Behaviour Modelling - Part 2
BUILDING A BEHAVIOUR MODEL
Preparation
Here are some typical reasons you might wish to use behaviour modelling.
1. To simulate the high performance of others.
2. To achieve a specific goal or task.
3. To understand a process in greater depth.
Be very clear about the reasons you have decided to model a behaviour.
Identify the person who you wish to base your model on. Select them carefully. Make sure that they perform the behaviour you wish to develop and you have a reasonable amount of access to information surrounding them and the behaviour/s you wish to model (personal contact is preferable). I will refer to this person as the ‘subject’.
Remember you can have as many subjects as you like, but model each of them separately and do not generalise. If you generalise you are more likely to miss the key to the desired behaviour.
So, to model behaviour you must identify particular key elements. Ask these questions and record your results. The more accurate and detailed you are with your data the better model you can build.
1. What are the subject’s goals?
2. How does the subject measure progress towards their goals?
3. What are the choices the subject uses and how do they action them?
4. How does the subject respond if the goal is not achieved?
Preparation
Here are some typical reasons you might wish to use behaviour modelling.
1. To simulate the high performance of others.
2. To achieve a specific goal or task.
3. To understand a process in greater depth.
Be very clear about the reasons you have decided to model a behaviour.
Identify the person who you wish to base your model on. Select them carefully. Make sure that they perform the behaviour you wish to develop and you have a reasonable amount of access to information surrounding them and the behaviour/s you wish to model (personal contact is preferable). I will refer to this person as the ‘subject’.
Remember you can have as many subjects as you like, but model each of them separately and do not generalise. If you generalise you are more likely to miss the key to the desired behaviour.
So, to model behaviour you must identify particular key elements. Ask these questions and record your results. The more accurate and detailed you are with your data the better model you can build.
1. What are the subject’s goals?
2. How does the subject measure progress towards their goals?
3. What are the choices the subject uses and how do they action them?
4. How does the subject respond if the goal is not achieved?
Identifying Skills
All skills are made up of other skills - ‘sub-skills’. For example, driving a car requires knowledge of legislation, road use, hand / eye coordination, some basic mechanical understanding, starting / controlling / stopping a vehicle and so on. To develop each of these sub-skills, in turn, requires further sub-skills, some of which you may already have.
This is known as ‘chunking’ down. These ‘chunks’ of information make up the higher-level skill you are aiming to develop. I will discus ‘chunking’ information and how it relates to learning and our short-term memory another time.
There are three types of skills:
Behavioural - (what we do / action)
Cognitive - (how we think / thought processes)
Linguistic - (what we say / use of language)
There are two levels to each of these skills:
Simple - (takes seconds to minutes to identify)
Complex - (takes sustained observation to identify)
So in all there are a total of six categories of skills.
Simple Behavioural
Simple Cognitive
Simple Linguistic
Complex Behavioural
Complex Cognitive
Complex Linguistic
It is obviously easier and quicker to model the simple skills than the more difficult complex skills. So it makes sense to model the simple skills first. Remember that it may be necessary to chunk down these skills into their sub-skills, particularly the complex ones.
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