Formal symbolic languages accelerate the progress and maturation of their disciplines by defining the basic units, making their relationships visually accessible, identifying their parameters, recording and communicating the discipline’s knowledge, categorizing and conceptualizing it, and teaching it. The paper explains why the field of behavior analysis needs such a language, with examples of its applications.
Also available at: Mechner, F. (2011). Why behavior analysis needs a formal symbolic language for codifying behavioral contingencies. European Journal of Behavioral Analysis, 12, 93-104.