Analogue Methods

Introduction

Analogue behavioural observation (ABO) involves a situation designed by, manipulated by, or constrained by an assessor that elicits a measured behaviour of interest. Observed behaviours comprise both verbal and non-verbal emissions (e.g. motor actions, verbalized attributions, observable facial reactions).

ABO exists on a continuum of naturalism, ranging from highly contrived situations (e.g. How quickly do people walk down the hallway after being exposed to subconsciously presented words about ageing? Bargh et al., 1996) to naturalistic situations arranged in unnatural ways or settings (e.g. How do couples talk with one another when asked to discuss their top problem topic? Heyman, 2001) to naturalistic situations with some (but minimal) experimenter-dictated restrictions (e.g. family observations in the home; Reid, 1978).

Why Use Abo?

ABO is used as a hypothesis-testing tool for three purposes: (a) to observe otherwise unobservable behaviours, (b) to isolate the determinants of behaviour, and (c) to observe dynamic qualities of social interaction. Although naturalistic observation might be preferable (i.e. generalizability inferences are minimized), the first two purposes require controlled experimentation, necessitating ABO; for the third purpose, ABO is often preferable because it allows the observer to ‘stack the deck’ to make it more likely that the behaviours (and/or functional relations) of interest will occur when the assessor can see them.

Domains

ABO comprises two main assessment domains: individual/situation interactions and social situations. The goals of individual/situation interaction experiments are to manipulate the setting and test individual differences in response. This domain comprises a wide variety of tasks in developmental psychology (e.g. strange situation experiments; Ainsworth et al., 1978), social psychology (e.g. emotion regulation experiments; Tice et al., 2001) and clinical psychology (e.g. functional analysis of self-injurious behaviour; Iwata et al., 1994; social anxiety assessment; Norton & Hope, 2001).

The social situation domain employs ABO mostly as a convenience in assessing quasi-naturalistic interaction. The goal of such assessment is typically to understand behaviour and its determinants in dynamic, reciprocally influenced systems [Page 20](e.g. groups, families, couples). Understanding generalizable factors that promote or maintain problem behaviours in such systems typically requires more naturalistic approaches than those used in the other domain. Thus, although experimentation is often extremely useful in understanding causal relations in social situations (e.g. whether maternal attributions affect mother-child interactions; Slep & O'Leary, 1998), most such ABO investigations aim for quasi-naturalism.

Clinical Assessment

ABO is a useful tool in clinical assessment, although relatively few ABO paradigms have been developed specifically with this application in mind. To be clinically useful, ABO must efficiently provide reliable, valid, and non-redundant (but cost-effective) information.

An apt analogy for research-protocol based assessment vs. field-realistic assessment might be found in the treatment literature. In recent years, a distinction has evolved between efficacy studies (i.e. those studying interventions under tightly controlled, idealized circumstances, such as a trial of treatment for major depressive disorder that eliminates all potential participants with comorbid disorders) and effectiveness studies (i.e. those studying interventions under real-world conditions). Because we do not have an adequate research body of effectiveness studies, clinicians in the field, urged to use empirically validated treatments, are expected to adapt such protocols to meet real-world demands. Similarly, clinicians should be urged to use empirically validated ABO when it would be appropriate, but should be expected to adapt ABO protocols in a cost-effective but still clinically informative manner.

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