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VOLUME 11 2011

ISSN 1942-0722 WWW.BAOJOURNAL.COM

baoJOURNALS

BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT

BULLETINSpecial Section on Genes and Environme

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EHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN VOL. 11, 2011 ISS

I

EDITORIAL BOARD

EDITORMichael Lamport Commons, Ph.D. Harvard Medical School

Martha Pelaez, Ph.D. Florida International University

EDITORIAL ADVISORSJack Apsche, Ed.D, ACPP Apsche Center for Evidence Based Psychology, Yardley,

PA

Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, Ph.D. National University of Ireland

Sarah Till Boysen, Ph.D. Ohio State University

Joseph Cautilli, Ph.D. Childrens Crisis Treatment Center, Philadelphia, PA

Darlene Crone-Todd, Ph.D. Salem State University

Tiffany Field, Ph.D. Touch Research Institute, University of Miami

Jacob L. Gewirtz, Ph.D. Florida International University

Sigrid Glenn, Ph.D. University of North Texas

Douglas Greer, Ph.D. Columbia University

Per Holth, Ph.D. The Behavioral Center, Unirand, Oslo, Norway

DolleenDay Keohane, Ph.D. Nicholls State University

Rebecca, MacDonald, Ph.D. The New England Center for Children, Boston, MA

Marcus Jackson Marr, Ph.D. Georgia Institute of Technology

Patrice Marie Miller, Ed.D. Salem State University

Edward K. Morris, Ph.D. University of Kansas

Gary Novak, Ph.D. California State University

Hayne Reese, Ph.D. West Virginia University

Ruth Anne Rehfeldt, Ph.D. Southern Illinois University

Jesus RosalesRuz, Ph.D. University of North Texas

Sara Nora Ross, Ph.D. Antioch University Midwest

Henry D. Schlinger, Jr., Ph.D. California State University and UCLA

Rachel Thompson, Ph.D. University of Kansas

Javier Virus-Ortega, Ph.D. University of Manitoba

ASSOCIATE EDITORS OF SPECIAL SECTIONJudah Axe, Ph.D., Simmons College

Christine Barthold, Ph.D., University of DelawareHelen Canella-Malone, Ph.D, Ohio State University

Traci Cihon, Ph.D., University of North Texas

Grant Gautreaux, Ph.D., Nicholls State University

Amanda Guld, Ph.D., Melmark

Barbara Metzger, Ph.D., Sam Houston State University

Corrine Murphy, Ph.D., West Chester College

Jessica Singer-Dudek, Ph.D., Teachers College, Columbia University

MANAGING EDITOREva Yujia Li, B.A. Dare Institute

CONTENTS The Learning-by-Doing Principle

Hayne W. Reese 1

Gene-Environment Interactions and the Functional Analysisof Challenging Behavior in Children with Intellectual andDevelopmental Disabilities

Peter McGill and Paul Langthorne 20

The Bigger Picture: Development, Genes, Evolution, andBehavior Analysis

Susan M. Schneider 27

How a Future Species of Superion Hominids Might Negotiateto Promote the Survival of Homo Sapiens: An Application ofthe Model of Hierarchical Complexity

Lucas Alexander Haley Commons-Miller 32

Brief Report on Experiential Avoidance and Valuing in At-riskAdolescents

Amy R. Murrell & Vaishnavi Kapadia 38

MISSION STATEMENTTe mission o the Behavioral Development Bulletin (BDB) pro-

vided developmental psychologists with peer reviewed scienticin ormation o interest. It is to in orm the eld o developmentalpsychology by taking a behavioral analytic approach, includingresearch in cognitive development, child emotional develop-ment, developmental theory and socialization. Tere are threegoals. One is to understand development in behavioral terms.Te second is to reach out to developmental psychology with theinnovations that behavior-developmental approaches have provided. Tirdly, we see behavior analysis as providing interven-tions that measure and promote development. Tat means thatwe are interested in educational and clinical interventions thatstimulate and increase the likelihood o development. Under

the topic o the measurement o development that includes whatare the sequences o development in different areas.Since its inception, the journal has published articles o an

inter-and-multidisciplinary nature including areas o socio-biology and behavioral methodology. Te Behavioral Develop-ment Bulletin (BDB) is especially relevant to behavior analystswho study the developmental processes responsible or behaviorchanges and their progressive organization. Te Behavioral De- velopment Bulletin (BDB) hopes to provide answers by lookingat the biological and environmental actors that affect behavioraldevelopment, while maintaining primarily interest in the role oenvironmental contingencies in behavior change.

Behavioral Development Bulletin A BAO Journals Publication

Special Section on Genetic and Development
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uted at no charge rom its website http://www.baojournal.com/BDB%20WEBSI E/index.html. However, all other rights arereserved. Any other use requires the express prior written per-mission o the copyright holder. For permission, contact Mar-tha Pelaez, Editor.

All in ormation contained within is provided as is. Te Be-havioral Development Bulletin, its publishers, editors, authors,

and/or agents, cannot be held responsible or the way this in-ormation is used or applied. Te Behavioral Development Bul-

letin (BDB) journal is not responsible or typographical errors.Te Publisher, Joseph Cautilli may be reached at: [email protected]. For hard copies you may contact the editor, MarthaPelaez, at: [email protected]

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CONTACT INFORMATION OF THE EDITORS

Michael Lamport Commons, [email protected] Martha Pelaez, pelaeznm@ u.eduRuth M. Debar, [email protected]

PUBLISHERS STATEMENTBehavior Development BulletinVolume 11, 2011Published: August, 2012

Te Behavioral Development Bulletin (BDB) is the official journal o the Developmental Behavior Analysis Special Inter-est Group o the Association or Behavior Analysis (ABA). It ispublished annually in online ormat at http://www.baojournal.com/BDB%20WEBSI E/index.html by Joseph D. Cautilli andBehavior Analyst Online (BAO) Journals and in hard copy byMartha Pelaez. Te BDB journal is a publication o general cir-culation to the scientic community.

Te materials, articles, and in ormation provided on thiswebsite have been prepared by the staff o the Behavioral De- velopment Bulletin (BDB) or in ormational purposes only. Tein ormation contained in this web site is not intended to cre-ate any kind o patient therapist relationship or representationwhatsoever. For a ree subscription to Behavioral DevelopmentBulletin (BDB), go to the subscriptions page on the website

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REESEEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN VOL. 11, 2011 ISSN: 19

1

Learning by doing means learning rom experiences resultingdirectly rom ones own actions, as contrasted with learningrom watching others per orm, reading others instructionsor descriptions, or listening to others instructions or lectures.O course, watching, reading, and listening are actions, but theyare not the kinds o doing re erred to as learning by doing be-cause they yield direct experience with demonstrations or de-scriptions o actions rather than with actions the learner actu-ally per orms. In classical psychology and its hangers-on (e.g.,Robinson, 1930), direct experience meant mental contact withmental phenomena by introspection; but in the present context,

it means sensory contact with the results o doing.Te learning-by-doing principle has been advocated widely

and in many orms, including learn-by-doing, trial-and-errorlearning or discovery versus instruction, practical experience versus book learning, the practice-theory-practice dialectic,and proo upon practice. Te word practice in the last two othese versions is sometimes interpreted to mean repetition, asin a study by Keeling, Polacek, and Ingram (2009) discussed inthe subsection Learning to Ask Good Questions. However, itis intended in the sense o praxis, which means a goal-directedbehavior. Te phrase goal-directed behavior can be interpretedin a cognitive sense or in the sense o an operant behavior.

Te learning by doing principle is old and many advocateshave stated it as a truism. For example, it was cited withoutdocumentation by Sam Bonasso, a civil engineer, in an essay oncreativity (Bonasso, 1983), and by the semanticist, economist,and writer Stuart Chase, in a book against communism and as-

cism (Chase, 1938, p. 182; the quoted characterization o Chaseis rom Chase, 1969, unnumbered p. 217). Other examples ouses o the principle are discussed in the next section.

USES OF THE PRINCIPLE

Te uses summarized in this section are organized by orm or version o the principle. Tis approach is based largely on con- venience, but some versions emphasize aspects o learning bydoing that are only implicit in other versions.

DISCOVERY VERSUS INSTRUCTIONTe rst example in this section is more or less rom everydayli e. Another example o this sort is given in the section Prooupon Practice.

TRIAL AND ERROR VERSUS READING A USERS MANUAL

rying to solve a computer or other mechanical problem byreading a Users Manual o en leads to nothing but rustration,either because the manu acturer provides no hardcopy UsersManual or the one provided seems to have been written in a

oreign language and badly translated into English or written ingeek-jargon and not translated at all. Using trial and error withthe computer keyboard and mouse o en leads to problem so-lution, but this is not learning by doing unless the discoveredprocess is remembered.

