Sounds like the author is trying revive Behaviorism.

It also brings to mind a question: what sort of practice does the paper itself represent? Although it is possible to live by numbly walking through a set of practices, the evidence that we also reason is abundant. For instance, someone wrote that paper, and someone else is reacting to its ideas.

Even the child in the dialog is an agent capable of many other reactions than the one showcased. And some of them could be driven by explicit reasoning via mental models rather than intuitive reaction from an acquired pattern recognition system.