Which method are you using if you are watching and recording if a behavior happens or not?

3.01.1 Introduction

Behavioral observation is a commonplace practice in our daily lives. As social creatures and "informal scientists," we rely upon observations of behavior to understand current social experiences and predict future social events. In fact, direct observation of behavior is one of the most important strategies we use to process our social world. Thus, it is not surprising that the field of psychology also is drawn to behavioral observation as a research method for understanding human behavior. The current chapter will focus upon behavioral observation as a formal research tool. In this context, behavioral observation involves the systematic observation of specific domains of behavior such that the resulting descriptions of behavior are replicable. In order to accomplish this task, the ongoing stream of behavior must be coded or broken down into recordable units, and the criteria for the assignment of labels or for making evaluations must be objectified. These practices of specifying units of behavior and objectifying coding criteria are the key steps in translating informal behavioral observations into formal, scientific observations. As will be seen below, the challenge of employing behavioral observation in research settings involves the myriad of decisions that an investigator must make in this translation process from informal to formal observation.

8 Summary

Behavioral observation is one of the most widely used assessment strategies in schools. Given its flexibility and ease of use, behavioral observation procedures can be used to collect a range of data that provide helpful information and are useful for making a variety of psychoeducational decisions. Because of its direct nature, behavioral observation is particularly well suited for everyday life settings and can provide a systematic record of behavior that can be used in preliminary evaluation, intervention planning and design, the documentation of changes over time, and as part of a multimethod–multisource evaluation that integrates other forms of assessment (e.g., interviews and rating scales) and sources (e.g., teachers, parents, and children).

7.08.5.3 Behavioral Observation

Behavioral observation has been described as an essential component for the evaluation of fear and anxiety (Last & Hersen, 1988). Despite the availability of various systematic schemes for behavioral observation of anxiety among younger adults (Nietzel et al., 1988), only case studies have provided any such approaches for the assessment of anxiety in elderly people. In one report, Turner, Hersen, Bellack, and Wells (1979) described a behavioral observation scheme for monitoring ritualistic handwashing and associated symptoms in a 66-year-old woman with OCD. Behavioral observations were made on an inpatient unit by research assistants three times a day, with measures estimating mean time spent washing and percentage of observation periods in which washing occurred. In another case report, Junginger and Ditto (1984) measured the frequency and nature of checking behaviors in a 65-year-old woman receiving inpatient psychiatric treatment for OCD and major depression. However, no standardized approaches for the behavioral observation of anxiety symptoms in older adults have been developed, and the need for further research in this area has been highlighted (Hersen et al., 1993). In particular, reliable systems for the observation of behavior in clinical and naturalistic settings are needed.

Behavioral Observations

Behavioral observations obtained during the clinical interview and formal testing highlight the child's behavior and are particularly relevant. Examples of behavioral observations that should be noted include:

Child's response to the stress of testing, the tasks they evade and the tasks they prefer, and ability to persist and sustain attention to difficult tasks

Language proficiency, e.g., fluency, prosody, grammar, articulation, volume, pragmatics, and vocabulary

Motor or sensory impairments

Activity/energy level, e.g., hyperactivity and hypoactivity

Ability to follow directions and stay on task, and distractibility

Internalizing and externalizing psychological factors, e.g., anxiety, mood disorder, and conduct disorder

Effects of past or current illness and associated treatments

Cultural factors

Additionally, clinical developmental neuropsychologists are alert to the presence of neurological soft signs evidenced throughout the evaluation as these can indicate a nonspecific neuropsychological dysfunction. Supplementary behavioral information can be gained through parent and teacher questionnaires that serve to identify variations in a child's behavior across settings.

Behavioral Observation

Behavioral observation is concerned with determining antecedents or determinants of behavior, as well as its consequences, in other words, the situational determinants of behavior. Behavioral observation is a functional, utilitarian approach in that it focuses on the clearly observable ways in which the client interacts with his or her environment. Behavioral observation may be used informally as part of an interview or in a testing session, or as a method in its own right. Behavioral observation may be the most informative type of assessment in certain cases, such as with very young children, the developmentally disabled, resistant clients, and clients lacking in insight. Behavioral observation may be conducted by the psychodiagnostician, by other individuals in the client's life (e.g., teachers, parents, spouses, other caregivers), or by the client themselves through self-monitoring.