TRIAL AND ERROR VERSUS INSTRUCTION

Sidman (2010) commented that learning by doing can be error-ul as in trial-and-error learning, or errorless as in insight and

programmed errorless learning. Harlows (1949, 1959) concepto learning set is relevant. It involved per orming on a serieso two-stimulus discrimination-learning problems each with adifferent pair o stimuli. Te research showed that a er a pro-longed training series, subjects solve new problems in a single

The Learning-by-Doing PrincipleHayne W. ReeseWest Virginia University

AbstractLearning by doing has been a principle for thousands of years; it has had many proponents, including Plato, Thomas HobbesEnglish and Spanish epigrammatists, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong, cultural anthropologists, Montessori, John B. Watson, anB. F. Skinner; and it has had many forms, including learning by doing, discovery versus instruction, practical experience versbook-learning, the practice-theory-practice dialectic, and proof upon practice. The paper includes discussion of several of thforms, with examples, to establish what the principle means; modi cations of the principle such as instructed learning-by-doand a role of reasoning; and possible explanations of its effectiveness.

KeywordsPractical Experience, Trial-and-error, Discovery, Practice-Theory Relation, Practice-Theory-Practice Dialectic

Hayne W. Reese, Ph.D., Centennial Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychol-ogy, West Virginia University. This paper is an expanded and updated version ofa paper presented at the meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, San

Antonio, TX, May/June 2010, which was a shorter but updated version of aninvited address presented at the meeting of the Nevada Association for Behavior

Analysis, Reno, NV, October, 2009. Authors address: [email protected]
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and Plato as programmed instruction (he also cited two otherinterpretations).

A simpler, more direct version o the Socratic and Platonicmethod has been shown to acilitate problem solving. For ex-ample, Grote, Rosales, Royer, and Baer (??in press) showed that4-year-olds sorting o multidimensional stimuli was acilitatedby asking, What are you looking or? Te question is content-

ree in that it does not re er to any specic dimension or set odimensions that could be used as the basis or sorting; it seemsto have been effective because it led the children to identi y andthen to name eatures that were bases or correct sorting. An ex-ample with more specic questions is a study by Lisina showingthat young childrens per ormance improved when the exam-iner asked task-relevant questions such as How are you goingto reach that? and What is broken? Te questioning led togreater organization and goal-directedness o the childrens ac-tions, presumably because it induced the children to identi y anappropriate action or a relevant aspect o the situation (Zaporo-zhets, Zinchenko, & Elkonin, 1971, pp. 214-215). Evidently,the questions in these examples, and in Socratess and Platos

method, unction as instructions. Tere ore, these proceduresexempli y learning by doing as instructed.

LEARNING THE DIALECTICAL METHOD

Kozulin (1984, p. 131) attributed the learning-by-doing prin-ciple to John Dewey; but although Dewey may have popularizedit, it was known already by Plato. Plato believed that the way tolearn the philosophical method, by which he meant dialectic,is by using it (Annas, 1981, pp. 276, 292). In Te Republic, Platore used to answer young Glaucons questions about the dialecti-cal method because Plato thought it could be learned only byyears o personal experience and practice (Plato, Te Republic,Bk. 7 [532e-533a, 534], also identied as Pt. 3, chap. 27; 1941,

pp. 253, 255).RELATIONAL-FRAME LEARNING

A research example o discovery versus instruction is a studyby Eikeseth, Rosales-Ruiz, Duarte, and Baer (1997) on stimu-lus equivalence in college students. Eikeseth et al. used instruc-tions rather than training to establish the initial conditional as-sociations, and then they gave symmetry and transitivity testso stimulus equivalence with 16 interspersed probes o memory

or the instructed associations. Only 28 o 58 subjects--about48%--met a memory criterion o at least 15 correct responseson the 16 probes, and only 50% o the 28 exhibited stimulusequivalence by meeting the same criterion on the symmetry

and transitivity tests. Eikeseth et al. said that 50% success isnot bad in that it has also been ound in the rst set o probeswhen the initial conditional associations were learned by train-ing rather than instructions. For documentation, Eikeseth et al.cited our reports, one covering two experiments. One o thecited experiments (Sidman, Kirk, & Willson-Morris, 1985, Exp.2) included a normal adult, and his per ormance on the initialtest trials--30% and 41% correct responses--was airly consis-tent with the point alleged by Eikeseth et al. However, the oth-er our experiments were irrelevant: three included no adults(Devany, Hayes, & Nelson, 1986; Lazar, Davis-Lang, & Sanchez,1984; Sidman et al., 1985, Exp. 1) and one included children

trial, whether the subjects are animals such as pigeons, rats, andnonhuman primates, or humans ranging rom young childhoodthrough old-old age and rom below normal in intelligence tonormal or better ( or reviews, see Reese, 1963, 1964, 1989).

Te occurrence o one-trial learning in this situation lookslike insight, but only i one is unaware o or ignores the longtraining series in which the learning on each problem was bytrial and error. Actually, at the end o training the one trial onwhich the new learning occurs can involve an error because thelearning set provides no way to oretell which new object is cor-rect. Tere ore, the learning set can be described as Win-Stay,Lose-Shi : Guess on rial 1; i correct on rial 1, choose thesame stimulus therea er, and i incorrect on rial 1, choose theother stimulus therea er. Normal human adults could presum-ably be taught the quoted sentence and might subsequently ex-hibit the learning set, but in this case the learning would be byinstruction and the only insight involved would be realizing thatthe sentence is true.

Programmed errorless learning is a kind o instruction inthat its effectiveness in eliminating errors depends not on the

nature o the task but on the skill o the programmer. In thestandard procedure, only the correct stimulus or only the incor-rect stimulus is presented on the rst trial or the rst ew trialso a problem, and then a choice trial is given with both stimuli.Research showed that errors occur on choice trials in the initialpart o the series o training problems, indicating that the learn-ing was actually not errorless.

In another procedure, o en involving a single discriminationproblem, the correct stimulus is presented alone at rst and thenthe other stimulus is aded in be ore the choice trial. A typicalnding is that some subjects make an error on the choice trial.A version o this procedure is being used when a complex be-havior is taught by step-wise shaping o the behavioral units thatcompose it. Sidman (2010) commented that i the learner makesan error in a step, the teacher revises the instruction. Telearner is learning by doing in the sense that he or she is actu-ally per orming the behavioral units, but it is not real trial-and-error learning, it is learning by doing as instructed (discussedin the section Role o Indirect Experience and other sectionscited there). Te units are identied by a task analysis done bythe teacher. According to my notes, Sidman said that any kindo trial-and-error learning would benet rom task analysis, and

or trial-and-error learning in the usual sense, the task analysisshould be done by the learner. Te usual learner would need tolearn how to do effective task analyses, and I suspect that this

learning would most efficiently be learning by doing as instruct-ed by an expert at task analysis.Tis point is also applicable in programmed instruction,

which is like programmed errorless learning but in an educa-tional context. Te aim is to present the course aims and con-tents in a programmed orm designed to allow students to learnon their own, at their own pace, with no errors, or a minimumo errors, and without lectures by an instructor. Te effective-ness o the program depends on the program writers skills notonly in analyzing the aims and contents o a course but also inwriting the steps that can lead students to learn by their ownefforts. Cohen (1962) interpreted the method used by Socrates
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THE LEARNING-BY-DOING PRINCIP

activist there ore has a better understanding o political historythan does an historical scholar who lacks the least practical ac-quaintance o what makes politics go (p. xiii).

An example o Kautskys point can be seen in an article by RyanLizza (2008) in Te New Yorker. Te article is about the historyand current practices o selecting Vice Presidential nomineesin the United States. Lizza discussed three practices that JohnKerry identied, grouped roughly by when the candidates areselected: January, August, or October o the election year. TeJanuary selections are relevant here because the primary quali-cation is potential or helping the hoped- or new administra-tion govern, and Lizza implied that this qualication reects theneed or practical experience. He said that the evidence o therequired potential is usually congressional experience and longWashington rsums, and as examples he mentioned LyndonJohnson, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush, Al Gore, DickCheney, and Joe Biden. Te needed expertness is knowing theinner workings o congress and lobbyism by having been thereand done that. In short, political experience in Realpolitek ismore important than political theory. (Incidentally, or August

selections the primary qualication is potential or helping re-start a lagging campaign, and or October selections, potentialor carrying a geographic or demographic group. Sarah Palin

was the August type or John McCain; John Edwards was theOctober type or John Kerry.)

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Seventeenth century students at Harvard University were giventheses written in Latin and were required to de end them in Lat-in. One o the theses in 1643 was, Linguae oelicius usu, quamarte discuntur (Morison, 1936, p. 583), which means Lan-guages are learned better by use than by ormal rules (Ong,1958, p. 197, citing Morison). Tis principle is a truism now, but

a challenge is presented in the subsection Learning languageby use.

LEARNING TO ASK GOOD QUESTIONS

Much research and a lot o theory indicate that learning is a-cilitated i the learner asks good questions ( or a brie review,see Brill & Yarden, 2003). Keeling, Polacek, and Ingram (2009)wanted to study the effect o practical experience on the qual-ity o questions generated by undergraduates in a real-li e situ-ation--a senior-level college biology course that included eightlaboratory sessions. Be ore each laboratory session, each stu-dent was required to write at least three questions relevant tothe session. A commentator in Science (MM, 2009) said that

the quality o the questions improved over time, but actually thechanges were statistically nonsignicant or the class as a whole,and or individual students the correlation between quality andtime was statistically signicant or only 3 o 38 students. Teproblem seems to have been inadequate eedback.

