This article offers an intriguing promise in its title giving reference to the future and intentional change. A detailed reading reveals a score of 2 out of 4: unidirectional (not bidirectional) reference to the future, and a 1970s recognition of intentional change. This statement is not intended to be harsh, but I believe that addressing these issues, if it is possible, could make or break the chance of a real contribution to behavioral science. This article misses the opportunity to recognize the future as a source, not just a destination, of learning. “Evolving-the-future” and “learning-from-the-future” (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012a) are clearly opposite processes in the fourth dimension, so contrasting them is easier than linking them.
Evolution is a process of learning from or building on the past. So is operant conditioning, which is why Skinner (Reference Skinner1981) wrote the article so much cited in Wilson et al.'s article. Skinner devoted his professional life to explaining as much behavior as he could in operant terms. But his after-hours thoughts encompassed much else, including learning from the future (though he did not call it that; B. F. Skinner, personal communications, April 10, 1983 et seq.). For example, in his Notebooks he wrote of the folly of the common practice to show batters in a slump, videos of striking out (which is feedback; learning from the past). Better, he wrote, “[that the batsman] be shown a short film of himself hitting home runs. A videotape device in the back of the dugout could have short cassettes for each player” (Epstein Reference Epstein1980, p. 6). Although this may look like a different selection of past behavior, more important, it is a representation of valued future behavior.
Wilson et al. make no effort to include this domain of learning in their treatise, although it represents half the discourse on learning theory. Learning from the future creates dramatic changes, in contrast to hard earned successive approximations toward a modest delta. The article does refer to modeling, self-modeling, goal setting, exposure, and other procedures with potential for participants to be drawn by images of the future, more than being driven by ghosts of the past (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012b). However, these possibilities are either overlooked or avoided. Even the behavior-influencing kernels of Dennis Embry (Reference Embry2004) and the variations of Steven Hayes's (Reference Hayes2004) mindfulness therapy, both potentially replete with the full spectrum of future-oriented learning, are tightly linked here to evolutionary theory or experimental analysis of behavior as ways to build, exclusively, on the past. Potential for connecting to learning from the future is hinted at by reference to “therapy [behavior change] that employs symbolic language” (“the symbolic Darwin machine”) and by reference to prevention. However, change at the “level of individuals” is limited almost entirely to clinical, developmental, and educational problems, whereas theory needs to address improvements and variations in positive change, as well. All 13 examples in Tables 2 and 3 (community interventions) describe outcomes solely in terms of the reduction of (bad) behaviors, not as improvements in terms of any acquisition or evolution toward future valued behavior. Tellingly, there is no reference to Albert Bandura or other descriptions of social cognitive theory significantly related to intentional change (e.g., Bandura Reference Bandura1986; Reference Bandura1997).
Learning from the future is exemplified by cognitive-behavioral feedforward, in which a new skill or level of performance is rapidly acquired when it is constructed as an image made from component behaviors already in the repertoire (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012a; Reference Dowrick2012b; cf. Dowrick & Hood Reference Dowrick and Hood1981, p. 397). A related process is positive self-review, in which a previously demonstrated skill (e.g., hitting a home run) is mentally apprehended, via video or otherwise, as a valued future behavior without modification or reconstruction. There is evidence pointing to the neurological functions associated with future thinking, as distinct from episodic memories (see Schacter et al. Reference Schacter, Addis and Buckner2008; Suddendorf & Corballis Reference Suddendorf and Corballis2007). These processes can be stimulated in many direct and indirect ways.
But perhaps evolutionary theory cannot be linked to such learning – which is substantially absent in pigeons and earthworms (although rats have been found to combine brief sequences from spatial memory in the hippocampus, such that these sequences “predict immediate future behaviour”; Pfeiffer & Foster Reference Pfeiffer and Foster2013, p. 74). If it is not possible to make an effective link between the proposed theory and half our database in the knowledge of learning processes, at least that should be acknowledged. But if it is possible, it will take a different mindset: As the authors note in their final discussion, “seeing differently [will result] in acting differently” (emphasis in the original). More likely, the proposed theory is fundamentally stuck with incremental learning from the past.
