Behavioral Cusp

This is an interesting theory I just bumped into wandering through the affiliated links of a Google Search. Since I am on this road I may as well see where it leads.


“A behavioral cusp is any behavior change that brings an organism's behavior into contact with new contingencies that have far-reaching consequences… A behavioral cusp is a special type of behavior change because it provides the learner with opportunities to access (1) new reinforcers, (2) new contingencies (3) new environments, (4) new related behaviors (generativeness …), (5) competition with archaic or problem behaviors, and it (6) impacts the people around the learner, and (7) these people agree to the behavior change and support its development after the intervention is removed. The concept has far reaching implication for every individual, and for the field of developmental psychology, because it provides a behavioral alternative to the concept of maturation and change due to the simple passage of time, such as developmental milestones. The cusp is a behavior change that presents special features when compared to other behavior changes.” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_Cusp


This Wiki description sounds like a bit or at least several bytes of gobbledygook except the part explaining the behavioral cusp is somehow in and of itself a specific behavior change (a behavior out of the ordinary?) that introduces new contingencies that have subsequent far-reaching consequences on future behavior. I am less interested in what these cusps are than I am in the fact that they are Ah-Ha or DOH moments; some conscious, others unconscious. The entire balance of the definition seems rather obvious and even redundant in that we are dealing with a cusp (synonyms: acme, apogee, climax, crest, crown, culmination, cusp , greatest, height, max, maximum, meridian, most*, ne plus ultra, peak, pinnacle, point, roof, spire, sublimity, summit, tip, tops, up there, vertex or zenith - ( http://thesaurus.com/browse/cusp ) and not a nadir. I do not choose to deal with the specificity of the developmental psychology side of this phenomenon.


Bringing this back to earth: behavioral cusps occurred when I disobeyed my father and was caught rather than when I disobeyed him and did not get caught which was always quite an apogee in its own right. Getting away with something was exhilarating beyond belief and lead to repetition; hopefully, not to the extent that I was caught but enough to feel a smug satisfaction that it could be done. For long stretches of my adolescent life it simply was not possible to pull one over on the old man. He gave me the first real life description of been there, done that; or his sister Gladys did because it was her that set things straight.


I am guessing that neither Herm nor Gladys were the perfect children and frequently tried to get away with things. From what Gladys said they were not always successful. Since the apple does not fall far from the tree the Behavioral Cusp that I experienced was that eventually luck runs out.


In many ways this was life changing for me because I found the only successful Behavioral Cusp was to move out of the house. The thought was not entirely mine and dad changing the locks insured that the new reinforcers, enforcers, contingencies or environment would not be ones he provided. I was left to find my own way.


I am still looking.

© stevendphilbrick sr+ DakotaDawg 09/29/2010