Te authors said in their method section, Brie marginalcomments were written or eedback, discouraging lower-levelquestions and attempting to promote greater clarication anddeeper thought (p. 132). However, in their discussion sectionthey said the results suggested that learning by doing is notenough . . . and that more explicit guidance and discussion maybe required (p. 138). Tey also said that asking good questions

and severely retarded institutionalized adults (Sidman, Willson-Morris, & Kirk, 1986). In any case, the learning-by-instructionapproach Eikeseth et al. used is not as good as the learning-by-training approach, which involves learning by doing and allowsthe researcher to continue the learning-by-doing trials until thesubject exhibits stimulus equivalence or can be in erred to beuntrainable.

In another study, Eikeseth and Baer (1997) used learning-by-instruction and ound that 26 o 36 subjects--72%--met thememory criterion, but none o the 26 met all the criteria orstimulus equivalence. Tey had expected this kind o resultbecause the stimuli were meaning ul and there ore had asso-ciations that could compete with the equivalence relations. Temessage I get rom the two studies is that discovery is betterthan instruction or learning stimulus equivalence and perhapsall relational rames.

EDUCATION AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Te discovery versus instruction principle is a basis o Montes-soris (1912/1964) educational methods. Using these methods,a teacher gives no ormal instructions but equips the classroomwith materials selected to encourage exploratory actions by thechildren that lead them to discover the principles that the teach-er wanted them to learn. Soviet psychologists also endorsed thediscovery versus instruction principle. For example, Pavel Blon-sky recommended it as a method or school instruction (Kozu-lin, 1984, p. 131).

Discovery has also been a basic developmental principle,perhaps especially in dialectical theories. Examples are Piagetscognitive psychology (e.g., Piaget, 1970) and Soviet psychology(e.g., Lisina, 1985, pp. 8-9).

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE VERSUS BOOK

LEARNINGBACKGROUND ON BOOK LEARNING

During the Scholastic era, much o philosophy was devoted tointerpreting Aristotles writings and using the interpretations tounderstand nature. Beginning in the Renaissance a primary aimo philosophy was to repudiate this book-learning kind o schol-arship. For example, in 1651 Tomas Hobbes argued that thebasis o true knowledge is learning rom experience rather thanbook-learning ( or re erences see the later subsection TomasHobbes). However, the ght has not yet been won. For exampleMarxist scholars, especially in the de unct Soviet Union, werestill spending much o their time interpreting what were knownas Te Classics, which were writings by Marx, Engels, andLenin (Kamenka, 1967; Payne, 1968; Planty-Bonjour, 1967).Te epitome o the continuation o the Scholastic tradition inthe Western world has been Biblical scholarship, which by 427C.E. already had an exegetical literature (Augustine, On Chris-tian Doctrine, XXXIX Para. 59; 427/1958, p. 74).

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE IN POLITICS

Te German Marxist Karl Kautsky (1908/1953) endorsed theneed or practical experience, and he attributed the principleto Rousseau (p. xii). Kautsky said that a participant in any actunderstands it better than a spectator does, and that a political
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tablished between author and subject, which he said does notmean moving through the subject like a tourist, a respect ullooker-on but actively participating in the subject (pp. 47, 48).In his own case, he established the close connection by becom-ing an active participant in a collective arm.

Te American poet and Fascist sympathizer Ezra Pound(1931) said that retyakovs position was not new: Tere isnothing new or us in a writers living the li e he writes o (p.124). However, Pound himsel took a position closer to Watsonsthan to Bernards and retyakovs. As summarized by Walkie-wicz and Witemeyer (1980), Pounds position was that the jobo the Western writer is to observe his society, to communicatewhat he has learned about it, and to keep his art ree rom ideo-logical bias (p. 448).

THE PRACTICE-THEORY-PRACTICE DIALECT

ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTICE-THEORY-PRACTICE DIALECTIC

Marxist version. Te learning-by-doing principle is seen in thepractice-theory-practice dialectic, which is a basic principle inMarxist philosophy, theory, and application. For example, KarlMarx advocated and used it (1939/1973), the Soviet Union childpsychologist Lev Vygotsky used it (1929, pp. 418, 431), and MaoZedong popularized it in China (see inset quotation below). Inthis dialectic, practice means doing, not repetition; andtheory is used in a broad sense that includes knowledge andunderstanding. Te dialectic makes practice primary, like thedoing in the learning-by-doing principle, and makes theory,knowledge, and understanding secondary because they are de-rived. Tis is a basic ordering in dialectical materialism.

Schram (1983) seems to have believed that Mao Zedong initi-ated the idea that practice is primary and knowledge is derived,

but actually Marx initiated it (however, I believe the problemwas in Schrams wording rather than his belie ). Petrovi (1983)cited Marxs third and eighth theses on Feuerbach on the origin(the theses are in Marx, 1845/1976). Te gist o the third thesisis that conditions change human acts and are changed by hu-man acts, and the gist o the eighth thesis is that social relationsare practical in the doing sense. Te eighth thesis is an explica-tion o the seventh thesis--human characteristics are producedby social relations.

Petrovi also cited a statement rom the section Private Prop-erty and Communism in Marxs Economic and PhilosophicalManuscripts o 1844: Te resolution o theoretical contradic-

tions is possible only in a practical way, only through the prac-tical energy o man (Petrovi, 1983, p. 386). Te italics areMarxs (e.g., 1844/1975, p. 302). Te statement was in a sectionthat Marx crossed out, according to the editors, but evidentlyhis crossing it out did not indicate that he rejected the idea; itis consistent with the theses on Feuerbach, which he wrote thenext year. (Marxs requent use o italics reminds me o LittleOrphan Annies in the comic strip written and drawn by HaroldGray. However, Marxs excess can be excused because he waswriting notes or his own use; Gray was writing or a readership.Grays stories, incidentally, were politically conservative moral-ity plays [Horn, 1976, p. 459].)

had almost no consequences because ull credit could be earnedby asking almost any relevant questions and the grade or thequestions accounted or only about 1.25% o the course grade.An implication discussed more ully in the subsection Marxist version is that eedback about unimportant consequences is in-effective and, conversely, important consequences are effective.Te value o this statement can be questioned, because effec-tiveness is an observed property meaning that the desired be-havioral change occurred, and importance is a conceptual prop-erty in erred rom effectiveness. However, rom the unctionalperspective o behavior analysis the concept o importance hasthe same epistemological status as the concept o rein orcement;there ore, the statement that important consequences are effec-tive is analogous to the statement that rein orcement changesbehavior. Nevertheless, like the relation between rein orcementand behavior change, the relation between importance and e -

ectiveness is denitional rather than causal. Tere ore, sayingthat importance causes effectiveness would be unjustied.

My conclusion is that practical experience without importanteedback is mere repetition and is ineffective or learning by

doing. Tat is, the proverb Practice makes per ect is wrongi practice means mere repetition, because repetition withouteedback can make a habit stronger but cannot make it better

(this point is supported in the subsection Marxist version).Tere ore, learning to ask good questions is a version o learningby doing as instructed, which is discussed in the section Roleo Indirect Experience. As such, learning to ask good questionsis related to asking good questions to acilitate learning, whichis discussed in the section rial and Error Versus Instruction.

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE IN OTHER DOMAINS

Claude Bernard (1865/1927, p. 15) argued that practical med-icine should be based on experimental evidence and he said,

rather ornately, that direct participation is needed: We shallreach really ruit ul and luminous generalizations about vitalphenomena only in so ar as we ourselves experiment and, inhospitals, amphitheatres, or laboratories, stir the etid or throb-bing ground o li e.

John B. Watsons (1928) position was not so stringent. He saidthat literary authors need to have direct experience with theirsubject matter, but he added that authors can get their directexperience by observation rather than participation. Tat is, au-thors do not need to live the lives they observe, and indeed insome cases they should not live these lives. As an example, hesaid that being a reveler would inter ere with clear observationo revelry. Although this example may support his point, the

qualication--in some cases--correctly implies that the pointis not universally applicable. An example might be the primitiv-istic writer Jesse Stuart, who spent much o his li e in the kind orural environment in which his stories are set, perhaps account-ing or his stories having an air o authenticity and veracity thatmade them popular even among highly urbanized readers (Fos-ter, 1981). I , as I assume, he was an observer in the rural envi-ronment, he exemplies Watsons position; but he could havebeen a participant, thus exempli ying Bernards position.

Te stance o Sergei Michailovich retyakov, a Russian poet,was more consistent with Bernards than Watsons position.

retyakov (1930) argued that A close connection should be es-
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but they implicitly require something o this sort. In stimulus-response learning theory, it is the concept o habit strength; inbehavior analysis, it is the concept o the organisms history oexperiences with specied three-term contingencies; and in Ar-istotles theory it is hexis, which means potentiality in the senseo a persons being able to per orm an action that he or she isnot per orming right now. Hexis must be preceded by dynamis,which is potentiality in the sense o being able to learn a par-ticular hexis (these are Aristotles typical uses o the two Greekwords, but he sometimes used dynamis in both senses, e.g., inAristotle, On the Soul, Bk. 2, chap. 5 [417a 21 - 417b 1]).

