I've got an eye towards my PhD dissertation (the details of which are entirely unknown to me at this time). My initial thoughts were: I'm in a program (Special Ed. & Disability Policy) that does not align too neatly with my Master's (Applied Behavior Analysis/Special Education) and frankly, I find myself surrounded by folks hostile to behaviorism. So I was thinking a hard and fast strategy, focusing on something like a meta-analysis of an existing data set (saw an interesting PhD thesis by someone at MCV who did, "The Rate of Reporting of Civil Rights Violations by Persons Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder". Pretty straightforward, doubt you even need an IRB.
But my passion is the 'malfunctions' in neural functioning that result in http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifpresentations like autism spectrum. I was trained in a sub-specialty of ABA called 'Verbal Behavior' based on a 1957 theoretical work of the same name. I view autism as, essentially, a malfunction of consciousness. For reasons we don't understand, consciousness does not 'unfold' naturally like it does in almost every other human being. A key component of 'knowing oneself' is the internalization of language and 'ownership' of that 'voice' as ones' own. After all, you...your experience of yourself happens in the language you learn as a child. No language, then there is no 'you' talking in your head.
There has been some research into this 'speaker-as-own-listener'. I'm now thinking about doing something based on Skinner's chapter in Verbal Behavior on 'Thinking'. Dr. Mark Sundberg publisper a paper in 1991 titled, "301 Research Topics from Skinners Verbal Behavior" . I spent two days last week at a training he did and he might help guide me.
As someone who is fascinated by autism, I also look at how we help the kids learn to talk, learn to be social, learn to navigate the world...(but I know the troubles with IRB's and research with kids).
Okay, I could go on and on. This is my first class and I'm very much looking forward to your thoughts.
Adam
Adam, it’s clear that you have a lot of enthusiasm for your topic, and that’s great! Enthusiasm will motivate you and keep you moving toward the ultimate goal of the dissertation. For now, you need to take a step back. Don’t worry about data collection or data analysis or the IRB. Just think about what you want to know. Do you want to clarify, test, or revise a theory? Do you want to examine contradictory findings from previous work? What are your questions? Can you pick a couple of the topics suggested by Sundberg and develop them into problem statements? Remember the three components that you need to consider: context, goals, and significance. You’ve touched on each of these to a certain degree, but a complete problem statement will develop these elements more fully.. Another consideration is whether your questions translate into a qualitative or quantitative problem. Although ABA tends to be highly quantitative, your questions could have a more exploratory direction.
ReplyDelete