I just wrote a psychology quiz and there was a "good at" question that I did not answer correctly. I would like to ask the thread's help on this one.
The question was:
Is the following a behavior or a summary label: "A person was [good at tuning the violin]."
If the "good at" phrase is interpreted as an action, then it is a behavior. If the "good at" phrase is interpreted as a personal characteristic, then it is a summary label. An online thesaurus gave the synonym of "to have a particular physical or mental skill" for "good at doing something". It is very unclear to me whether "good at tuning violins" actually refers to a specific, instance or instances or tuning violins or as a description of a person skill in tuning violins.
My psychology profs often seem to want to be English profs. The correct answer to the question hinges on whether or not [good at] should be understood as an active or a passive phrase. The question had to be phrased in nominal English, so whatever is considered to be correct by those highly proficient in English usage is the answer that should be accepted as correct.
{The behaviorist tradition in psychology makes a distinction between objectively measurable responses (behavior) and subjectively applied labels. So for a behaviorist, someone with autism (label) would be described as a person with autistic behaviors (behavior). The rationale here is that behavior can be changed while using operant technology, while a label is a description that refers to an internal state of a person that is assumed unchangeable. The danger is that when people are labeled, others can respond to them according to the label and not according to how other people are actually responding.}