Tese versions demonstrate that Marxism is not the only pos-sible basis o a practice-theory-practice kind o analysis. Likethe learning-by-doing principle, it has had several differentphilosophical bases, and sharing the principle does not meanthat these philosophies are compatible. An idealist example isImre Lakatoss (1978) philosophy that scientic progress hastwo orms, theoretical and empirical, and that a new scienticprogram can be theoretically progressive or a while by mak-ing stunning new predictions, but it will not survive unless it

becomes empirically progressive by testing and conrming thepredictions. Progress needs to be made experimentally, whichmeans made via practice, as well as theoretically.

Lakatos erred on another point: He said that a theory is rejected i the stunning predictions are not conrmed. Tis as-sertion is consistent with Karl Poppers alsicationism theory(1983, pp. xxi, 162, 244, 247-248, 342), which implies the sillynotion that scientists do prediction-testing experiments in thehope that the predictions will be disconrmed. Poppers theorywas that on the one hand, theories cannot be veried by con-rming predictions, because the so-called verication wouldbe the logical allacy o affirming the consequent, but on the

other hand, theories are alsied by disconrmation o predic-tions, which is the valid argument o denying the consequent.Larry Laudan (1977, pp. 114-118) got the point right in argu-ing that when a prediction is disconrmed, only a rival theoristrejects the theory. He also pointed out that proponents o thetheory patch it up so that it provides a post hoc explanation othe anomalous observed acts without losing its prior explana-tory value, and ideally the proponents then test the patched-uptheory by testing predictions that it generates. Tis is what thepractice-theory-practice dialectic means. It is also the standardprocedure in behavior analysis: Start with a more or less vagueidea or hunch, do research and see what happens, then do ol-low-up research to rene knowledge about the controlling vari-ables, and the cycle continues.NEED FOR TRANSFORMATION

Marx (1845/1976) expressed the need or practice in the senseo doing in his second thesis on Feuerbach: Te truth o think-ing is proved by practice, not by theory. He specied in the 11ththesis that the practice must change something: Te philoso-phers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point,however, is to change it (p. 8). Te doing can be a conceptualanalysis (i.e., a mental action) or a physical action. In both cases,the doing is trans ormative, either by trans orming concepts ortrans orming things.

Mao (1963/1968) stated the basic idea o the practice-theory-practice dialectic: Knowledge is at rst perceptual, but sufficientaccumulation o perceptual knowledge results in a dialecticalleap to conceptual knowledge. Tis leap is one process in cogni-tion, rom objective matter to subjective knowledge. Subjec-tive knowledge is a persons (subjects) knowledge, that is, aninterpretation; but the rst dialectical leap does not prove thecorrectness (truth) o subjective knowledge. Rather, correctnessis proved by urther practice, which is the practice-theory-prac-tice dialectic. Mao (1937/1965) said:

Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice veri y and develop the truth. Start rom perceptualknowledge and actively develop it into rational [conceptual,theoretical] knowledge; then start rom rational knowledgeand actively guide revolutionary practice to change boththe subjective and the objective world [i.e., the world asknown and the actual world]. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge. Tis orm repeats itsel inendless cycles, and with each cycle the content o practiceand knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole o

the dialectical-materialist theory o knowledge, and such isthe dialectical-materialist theory o the unity o knowingand doing. (p. 308)

Te phrase the unity o knowing and doing does not con-tradict the primacy o practice over knowledge, cited earlier inthis subsection. Te relevant Marxist principle is the struggleand unity o opposites ( or philosophical discussion, see, e.g.,Planty-Bonjour, 1967, chap. 6; Wetter, 1958, Pt. 2, chap. 3, 1966,Pt. 1, chap. 5; or a brie overview, see Wozniak, 1972).

Te inset quotation means that actual doing generates someknowledge, this knowledge leads to more effective doing, whichgenerates improved knowledge, and the cycle continues until thedoing attains its goal effectively and efficiently, that is, the cyclecontinues until the knowledge needs no urther unctional im-provement. Te cycle may seem to re er to practice in the senseo repetition; but it does not, because each instance o the do-ing is different rom the preceding one. Furthermore, the differ-ences are improvements in knowledge because they result romimprovements in practice, which Mao explicitly said includesscientic experiments (1937/1965, 1940/1963, 1963/1968).

Te cycle is like the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis tril-ogy, or negation o the negation, but with an historical necessityo improvement rather than Hegels logical necessity ( or discus-sion see the subsection Gap Between Practice and Teory).Te source o the historical necessity is eedback rom practice;

that is, knowledge changes because each doing in the cycle gen-erates consequences that the doer observes. Tere ore, eedbackis an essential eature o the practice-theory-practice dialectic.Tis need or eedback supports the conclusion about the prov-erb Practice makes per ect in the subsection Learning oAsk Good Questions. Feedback is also needed because learn-ing by doing requires not only doing something but also learn-ing something rom the doing. Learning requires some sort o

eedback such as reward or punishment in stimulus-responselearning theory and SR + or SR - in behavior analysis.Other versions. Other versions o the learning-by-doing principledo not re er explicitly to theory, knowledge, or understanding,
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ternative interpretations o observed phenomena. Experimentalmethodology in science has the same orm and rationale. Tetrans ormations are manipulations that change reality to createexperimental conditions; the rationale is that by creating theexperimental conditions, scientists rule out naturally occurringextraneous conditions as possible causes o the observed phe-nomena.

THE PRACTICE-THEORY RELATIONGAP BETWEEN PRACTICE AND THEORY

Te authors cited in this section did not clearly distinguishbetween two meanings o practice: practical application andtrans ormative doing.

Te philosopher o science Mario Bunge (1967) said:

Te doctrine that practice is the touchstone o theories re-lies on a misunderstanding o both practice and theory:on a con usion between practice and experiment and as-sociated con usion between rule and theory. Te questionDoes it work?, pertinent as it is with regard to things and

rules, is impertinent in respect to theories. (p. 128)A touchstone is a test or criterion or determining the

quality or genuineness o a thing (Merriam-Websters, 2002, p.1243). Tere ore, practice as the touchstone o theories is thetrans ormative kind o doing; but Bunges contrasting o prac-tice and experiment and his associated contrasting o ruleand theory implicate practice as practical application. Aside

rom being con used, Bunge was wrong because the questionDoes it work? is pertinent not only to practical applicationsand practical rules, but also to theories and trans ormative do-ings such as experiments. A theory works i it leads to predic-tions that are veried empirically, according to Lakatos, Popper,

and Laudan; and a trans ormative doing or experiment worksi it conrms expectations or predictions or disconrms thembut leads to plausible patching o the underlying theory (subsec-tion Other versions).

Brandtstdter (1980) said, no logical tracks lead rom theoryto practice and back again (p. 16). He was right whichever senseo practice is used, but only because the relation between the-ory and practice in either sense is not a logical relation. Kemp(1992) expressed this point with respect to practical applicationin saying that engineering at its best is not applied science, it isan art orm. Any relation between practical application and the-ory is empirical rather than logical because a scientic theorydoes not necessarily have any implications about practical ap-

plication and vice versa. As in the Marxist practice-theory-prac-tice principle, the relation between trans ormative doing andtheory is dialectical. As a Marxist concept, this dialectical rela-tion is true by historical necessity, that is, it is necessarily truebecause it is what occurred in act (Engels, 1894/1987, p. 124;Hook, 1950/1962, p. 68). In this respect, as mentioned in thesubsection Marxist version, it is different rom Hegels triad othesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which is a logically necessaryprogression in Hegels dialectical idealism (Hegel, 1830/1892,chap. 9; Hook, ibid.). (A parenthetically noteworthy point isthat Marx o en said that the dialectical relation is a necessity,most notably in his and Engelss Mani esto o the Communist

Conceptual analysis. When the doing is conceptual, the practice-theory-practice dialectic implicates Kaplans (1964) paradox oconceptualization: Proper concepts are needed to ormulate agood theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the properconcepts (p. 53). I practice is substituted or theory, the rel-evance o Kaplans paradox is more direct: Te proper conceptsare needed to ormulate good practice, but we need good prac-tice to arrive at the proper concepts. In a conceptual analysis,then, the development o theory, knowledge, or understandingconsists o discovering through practice new signicance--newempirical relations--o old concepts and dropping old conceptsthat have lesser signicance in avor o new concepts that retainthe old signicance and promise to have new signicance (ex-pected to be revealed in urther practice).

