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

The Dead Man's Test plays an important role in the development of behavior analysis.

In behavior analysis, the dead man's test is a very interesting test to use when determining the to use when determining the behaviors to be assessed in the course of observation.

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

This test has had its pros and cons, but apart from them it is still a curious way of establishing which behaviors to evaluate when doing research or analyzing the behavior of an individual. Let's go into a little more detail.

What is the Dead Man's Test?

The Dead Man's Test is an idea that has been used to try to distinguish between objectively measurable and observable behavior and that which is not. This test has been used on many occasions as a criterion to establish which behaviors should be analyzed when evaluating the behavior of an individual, be it a person or an animal, within the framework of behavior analysis. Its main use is to determine whether or not a given action can be considered as a behavior..

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

Application in the world of education

Let's try to better understand this curious idea by associating it with the reason for its creation. The Dead Man's Test was conceptualized at a time when educational research had a serious problem when it came to analyzing student behavior. Many teachers were using very lax criteria to determine the ideal behavior of their students.These criteria included something that could be called "nonbehavior".

Among the aspects that teachers evaluated were, for example, how long their students were quiet or whether they did not throw a tantrum. While assessing these "behaviors" was convenient, it did not provide meaningful data on whether they were actually learning, nor could they be considered learning-promoting behaviors, as would assessing how engaged students were on task or how motivated they were to ask questions of the teacher.

These two behaviors, i.e., not throwing a tantrum and sitting still at the desk, would not pass the dead man's test, would not pass the dead man's test because, basically, a dead person can "do them.". Dead bodies sit still and don't make a fuss, so wanting the children in a classroom to behave like that would be the same as wanting them to behave as if they were dead.

Example of application of this test

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

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

"Can a dead person fail when it comes to having to comply with a demand?"

The answer to this question is clearly yes. The dead person does nothing, so he will fail every demand we ask of him. Considering that this definition of failure to comply does not pass the dead man's test, it becomes necessary to consider a new behavior to evaluate.

In this particular case, instead of talking about non-compliance, we could evaluate the individual's refusal of the task that has been asked of him/her, defining "refusal" as the act of responding with a resounding no to a given request. Here we can ask ourselves the following question:

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

The answer in this case is obviously no. A dead person has neither the ability to speak nor to actively refuse anything, whereupon the refusal is a behavior because he has passed the dead man's test.

Weaknesses of this test

Although at first it was quite widely accepted as a good criterion to clearly establish the line that separated behavior from that which could not be considered behavior, today it is not considered a good criterion to establish the line that separated behavior from that which could not be considered behavior, today it is not considered a clear-cut test of what is behavior and what is not.. Moreover, although it was conceptualized during the 1960s, it does not have much empirical evidence to date.

Added to this, we should not ignore the circular type of reasoning behind the test. The dead man test associates behavior with being alive while anything a dead man can do is automatically considered as non-behavior, therefore, its premise is that being alive is synonymous with behavior and not being alive is synonymous with non-behavior.

This brings us to the current conceptualization of what is, 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 to the fact that the behavior to be analyzed must be formulated in a clear, objective and concise manner and, certainly, there are some things that the dead can "do" that could be considered as behavior taking into account these parameters and it would be in that case in which the dead man test could be useful.

When doing any kind of behavioral analysis one should choose behaviors that are socially significant and in which it is clear that the individual is involved, and the latter can be checked by making use of the dead man's test. But, in addition to this, any behavior analyst must make sure that the behaviors 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's test, it is necessary to consider another behavior to be evaluated.