The first step in behavioral observation is to select a target behavior, or set of target behaviors related to the problem behavior, for observation. There are then several recording methods from which to choose depending on the goal of assessment, the nature of the target behavior and the practicality of the method for the particular client. Narrative recording is what is frequently done during other psychological testing as an additional source of information. It involves simply taking note of any behaviors of interest. There is a lot of flexibility in terms of how descriptive or inferential the recording is, and little quantification is used. Interval recording, also referred to as time sampling, interval sampling, or interval time sampling, involves recording selected behaviors within a predetermined time interval (e.g., for 5–30 s every 5 min). Interval recording is used, for example, with behaviors such as walking, listening, or playing because they occur with moderate frequency and do not have a clear beginning or end. As opposed to using a predetermined time interval as a guide for recording, event recording relies instead on the occurrence of the behavior itself to record details of the behavior such as frequency, duration, and intensity. Behaviors of low frequency are best suited to event recording. Last, ratings recording is more general and global than the previously described methods; the evaluator provides a rating of a particular behavior, in terms of frequency or quality, after a defined period of observation. The advantages to ratings recording are that it can be applied to a wide variety of behaviors, it can be statistically analyzed, it is time-efficient, and the ratings can be made for individuals or groups.

5.12.3.3 Observational Approaches

Behavioral observation contributes valuable information to the assessment process and is useful for identifying and quantifying symptoms of fear and anxiety, such as avoidance. For instance, behavioral approach tasks (BAT) require the child to take steps of increasing difficulty toward a feared object or situation in a controlled environment (Creswell et al., 2020a). These direct observations allow clinicians to subjectively rate the child's level of approach, avoidance, and distress related their fear (e.g., to assess specific phobias) to inform the development of a treatment exposure hierarchy.

Employing social evaluative tasks are another behavioral observation method that measures social skill deficits and behaviors in children diagnosed with social phobia, using role play and reading tasks (Beidel et al., 2000). Behavioral observation is also used to identify patterns of parent-child interactions to ascertain whether such patterns contribute to the maintenance of anxiety. For instance, Hudson and Rapee (2001) developed a problem-solving tangram puzzle used in the parent-child interaction task with the aim to observe the level of parental involvement during the task, specifically when the task was designed slightly too difficult for the child to complete within the allocated time. Taken together, systematic direct observational procedures provide helpful conceptual information with regards to treatment planning, although such observations can be time consuming.

3.2 Behavioral Observation

Behavioral observation is a straightforward process that involves watching live or recorded performance. It provides at least one distinct advantage over all of the other assessment methods in that SPPs can see firsthand how athletes behave in the most relevant settings (e.g., practice, competition). This information is invaluable because there are cues that may be identified in real-life settings that might not arise under less realistic conditions. Athletes might consistently make mistakes in situations but be unaware of the cause. The purpose of behavior observation is to watch athletes perform in those situations where insight into psychological performance factors can be ascertained. Both structured (i.e., controlled) and unstructured observation can be used to acquire this type of information. Trained SPPs can learn a great deal by attending to a variety of “targets” that include, but are not limited to, actual performance, verbal behavior, and body language. For example, slumped shoulders after a missed shot might reflect a slip in confidence. These kinds of observations can provide invaluable discussion points that can be critical in helping athletes to understand themselves and their performances (Table II).

TABLE II. Behavioral Observation Checklist

Sea Otter

Behavioral observations revealed that sea otters (order Carnivora, Enhydra lutris) sleep in water at the surface on their backs in a characteristic posture, holding their heads above the surface and balancing their bodies with their tails. When REM sleep occurs in water, the otter turns on its side or stomach and its head sinks under the surface. REM sleep episodes in sea otters lasted up to 6 min (mean of 95 s) and their durations did not differ while on land or in water. Behaviorally, TST and REM sleep in one adult animal averaged 29% and 2% of 24 h, respectively.

The Significance of Behavioral Observation

Behavioral observation involves recording the manifest activities of individuals. Direct observation is consistent with an epistemological emphasis on overt behavior, quantification, and low levels of inference. For these reasons, observational procedures are rigorous and powerful, providing measures of both behavioral frequency and duration on the basis of their occurrence in the noninterrupted natural time flow. This approach to assessment has been called the sine qua non of social science research; that is, observation is often considered the gold standard against which other kinds of assessments should be evaluated. For these reasons, observation has been employed in the vast majority of published research.

Conclusions

Behavioral observations and neuroanatomical evidence from healthy participants and brain-injured patients concur to suggest that STM should be conceived as a multiple-component system with specific functional properties and discrete neural correlates. Current evidence suggests the existence of phonological, spatial and visual STM systems, each including store and rehearsal components. These systems secure retention of a limited amount of material in the time range of seconds, and contribute to relevant aspects of cognition, such as long-term learning of new, unfamiliar material. Specifically, PhSTM is related to a number of aspects of language: vocabulary acquisition, speech production, phonological judgments, and comprehension of complex sentences. Spatial and visual STM may be involved in spatial orientation and navigation.