Marx (1939/1973, p. 100) used a conceptual analysis in devel-oping Das Kapital: Such an analysis begins with a whole that isgiven concretely by experience; this whole is chaotic and it canbe understood only by analysis. However, it is the psychologicalunit, and it can never be understood i it is also the unit o analy-sis. Te needed units o analysis are the parts o the whole and

their interrelations, but initially they are abstract conceptionsrather than concrete experiences. Tere ore, the analysis beginswith identication o plausible conceptualized parts, continueswith conceptual analysis o the whole into these parts and theirpossible interrelations, and then conceptually synthesizes theanalytic parts and interrelations to create a new understandingo the whole. Te process continues with better conceptualizedparts and interrelations, and each new analysis and synthesisproduces an understanding that is more coherent and less cha-otic than the preceding understanding.Physical analysis. Relevant to physical doing, Mao Zedong said,I you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice ochanging reality. I you want to know the taste o a pear, youmust change the pear by eating it yoursel (1937/1965, p. 300).Juan Pascual-Leone, who is a Spanish-Canadian Marxist neo-Piagetian, also made the point, but not as concretely as Mao.Pascual-Leone (1976) said, o know an object one must inter-

ere with or act upon it; only in this praxis can the constraintso reality . . . create knowledge (p. 112). Urie Bron enbrennerattributed the same idea to his graduate-school mentor W. F.Dearborn: I you want to understand something, try to changeit (Bron enbrenner, 1977a, p. 284; 1977b, p. 538). I do not knowwhether Dearborn and Bron enbrenner were Marxists, but theimportant point here is that the doing is not just looking at andobserving things; it is active mental or physical manipulation

that changes concepts or things. Tis point is examined in moredetail in the section Proo upon Practice.Other views of transformation. In Peppers (1942) analysis, organi-cism is the same as Hegels philosophy, which was the dialecticalidealism that Marx stood on its head when he created dialecticalmaterialism. Dialectical materialism is consistent with Pepperscontextualism (Reese, 1993). Jean Piaget (1970) was an organi-cist, and he emphasized the role o trans ormation in the devel-opment o knowledge: In order to know objects, the subjectmust act upon them, and there ore trans orm them: he mustdisplace, connect, combine, take apart, and reassemble them(p. 704). Te rationale is that the trans ormations rule out al-
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so collected, as that they may be reduced into art: but toknow them, is onely granted to him, who hath ofen seenand had them in handling. (pp. 174-175)

Tat is: Book-learning or theory deals with universals, whichare abstract, and practice deals with particulars, which are con-crete. Tere ore, book-learning is insufficient by itsel because itis unin ormative about regularly success ul practice, which re-quires knowing and dealing with the relevant particulars o eachdifferent person. However, direct experience is also insufficientby itsel because although it deals with particulars, li e is tooshort or direct learning o all the particulars that are relevant tosuccess ul practice. Tere ore, effective practitioners base theirprocedures not only on extensive practical experience but alsoon theoretical principles. Te theoretical principles are learned

rom books written by well-experienced prior practitioners; thepractical experience permits implementing the principles inways that are effective in particular cases such as a physicianscuring a particular ailment in a particular person. Te basicmessage I derive rom Huartes discussion is that theory is a dis-tillation o previous persons direct experiences and it is needed

to guide present seekers o direct experiences.SUCCESS IN SCIENTIFIC PRACTICE

Te message I drew rom Huartes discussion o the relation be-tween theory and applied practice is also relevant to the relationbetween theory and practice as trans ormative doing in science.However, some commentators have emphasized the act thattheory can have scientically undesirable effects. For example,Farrington (1961, p. 207) said, I he [a scientist] has a theory hetends to see what supports it and to miss other signicant acts.Lillard (1999, p. 57) made a point consistent with Farringtons:People respond not to the world as it is, but to the world asthey believe it to be--belie drives action. Skinner (1980) went

urther:[Models] evoke contemplation rather than action. Te the-oretical physicist wants to represent reality; the laboratory physicist wants to do something about it. One changes amodel to produce a different picture; the other manipulatesindependent variables to change a dependent variable. Amodel is what something is to be done about; it is not whatis to be done.

Model is little more than another word or idea--somethingknown by acquaintance. I look orward to greater recognition othe importance o laboratory scientists. Te theorists have beensponging on them or decades and getting most o the credit.

(pp. 173-174)Even granting all this, the consensus supports extending Hua-rtes message to science: Teory is needed as a guide or directexperience in the orm o research. James Mark Baldwin (1895)made the point, a little effusively:

Tat most vicious and Philistine attempt in some quartersto put psychology in the straight-jacket o barren observa-tion, to draw the li e-blood o all science--speculative ad-vance into the secrets o things--this ultra-positivistic cryhas come here as everywhere else, and put a ban upontheory. On the contrary, give us theories, theories, alwaystheories! . . . In the matter o experimenting with children,

Party [Marx & Engels, 1888/1955, pp. 31, 32] but also elsewhere[Marx, 1852/1983, pp. 62, 65, 1875/1989, p. 95]. However, hewas not asserting any logical necessity in dialectical material-ism, he was talking about past and expected uture historicalnecessities in historical materialism.)

SUCCESS IN APPLIED PRACTICE

Practice in this section means practical application in the real

world, as in medical practice. Baer (1981) said that theory andthe basic research it generates enable success ul practical appli-cation but do not guarantee it, and practical application can besuccess ul even i the enabling theory and basic research are un-known to the practitioner. For example, the art o photographywas made possible by basic knowledge about optics, the physicalmechanics o cameras, chemistry, and so on, but a photographerdoes not need this knowledge in order to be success ul. Further-more, as Baer said, to get good pictures o a wedding one hires aphotographer, not an optics researcher, and to get treatment oran ailment one goes to a physician, not a physiologist. Pre erablyone goes to an expert practitioner, but knowledge about a prac-titioners practical expertness is sometimes hard to get.

Baers point that practitioners can be success ul without rel-evant book learning means that their success ul practice musthave come rom direct experience. Tese practitioners wouldbegin as uneducated novices, and being uneducated, they wouldneed to get the knowledge required or success ul practice eitherby using a trial-and-error method to get the direct experiencethat would generate this knowledge, or by using the method olearning by doing as instructed by an expert practitioner (thismethod is discussed in the section Role o Indirect Experi-ence). A problem with the rst method is how the novicescould recruit persons to be subjects o the trial-and-error work.Who would volunteer to be subjects o trial-and-error work bya would-be surgeon, or even a would-be pro essional wedding-photographer?

Juan Huarte solved this dilemma in the 16th century by ex-plaining why theory is needed:

o what end serveth it to spend time is schooles? to this maybe answered, that rst to know the art o phisicke is a mat-ter verie important: or in two or three yeares, a man maylearn al that which the ancients have bin getting in twoor three thousand. And i a man should heerin ascertainhimsel e by experience, it were requisit that he lived somethousands o yeeres, and in experimenting o medicines, heshould kill an innit number o persons be ore he couldattain to the knowledge o their qualities: rom whence weare reed, by reading the books o reasonable experienced phisitions. (Huarte, 1594/1959, p. 181; orthography mod-ernized; spelling and punctuation unchanged)

Consequently:

Te per ection o a phisition consisteth o two things . . . .Te rst is, to weet [i.e., know] by way o method, the pre-cepts and rules o curing men in generall, without descend-ing to particulars. Te second, to be long time exercised in practise, and to have visited many patients: or . . . thererest in them particularities o such condition, as they canneither be delivered by speech, nor written, nor taught, nor
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saying Te proo e o a pudding is the eating (p. 116). illey(1950, p. 558) did not cite Addison, but he cited Glapthorne,two uses earlier in the 17th century than Glapthornes use, andeight uses later than Glapthornes.

Te proo o the pudding proverb has also been attributedto Cervantes in Don Quixote (Bartlett, 1980, p. 169; Steven-son, 1967, p. 1621), but the attribution is not strictly correct.Te proverb was used in a 1700 translation o Don Quixoteinto English, as a substitute or the Spanish proverb It will beseen in the rying o the eggs (Magill, 1965, p. 805), which isdiscussed next. (Bartlett and Magill attributed the translationto Peter Motteux. Bartlett cited Part 4, chapter 10, page 322 inwhat he called a Modern Library Giant edition, without cit-ing a year. A 1950 edition published by Te Modern Librarycontains the pudding proverb at the location Bartlett cited; thisedition is a 1719 revision by John Ozell o Motteuxs transla-tion [Doyle, 1950, p. vi], and an editorial note on page 322 in-dicates that the pudding proverb was substituted or Cervantess

rying-eggs proverb. Tere ore, Bartlett should have known thathis attributing the pudding proverb to Cervantes was incorrect.Te Modern Library published another translation in 1949, bySamuel Putnam. Putnam [1949] said that critics called the Mot-teux translation odious, worse than worthless, and the veryworst [pp. x, xii-xiii]; he said the Ozell revision was in 1725 [pp.xii, 1037]; and he cited a 1930 Modern Library publication othe Motteux-Ozell translation [note 18, p. 466; p. 1037]. He usedCervantess rying-eggs proverb [Cervantes, 1949, Part 1, chap.37, p. 335]--you will see when you go to ry the eggs--and heindexed an unhelp ul end-note, in ull it was: 5. A proverb[p. 483]. Stevenson cited Part 2, chapter 24 in no specied edi-tion, but this chapter is not relevant in any edition I have seen,including a acsimile o the 1605 Spanish edition [CervantesSaavedra, 1605/1905].)FRYING EGGS VERSION

Te meaning o proo upon practice is expressed in a 15thcentury Spanish proverb about knowledge based on discov-ery: It will be seen in the rying o the eggs or On rying theeggs you will see. Cervantes used this proverb in Don Quixote(Part 1, chap. 37; the It will version is rom Cervantes Saave-dra, 1605/1905, p. 322; the On rying version is my translationo Al reir de los huevos lo ver, ibid., spelling modernized).Fernando de Rojas used a version without the eggs in 1499 inLa Celestina--Al reyr lo ver, On rying you will see (Rojas,

1499/1913, p. 39; my translation). However, as indicated in thethird context described below, the eggs were implicit in his ver-sion.