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This article offers an intriguing promise in its title giving reference to the future and intentional change. A detailed reading reveals a score of 2 out of 4: unidirectional (not bidirectional) reference to the future, and a 1970s recognition of intentional change. This statement is not intended to be harsh, but I believe that addressing these issues, if it is possible, could make or break the chance of a real contribution to behavioral science. This article misses the opportunity to recognize the future as a source, not just a destination, of learning. “Evolving-the-future” and “learning-from-the-future” (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012a) are clearly opposite processes in the fourth dimension, so contrasting them is easier than linking them.
Evolution is a process of learning from or building on the past. So is operant conditioning, which is why Skinner (Reference Skinner1981) wrote the article so much cited in Wilson et al.'s article. Skinner devoted his professional life to explaining as much behavior as he could in operant terms. But his after-hours thoughts encompassed much else, including learning from the future (though he did not call it that; B. F. Skinner, personal communications, April 10, 1983 et seq.). For example, in his Notebooks he wrote of the folly of the common practice to show batters in a slump, videos of striking out (which is feedback; learning from the past). Better, he wrote, “[that the batsman] be shown a short film of himself hitting home runs. A videotape device in the back of the dugout could have short cassettes for each player” (Epstein Reference Epstein1980, p. 6). Although this may look like a different selection of past behavior, more important, it is a representation of valued future behavior.
Wilson et al. make no effort to include this domain of learning in their treatise, although it represents half the discourse on learning theory. Learning from the future creates dramatic changes, in contrast to hard earned successive approximations toward a modest delta. The article does refer to modeling, self-modeling, goal setting, exposure, and other procedures with potential for participants to be drawn by images of the future, more than being driven by ghosts of the past (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012b). However, these possibilities are either overlooked or avoided. Even the behavior-influencing kernels of Dennis Embry (Reference Embry2004) and the variations of Steven Hayes's (Reference Hayes2004) mindfulness therapy, both potentially replete with the full spectrum of future-oriented learning, are tightly linked here to evolutionary theory or experimental analysis of behavior as ways to build, exclusively, on the past. Potential for connecting to learning from the future is hinted at by reference to “therapy [behavior change] that employs symbolic language” (“the symbolic Darwin machine”) and by reference to prevention. However, change at the “level of individuals” is limited almost entirely to clinical, developmental, and educational problems, whereas theory needs to address improvements and variations in positive change, as well. All 13 examples in Tables 2 and 3 (community interventions) describe outcomes solely in terms of the reduction of (bad) behaviors, not as improvements in terms of any acquisition or evolution toward future valued behavior. Tellingly, there is no reference to Albert Bandura or other descriptions of social cognitive theory significantly related to intentional change (e.g., Bandura Reference Bandura1986; Reference Bandura1997).
Learning from the future is exemplified by cognitive-behavioral feedforward, in which a new skill or level of performance is rapidly acquired when it is constructed as an image made from component behaviors already in the repertoire (Dowrick Reference Dowrick2012a; Reference Dowrick2012b; cf. Dowrick & Hood Reference Dowrick and Hood1981, p. 397). A related process is positive self-review, in which a previously demonstrated skill (e.g., hitting a home run) is mentally apprehended, via video or otherwise, as a valued future behavior without modification or reconstruction. There is evidence pointing to the neurological functions associated with future thinking, as distinct from episodic memories (see Schacter et al. Reference Schacter, Addis and Buckner2008; Suddendorf & Corballis Reference Suddendorf and Corballis2007). These processes can be stimulated in many direct and indirect ways.
But perhaps evolutionary theory cannot be linked to such learning – which is substantially absent in pigeons and earthworms (although rats have been found to combine brief sequences from spatial memory in the hippocampus, such that these sequences “predict immediate future behaviour”; Pfeiffer & Foster Reference Pfeiffer and Foster2013, p. 74). If it is not possible to make an effective link between the proposed theory and half our database in the knowledge of learning processes, at least that should be acknowledged. But if it is possible, it will take a different mindset: As the authors note in their final discussion, “seeing differently [will result] in acting differently” (emphasis in the original). More likely, the proposed theory is fundamentally stuck with incremental learning from the past.