Um levantamento das concepções acerca do behaviorismo radical entre professores e supervisores de terapia comportamental

Abstract

The purpose of the present work was to investigate the knowledge that professors and supervisors of Behavior Therapy have regarding the Radical Behaviorism, looking for to evaluate how much and what those subjects know about aspects of that philosophy, especially those related to the criticism and misconceptions that commonly surround the Behaviorism. As subjects, 43 graduation's professors that teach and supervise disciplines related to practices related to the Behavior Therapy in Brazil. A questionnaire composed of two parts was used: a) one of them composed of 26 items concerning~ the characterization, academic and practical formation and b) other containing 30 statements on 15 aspects of the Radical Behaviorism associated to criticism and misconceptions; the subjects should judge the statements true or false and to answer to three other opinion questions regarding an excerpt of Skinner's authorship. The questionnaires were sent to the subjects through e-mail address, through e-mail or give personally to the professors/supervisors. The first part of the results revealed that 95% of the sample had postgraduate formation. In the true/false statements, the subjects presented 83,87% of correct answers, 11,55% of wrong answers, and 4,03% of answers "I don't know". The statements in which there were larger numbers of mistakes were those related to the themes: 7he Role of Genetics (47,67%) Private Events (26,74%), and Behaviorism Acceptance (17,44). The largest number of successes felt in the Political Issues, Simplicity/Intervention, Simplicity/Human Aspects, and Reduction by Methodological Issues. There was correspondence among the data obtained in the true/false questions and the opinion questions In general, the data suggest the need of correction of fundamental points in the teaching of the Radical Behaviorism in Brazil