Tree main contexts have been used to explain the proverb.Te most popular one was given by, or example, the editors otwo English translations o Don Quixote: A robber stole a ry-ing pan rom a house and the mistress o the house saw him andasked him what he had. He answered, On rying the eggs youwill see (Cervantes Saavedra, 1932, note 2, p. 422) or you willknow when your Eggs are to be ryd (Cervantes, 1950, note *,p. 322). Iribarren cited a somewhat different context that hadbeen given in 1574:

. . . our theories must guide our work. (p. 38)

Others have made the point without the effusion. (a) Pasteursaid, Without theory, practice is but routine born o habit.Teory alone can bring orth and develop the spirit o inven-tion (Vallery-Radot, 1923, p. 76) and Progress with routineis possible, but desperately slow (p. 146). (b) Kantor (1953, p.20) said, Hypotheses, laws, or theories . . . are very o en the

most effective instruments or discovery and measurement. (c)Te Soviet psychologist S. L. Rubinshteyn (1955/1957, p. 265)said, Experimental investigation is blind unless its course is il-lumined by theory . (d) Farrington (1961, p. 207) said, In theinnite variety and complexity o the phenomena o nature thescientist is at a loss in which direction to turn unless he is look-ing or something. I he is looking or something, that means hehas a theory. (e) Lewis (1966, 1988) said that theoretical work is

oremost because nontheoretical research is inscribed (trivial,limited) (1966, p. 72).

PROOF UPON PRACTICETe proo upon practice proverb means that proo in the senseo a test o truth is given by practice in the sense o ones ownaction. One version o it, not discussed herein, is the success ulworking truth criterion o contextualism (Pepper, 1942; Reese,1993); our other versions are discussed in the ollowing subsec-tions.

PROOF UPON PRACTICE VERSION

Te 16th century English epigrammatist John Heywood seemsto have created the Proo upon practice version o the proverb,although its meaning was older. He described it in the ollowinglines rom a longer poem:

Practise in all, above all toucheth the quick.

Proo upon practise, must take hold more sure

Tan any reasoning by guess can procure.

I ye bring practise in place, without abling,

I will banish both haste and busy babling. (1562/1966, p.15; his italics)

Babling is an old, now obsolete version o babbling (Ox-ord, 1989, p. 850); one meaning, which I think is the one Hey-

wood intended, is oolish or meaningless talk (Ox ord, p. 848).Heywood apparently used the italics to identi y proverbs that hewas attempting to explicate by weaving them into a story, and inthis quotation their sense is carried by his phrase proo uponpractise, that is, truth is tested by practice, not by reasoning.

PROOF OF THE PUDDING VERSION

According to an English proverb, Te proo o the pudding isin the eating (Magill, 1965, p. 805); that is, the test o truthis in a relevant action. Stevenson (1967, p. 515) attributed thisproverb to in No. 567 o Te Spectator and to Henry Glapthornein Act 3 o Te Hollander. Addison called it a homely Proverb(1714, unnumbered p. 2), indicating that he did not originateit. In Glapthornes (1635/1874) play the character Sconce, whois the Hollander, has bought a weapon salve that purportedlycan cure wounds without surgery and he questions its efficacy,
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using this device violates one o the canons o science, statedwith some euphoria in 1841 by the astronomer John Herschel:

Another character o sound inductions is that they enableus to predict. We eel secure that our rule is based on therealities o nature, when it stands us in the stead o newexperience; when it embodies acts as an experience widerthan our own would do, and in a way that our ordinary

experience would never reach; when it will bear not stress,but torture, and gives true results in cases studiously differ-ent rom those which led to its discovery. (p. 233)

A problem is that even i the strategy is used consistentlywith Herschels canon, it is not necessarily sufficient, becauseresearch methods can be more subtly awed. Te anthropolo-gist L. Marano (1982) said, Exposure to primary data sourceopportunities does not o en lead to valid conclusions when in-adequate research strategies are employed (p. 395).

When denitive empirical evidence cannot be obtained, theonly alternative strategy may be to use theoretical evidence. Inthe present case, the evidence would come rom a persuasivetheory about why learning by doing is effective. I address thisissue in the last section. Teory also has another role, discussednext.

ROLE OF THEORYAs indicated in the section Te Practice-Teory Relation, aproblem with the learning-by-doing principle is that the do-ing needs to be guided: Doing, or practice in general, alwayshas an effect--even i only a small or trivial one--and there orepractice is always some kind o efficient cause. However, asHegel (1830/1892, p. 344) said, efficient cause is blind withoutnal cause. Or as stated in a Soviet manual, Fundamentals oMarxism-Leninism, unguided by theory, practice is doomed togrope in the dark (1st ed. 1961, p. 114; 2nd ed. 1963, p. 94). Tenegative unguided by theory implies that practice should beguided by theory. Tis implication is veried in a later version:One unction o theory is to point the way ahead to new knowl-edge (Fundamentals, 1982, p. 181). Tat is, theory should unc-tion as a purpose o practice, and as a purpose it has the unc-tions--but not the nature--o a nal cause.

ROLE OF REASONINGJohn Heywoods (1562/1966) comment about reasoning byguess (in the subsection Proo upon Practice Version) isrelevant here. He did not mean that reasoning is irrelevantto proo upon practice, but that reasoning without practice isbusy babling. Te role o reasoning was also discussed by 17thcentury authors.

THOMAS HOBBES

In 1651 in Leviathan, Tomas Hobbes endorsed a kind o learn-ing by doing in which scientists knowledge is based on actsthey obtain directly rather than by revelation or the authority obooks. His spin on the principle was that scientic knowledgedoes not come directly rom the directly obtained acts, it comes

rom reasoning about these acts. He excluded reasoning basedon supernatural revelation and the authority o books, and

Melchor de Santa Cruz, in his Floresta espaola de apotegmas[Collection o Fine Spanish Aphorisms; my translation], pub-lished in 1574 (chap. 5, story 10), says thus:

A charcoal merchant sold a basket o charcoal to a wom-an, and took a rying pan that was poorly guarded, and putit in the empty basket. Upon the womans asking him i thecharcoal was o oak, and i it was good, he said, On rying

the eggs you will see. (Iribarren, 1955, p. 123)Te third context was given in the 1950 edition o Don Quix-

ote cited above: When Eggs are to be ryd, there is no knowingtheir goodness till they are broken (Cervantes, 1950, editorsnote *, p. 322). Cejador gave this context more ully in a com-ment about the line quoted above rom Rojass La Celestina:

On rying the eggs you will see is another version (DonQuixote, Part I, chap. 37). On rying the eggs is when onesees what they are; in the event, things become known. Eggsthat are sof-boiled or scrambled can pass as good; but notso those that are ried, because the yolk is entirely visible.(p. 92 in Cejadors note 15, in Rojas, 1499/1913; my trans-

lation)(Iribarren also cited Cejadors comment.) Tis context legiti-

mizes the substitution o the proo o the pudding proverb orthe rying eggs proverb. Te substitution would be Te prooo the pudding is in the eating or something like Te test othe egg is in seeing the yolk.

A MODERN VERSION

Skinner (1945) gave a modern version o proo upon practice:

Te ultimate criterion or the goodness o a concept is notwhether two people are brought into agreement but wheth-er the scientist who uses the concept can operate success-

ully upon his material--all by himsel i need be. Whatmatters to Robinson Crusoe is not whether he is agreeingwith himsel but whether he is getting anywhere with hiscontrol over nature. (p. 293)

Tat is, the scientist does not use the mechanistic criteri-on o truth by agreement, but rather uses proo upon practice,which as noted above is the contextualistic truth criterion osuccess ul working. In Skinners statement, the phrase operate. . . upon his material re ers to a doing kind o practice, and theadverb success ully and the getting anywhere clause re er toproo .

CHALLENGES OF LEARNING BY DOING

PERVASIVENESS IS NOT RELEVANTTe pervasiveness o the learning-by-doing principle impliesthat it is more effective than other methods o learning, such asdirect instruction; but it equally implies nothing more than thatthe principle is believed to be more effective. Empirical evidenceis troublesome because any one condition can be ound to besuperior to a comparison condition i the comparison conditionis selected or its known or presumable in eriority. O course,
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implication o this shi in the section Sel -Shaping; the aspectrelevant here is the converse, learning rom indirect experience.

Te learning-by-doing principle implies that laboratories oscience are use ul because they permit direct experiences by do-ing, but scientic journals, books, and lectures are not use ulbecause the only doings they require are reading or listeningand then comprehending and remembering. Tese doings yieldonly indirect experiences with their topics. Tere ore, only theelite, the ew with direct experience, can truly understand phe-nomena.

