Dead Man Test: what is it, functions, advantages and disadvantages

In behavior analysis, the dead man's test is a very interesting test to be used when determining the behaviors to be evaluated during the observation.

The main idea of ​​the test is that any behavior that can also be "performed" by a person it is not advisable to consider it as such, since in itself it would not be an action significant.

This test has had its pros and cons, but apart from them it is still a curious way of establish what behaviors to evaluate when conducting an investigation or analyzing the conduct of a individual. Let's go into a little more detail.

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What is the Dead Man Test?

The Dead Man Test is an idea that has been used to try to distinguish between objectively measurable and observable behavior from what is not. This test has been used on many occasions as a criterion to establish what behaviors should be analyzed at the same time. when evaluating the behavior of an individual, be it a person or an animal, within the framework of the analysis of the conduct.

Its main use is to determine whether or not a certain action can be considered as behavior.

This idea was developed by Ogden Lindsley in 1965, who said that if a dead person can carry out a certain behavior, then it really is not a behavior. The idea is that, taking into account that only living organisms have the ability to emit behaviors, anything we call behavior has to pass the dead man's test and therefore cannot be emitted by an inert being.

Application in the world of education

We are going to try to better understand this curious idea by associating it with the reason for its creation. The Dead Man test was conceptualized at a time when research in the educational field had a serious problem when analyzing the behavior of students. Many teachers used very lax criteria to determine the ideal behavior of their students, criteria that included something that we could well call “non-conduct”.

Among the aspects that the teachers evaluated were; for example, how long your students were quiet or if they didn't throw a tantrum. Although evaluating these “behaviors” was comfortable, it did not provide meaningful data on whether they were really learning nor could they be considered as behaviors that promote learning, such as evaluating the degree of involvement of students in the task or how motivated they were to ask the teacher.

These two behaviors, that is, not throwing a tantrum and sitting still at the desk, they wouldn't pass the dead man's test because basically a dead person can "do" them. Corpses sit still and make no noise, so wishing that the children in a classroom behaved like this would be the same as wanting them to behave as if they were dead.

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Example of application of this test

Without leaving the educational field, we can give an example of the application of the dead man test but a little more current and quite common within the analysis of behavior.

If we define "non-compliance" as the failure to complete and obey certain demands within a period of time, applying the test we would have to ask ourselves the following question:

"Can a dead person fail to comply with a lawsuit?"

The answer to this question is clearly yes. The dead man does nothing, with which he will fail at every demand we ask of him. Taking into account that this definition of non-compliance does not pass the dead man's test, it is necessary to consider a new behavior to evaluate.

In this specific case, instead of talking about non-compliance, we could evaluate the individual's rejection of the task that has been asked, defining "rejection" as the act of responding with a resounding no to a certain petition. Here we can ask ourselves the following question:

"Can a dead person respond with a resounding no to a certain request?"

The answer in this case is obviously no. A dead man does not have the ability to speak or actively reject anything, so rejection is behavior because it has passed the dead man's test.

Weaknesses of this test

Although at the beginning it was quite accepted, considering it a good criterion to clearly establish the line that separated behavior from what could not be considered, nowadays it is not considered a clear proof of what is behavior and what is not. In addition, although it was conceptualized during the 1960s, today it does not have much empirical evidence.

Added to this, we must not ignore the type of reasoning behind the proof, circular type. The dead man's test associates behavior with being alive while anything a dead man can do is automatically considered as non-conduct, therefore, its premise is that being alive is synonymous with behavior and not being alive is synonymous with no conduct.

This brings us to the current conceptualization of what is considered, or at least should be considered, as behavior. Current behavior analysts indicate that any behavior that we conceptualize as such must be measurable and observable, in addition that the behavior to be analyzed must be formulated in a clear, objective and concise way and, certainly, there are some things that the dead can "Doing" that could be considered as behavior taking into account these parameters and it would be in that case that the dead man's test could to serve.

When doing any type of behavior analysis, choose behaviors that are socially meaningful and in which it is clear that the individual is involved, being able to verify the latter by making use of the dead man. But, in addition to this, every behavior analyst must make sure that the behaviors that he has established as such are measurable, observable, clear, objective and concise. If it does not meet these criteria and does not pass the dead man test, it is necessary to propose another behavior to evaluate.