learning disorder. The Reno Method was adopted as a discourse analysis instrument, as it is based on radical behaviorism. Its proposal is constituted by the integration of the experimental method with the interpretive method. The purpose is, therefore, to understand the variables in which a verbal response is a function, by establishing a context for the speaker's free speech, in the case of this research, the hypothetical school situation. The analysis will be done in two steps; in the first, verbalizations are functionally related to the stimulus prepared by the researcher, allowing inferences about the sources of control of verbal behavior; in the second, the self-analysis of the scientist's own behavior takes place. So far, five participants who are undergraduate students have been selected, divided into two groups: group A, whose hypothetical situation the student did not present with any diagnosis; group B, whose hypothetical situation the student was characterized by a specific learning disorder. Three macro-categories were created based on the researcher's regularities in the participants' verbal responses. Data were analyzed by participants. After the categorization and counting of answers selected by participants, the data were counted per group, comparison was made between per group and areas of knowledge. The main results found were that both groups presented responses categorized as interactionists and as teachers in greater numbers; both groups presented a high number of manipulative responses; group B presented a greater number of verbal responses in all categories and a greater number with a large difference in manipulative responses; and the participants from exact knowledge area in the group B presented the biggest number of answers of mentalists and of manipulation answers. It can be defined that there were no differences among the groups, except in relation to the participants from exact knowledge area when they were in the group B. This research contributes to the study of verbal behavior, and, in an incipient way, to the analysis of behavior applied to the school context.