A counterargument is that although direct experience is nec-essary, it can be acquired indirectly. Te point is expressed in aLatin proverb, What should be done must be learned rom onewho does it (quoted rom Davidoff, 1946, p. 101). Tis proverbmeans learning by doing as instructed, which is discussed hereand at least mentioned in the sections rial and Error VersusInstruction, Learning o Ask Good Questions, Success inApplied Practice, Errors by the Founder, and Learning lan-guage by use.

Tomas Huxley implicitly re erred to this point in a speech on

technical education that he gave in 1877 to the Working MensClub and Institute in Britain. He had described technical educa-tion as the teaching o handicra s (1877/1882, p. 74; his quo-tation marks), and he said that many o you might well won-der What does this speaker know practically about this matter?What is his handicra ? (p. 75). He then devoted about two anda hal pages to arguing that in his scientic specialty, which wasanatomy, he did intricate dissections that required him to be ahandicra sman. I do not think he established his credentials asa handicra sman, especially because o two urther comments:(a) Te ormal education o boys who will become workingmen, or handicra smen, should end as early as . . . at present

(p. 82) to allow them to engage in learning their handicra . Inthat era, these boys ormal education ended at the age o 13 or14 years (p. 86). (b) Consistently with the principle o learningby doing as instructed, he said, Te workshop is the only realschool or a handicra (p. 80). Te initial workshops or ana-tomical dissections probably included work on animal and hu-man cadavers, perhaps animal vivisection, watching experts dooperations on live humans, and their own supervised doings osuch operations. Tis sequence involves the method o learningby doing as instructed by relevant experts.

Mao Zedong directly re erred to the point under consider-ation:

All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. Butone cannot have direct experience o everything; as a mat-ter o act, most o our knowledge comes rom indirect experience . . . . [However], what is indirect experience or meis direct experience or other people. Consequently, consid-ered as a whole, knowledge o any kind is inseparable romdirect experience. All knowledge originates in perception othe objective external world through mans physical senseorgans. Anyone who denies such perception, denies directexperience, or denies personal participation in the prac-tice that changes reality, is not a materialist. (1937/1965, p. 300)

the kind o knowledge reected in prudence, or oresight,which is based on experience but not reasoning (Hobbes, Le- viathan, Part 1, remarks in introductory chap., which is chap.46 in Part 4 o the original work, 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th para-graphs; re oresight, chap. 3, paragraph marked Prudence, seealso chap. 5, penult. paragraph; re role o reasoning, chap. 5,ibid. and paragraph marked Science; re science, chap. 9, chart;1651/1958, pp. 3-4 in intro. chap., pp. 34-35 in chap. 3, 49-50 inchap. 5, 76-77 in chap. 9).

Hobbes also said:

Men that take their instruction rom the authority o books,and not rom their own meditation [are] as much belowthe condition o ignorant men as men endowed with truescience are above it. . . . For words are wise mens counters,they do but reckon by them; but they are the money o oolsthat value them by the authority o an Aristotle, a Cicero,or a Tomas [Aquinas], or any other doctor whatsoever, ibut a man. (Hobbes, Leviathan, Part 1, chap 4; 1651/1958, pp. 41-42; bracketed Aquinas is editors insertion)

He that takes up conclusions on the trust o authors, and doesnot etch them rom the rst items in every reckoning, whichare the signications o names settled by denitions, loses hislabor; and does not know anything, but only believes. (chap. 5;p. 46)

When I read these statements, I wondered why I was readingHobbess book; but then I realized that I was reasoning romwhat he had written rather than accepting his authority. Animplication is that book learning can be a use ul substrate orreasoning. Tis implication is consistent with the point o thepreceding section.

S. DE COVARRUBIAS OROZCO

In 1611 Covarrubias gave reasoning a role in discovery in hisinterpretation o the rying eggs proverb discussed in the sub-section Frying Eggs Version. He said:

Tis proverb gives us to understand that i we are not prepared with enough time to avoid haste, and we are advisedo the absence o something that is needed or attaining ourend, we should take the council o the sage and wise andwhen the event comes, we will notice the absent thing thatwe are accustomed not to think o . (1611/1943, p. 668; mytranslation)

Te basic point is still knowledge through discovery, but spe-cically in cases where the absence o reasoning makes a personunlikely to detect the missing object because the objects pres-ence is too commonplace to be noteworthy. Benjamin Whor(1940/1956) also discussed cases like this and gave the exampleso not missing water till the well runs dry, or not realizing thatwe need air till we are choking (p. 209).

ROLE OF INDIRECT EXPERIENCEA preliminary point is that in this section the basis o learninghas shi ed rom doing to direct experience. Tis is a standardshi ; or example, Pelez and Moreno (1998) used it in a distinc-tion between rules provided by others and sel -generated rules,which are generated by ones own direct experience. I discuss an
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they had seen, and they based their imitations largely on whatthey had already learned by doing. Te rehearsal hall is linedwith mirrors and the dancers watch themselves and practice un-til their movements accurately imitate what they remember see-ing. Tat is, their indirect experience o watching Balanchinesper ormance-as-instruction became their direct experience omonitoring their own per ormance.

Tis example shows that learning by indirect experience caninclude deliberate verbal or motoric instruction, incidentalmodeling, and learning by doing. Te learning-by-doing aspectinvolves direct experience with ones own deliberate and auto-matic doing in attempting to reproduce a models demonstra-tions. An important point here is that this learning by doingis not learning by imitating, because learning by imitating islearning by observing someone elses action. As indicated in theexample, learning by imitating becomes learning by doing whenthe learner learns by directly observing his or her own action.However, it is not pure learning by doing; it is learning by do-ing as instructed or modeled (discussed in the section Role oIndirect Experience).

LIMITED SCOPE

A preliminary point is that learning by indirect experience suchas watching, reading, listening, and imitating, may be less effec-tive than learning by doing, but it is certainly more efficient as

ar as it goes and or many purposes it goes ar enough (see thesection on science education in the April 23, 2010 issue o Sci-ence, Vol. 329, and letters to the editor in the August 13, 2010issue). An example is solving problems with a word processorby reading a good users manual, such as Power Point 2003 Justthe Steps or Dummies (Obermeier & Padova, 2006). Never-theless, the learningrom-indirect-experience argument is notconvincing in some cases. I describe our cases in the ollowing

paragraphs. An animal analogue. One case is a study by Held and Hein (1963)on the development o visually guided behavior in kittens thatwere reared in darkness and then were given visual experiences.Te kittens were paired and the kittens in a pair received highlysimilar visual experiences in the apparatus shown in Figure 1.One kitten received varying visual stimulation that it activelyproduced by walking in both directions, stooping, and rearing.Te paired kitten received the same varying visual stimulationpassively, by riding in a gondola yoked to the rst kittens move-ments by the chain across the top, the bar, and the pivot (thecylinder on the bar is a moveable counterweight). Head move-

ments also provide varying visual stimulation, but the activekittens head movements were not transmitted to the passivekitten, and its head movements were not controlled and there-

ore provided unyoked, independent variations in visual stimu-lation. Te ndings indicated that the active kitten developednormal vision, but the passive kitten did not until it was allowed48 hours o unrestricted activity in a lighted room. Evidently,normal visual development requires actively produced varia-tions o visual stimulation, and merely looking at scenery thathappens to change is not sufficiently active to be effective. Anal-ogously, in humans watching, reading, listening, comprehend-ing, and remembering are not sufficiently active kinds o doing.

(Te phrase is not a materialist was a polite way o saying isan idealist, which is anathema to a Marxist.)

EXCURSUS ON THE INDIRECT EXPERIENCEPRINCIPLE

Te alleged role o indirect experience is not necessarily a se-rious challenge to the learning-by-doing principle because the

indirect experience principle also has problems. Four kinds oproblems are discussed in the present section.

DISTANCE FROM DIRECT EXPERIENCE

As indicated in the inset quotation above, Mao Zedong assumedthat another persons direct experience can substitute or a per-sons own direct experience. A problem with this ormulationarises when the direct experience is at the beginning o a chaino tutors passing their indirect experiences to their pupils whoin turn become tutors, and the chain is probably o en long andincreasingly separated rom the direct experiences that oundedthe chain. Te problem is that each pupils direct experience isnot with what the tutor learned, but with the tutors words or

actions, and as the chain becomes longer, the words or actionsmight reect less and less well what the ounder had learned bydirect experience.

ERRORS BY THE FOUNDER

Another problem is that even the ounder might convey knowl-edge poorly. For example, in the standard procedure or in-structing ballet dancers, the choreographers instructionsconsist largely o demonstrating the desired movements by per-

orming them, then leaving while the dancers practice what theyremember having observed, and then returning and critiquingtheir per ormances verbally and with urther demonstrations.An anecdote about the ballet dancer and choreographer George

Balanchine provides an example. He instructed his dancers al-most entirely by per orming the movements he wanted. aper(1960) described the process:

What a ballerina may pick up rom watching Balanchinedance her part or her is a heightened awareness o herown special style and qualities, which his keen eye has per-ceived, and which he has rendered in claried orm or her.Still, there is no denying that all his dancers are acutelyresponsive in copying and appropriating the qualities hesketches out in dance or them. An instance o just howresponsive they are occurred when he was choreographingBourre Fantasque a number o years ago. When he had

the ensemble repeat or him a section that he had createdthe preceding week, he was perplexed to see that all themovements were being danced in a peculiarly crampedand agonized way. When he questioned the dancers, theyinsisted that this was the way he had shown the steps tothem. He could not gure it out until he recalled that theweek be ore he had been suffering rom bursitis; the com- pany had apparently picked up all his aches and pains andmagnied them into a bursitic Bourre Fantasque. ( aper,1960, p. 23)

In terms o the present analysis, Balanchine deliberately useddoing or instruction, the dancers deliberately imitated what
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learn English-Spanish associations, or example, automaticallyyielded backward, Spanish-English associations, which had tobe learned separately when rote memorization was used. Teresearch also showed that the use o imagery improved long-term memory o the associations--a nding also obtained inresearch on learning pairs o English words (reviewed in Reese,1977a, 1977b). Another nding--the one relevant here--is thatAtkinsons research showed that in general, the technique wasmore effective i the English words used as codes or the oreignwords were provided by the researcher than i they were madeup by the learner. In this sense, instruction worked better thanentirely personal practice.Learning language by use. Te third case is about learning a lan-guage by using it. Using a language is interpreted to be directexperience, as implied in the subsection Language Acquisi-tion, but it relies on examples and eedback provided by speak-

ers o the language who are more experienced than the learner.In other words, it is a case o learning by doing as instructed(discussed in the section Role o Indirect Experience). A c-tional example is in the 1985 movie with Mel Gibson and ina

urner, Mad Max Beyond Tunderdome. Mad Max happenedupon a community o children who spoke a primitive versiono English. Te children had survived a nuclear holocaust anda erwards they lived in a commune set up by adults who shortlyabandoned them. Te older children provided language models

or the younger ones, but the older ones had been young chil-dren at the time o the isolation rom adults, and there ore thelanguage models they provided were developmentally retarded

Learning paired associates by imagery. Research on verbal learningwas once dominated by the paired associates task, which re-quired learning arbitrary pairings o items. In the classical task,the paired items were nonsense syllables to rule out cognitiveeffects on learning, based on research by Ebbinghaus (Hoff-man, Bringmann, Bamberg, & Klein, 1987, pp. 58-60). Eventu-ally, however, researchers realized that meaning is the essenceo verbal learning and they switched to arbitrarily paired realwords presumed to be known by the participants. One o thegreat discoveries therea er was that pairs o concrete nouns canbe learned and remembered very easily by imagining an inter-action between the re erents o the nouns in each pair. Tis wasactually a rediscovery o a principle that had been known inancient Greece and therea er (Yates, 1966). One 19th centurywriter gave a circular explanation: Images are easily ormedand never orgotten (I am quoting rom memory, having lost

the re erence).Atkinson (1975) described a practical application that involved English-speakers learning a oreign-language vocabu-lary. Te learner is instructed to encode each oreign word inthe list as a concrete English noun that is acoustically related tothe oreign word and then to imagine an interaction betweenthe re erents o the correct English word and the code word.One o his examples was learning that duck is pato in Span-ish: Pato is pronounced roughly like pahtoh, so the acousticcode word could be pot and the interaction could be the imageo a duck with a cooking pot on its head worn like a baseballcap. Te research showed that using the imagery technique to

Figure 1. Figure 1. Apparatus used by Held and Hein. See text for explanation. (From Held & Hein, 1963, Fig. 1, p. 873. Used by permission.)
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Te concrete is concrete because it is the concentration omany determinations, hence unity o the diverse. It appearsin the process o thinking, there ore, as a process o concen-tration, as a result, not as a point o departure, even thoughit is the point o departure in reality and hence also the point o departure or observation (Anschauung) and con-ception. Along the rst path the ull conception was evapo-rated to yield an abstract determination; along the second,the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction othe concrete by way o thought. . . . [ ]he method o rising rom the abstract to the concrete is only the way in whichthought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the con-crete in the mind. (Marx, 1939/1973, p. 101)

Similarly, Pepper said he developed his root-metaphortheory o world views by examining the origins and eatures oworld views, but in his 1942 book he presented the theory (chap.4-5) be ore describing the world views (chap. 7-11). He said heused this sequence to serve the purposes o exposition (Pep-per, 1942, p. 84) and or reasons o simplicity o exposition(Pepper, 1943, p. 603). A nal example is that Flavell, Green,

and Flavell (1986) called such a method customary in scienticwriting (p. 4): In reporting the results o several related experi-ments, effective writers put the experiments in a sequence thatbest compels the conclusions, not necessarily the sequence inwhich the experiments were done.

Medawar (1963) and others (e.g., Goodstein, 2002; Madigan,Johnson, & Linton, 1995; Woodward & Goodstein, 1996) be-lieved that the differences between reports o research and actu-al research is un ortunate because the reports mislead studentsand others who are not already skilled researchers. For example,it represents research as more organized and logical than it usu-ally is in practice. Tis problem is especially acute when benchresearch methods are used. One characteristic o bench researchis that in light o the incoming data, the researcher can changethe procedures being used and even the research questions be-ing asked. Another characteristic is that the data are recordedas notes in record books, and the notes cover not only observa-tions but also minutiae regarding changes in the questions andprocedures. Te report o bench research is based on the notesbut merci ully does not usually include all their contents, thusleaving uninitiated readers still uninitiated.

Brill and Yarden (2003) obtained evidence apparently contra-dicting Medawar and the others in a study o question-askingby high-school biology majors. Te quality o the studentsquestions was better in an experimental group than in a control

group, and improved in the experimental group but not in thecontrol group. However, the study was awed in one way andirrelevant in one way. Te aw was that the topics o the ex-perimental and control classes were different; the point leadingto irrelevancy was that the research reports used in the experi-mental classes had been revised to make them more in ormativethan the original reports. Specically, students in the experi-mental classes, on developmental biology, learned by readingresearch reports that had been revised by adding in ormationabout the background o the research questions, simpli ying theresearch methods and the discussion, omitting results not di-rectly relevant to the research questions, and adding a section

in vocabulary and grammar. Tis outcome is consistent withan old saying, A stream cant rise above its source (W. Smith,1948, p. 625, cited an example o its use in 1700).

wo empirical examples illustrate the same point. First, lan-guage prociency in slum adults and children tends to be de-cient relative to middle-class language, presumably becausechildren initially learn language rom caregivers who are adultsor older children. Second, standardized tests show that twinstend to have smaller measured vocabularies than nontwins, butother evidence indicates that the reason is that twins tend todevelop their own words or some things and actions. Both ex-amples presumably reect group differences in the quality o theinput and eedback.

In conclusion, learning language by using it involves a per-sons own direct experience with the results o others directexperience, but the learners direct experience cannot producea better effect than the others direct experience produced orthem because the learners direct experience is indirect with re-spect to the others direct experience.Learning methodology from scienti c reports. In many graduate pro-

grams, students are required to read scientic reports publishedin journals rather than reading articles and books that are reviews o research ndings. Te rationale may be, in part, thatreading the primary sources is a way to learn how to do research.I so, the effort is wasted, especially or learning how to dobench research. Te general reason is that in science, research isconducted in a context o discovery and research results are re-ported in a context o justication (Reichenbach, 1938, pp. 6-7,1947, p. 2, 1951, pp. 230-231). Annas said that Aristotle madethe distinction in Posterior Analytics: Science begins with thesimple and works upward, not because that is how we discovertruths, or even how we rst learn them, but because that is the

method o rational presentation that will best acilitate under-standing o the subject-matter (Annas, 1981, pp. 291-292). (Idid not nd this idea expressed so clearly in Posterior Analytics,and Annas gave no specic citation. However, chap. 13 in Book1 o Posterior Analytics is relevant.)

Kaplan (1964, pp. 14-15) pointed out that different kinds ologic are used in the contexts o discovery and justication: Telogic o discovery can be construed as a study o the reasons

or entertaining a hypothesis, in contrast with the logic o proo ,which deals with the reasons or accepting a hypothesis (p. 17).Similarly, Vygotsky said, Te course o actual investigationnever coincides with its nal published record (1934/1986, p.209). More ully, Karl Marx said:

O course, the method o presentation must differ in orm rom that o inquiry. Te latter has to appropriate the mate-rial in detail, to analyse its different orms o development,to trace out their inner connection. Only afer this work isdone, can the actual movement be adequately described.I this is done success ully, i the li e o the subject-matteris ideally reected as in a mirror, then it may appear as iwe have be ore us a mere a priori construction. ( rom the pre ace to the second edition o Capital; e.g., 1890/1906, pp. 24-25)

and
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limb to keep it away rom the animals. Te point here is thathis good advice always came too late, a er the untoward eventhad occurred. Perhaps the writers o the episodes were using adramatic device based on bel

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