Behavior Analysis’s Not-So-Secret Agent
Thursday, 23 January 2020
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal Psychologically speaking, an agent is an entity responsible for a course of action. Some psychological agents with which many of us are familiar are “personality,” “conscience,” “self,” and “stress.” Each of these agents is said to be responsible for behavior: “she behaves that way because she has an outgoing personality” (the
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A Signal Experience
Thursday, 16 January 2020
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal I recently found myself caught up in a great discussion with two colleagues, both of whom I highly respect, concerning a particular term that we see in many places in our science. The discussion centered around whether or not it is good Behavior-ese to describe a discriminative stimulus as signaling the availability of
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Immedium and Procrastinium: A Fable in Waiting
Tuesday, 07 January 2020
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal Once upon a time, there were twins named Immedium and Procrastinium. As their names might suggest, the two approached tasks very differently. When a deadline was assigned, Procrastinium’s first reaction was to do something else, while Immedium started on it and soon got it done, PDQ, kazaam, what’s next? As
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Goodbye 2019, Hello 2020
Wednesday, 01 January 2020
Blogger: Kelly Therrien The end of the year can be a busy time of hustle and bustle as you wrap up work and manage the end of year holiday celebrations. With another year coming to a close, it is the perfect time to reflect and set your sights for 2020. Reflect on 2019 – Think
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Stay the Course?
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal Persistence is a topic of folk wisdom and behavioral science. Admiral Farragut’s “Damn the torpedoes; full speed ahead!” or sayings like “Never say die” all point to staying the course, even when it’s rough. Behavioral psychologists have, for a very long time, been interested in the circumstances under which behavior does
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What’s Free About the Free Operant?
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
Guest Blogger: Dr. Andy Lattal There is another question to be answered before considering the question in the title of this commentary: “What is a free operant, anyway?” It is an expression that sometimes appears in talks and articles, but it isn’t as commonly used as it once was. Free operant originally described an experimental arrangement in which
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Treating Dangerous Behavior
Tuesday, 03 December 2019
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal Dangerous behavior simply can’t be ignored. The person engaging in it is going to either hurt herself or someone else if it continues. Saying that is easy, knowing what to do about it is a rabbit hole. At what point does the behavior become more than “disruptive” and cross the “dangerous”
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Behavior in Translation
Tuesday, 26 November 2019
Blogger: Dr. Andy Lattal Have you ever heard a paper presented at a conference or elsewhere about research with rats or pigeons, and it seems like the findings might be helpful in working with your clients? But then you wonder, is there really a connection between the two? How do people know if a basic
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Psychology Spectrum Disorder (PSD)
Tuesday, 19 November 2019
Blogger: Dr. Andy Lattal In a famous article entitled “Are Theories of Learning Necessary,” published in 1950, Skinner examined the broad spectrum, that is, psychology, and presented it to the Midwestern Psychological Association. He proposed that approaches at either end of the psychology spectrum were, from his vantage, somewhat disordered. They remain so today. At one end were theories that
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Florida Institute of Technology BACB Certification: Which Path Should You Choose?
Friday, 08 November 2019
Blogger: Kristin Myers-Kemp, ABA Online, College of Psychology & Liberal Arts, Florida Tech, Executive Vice President of ABA Technologies, Inc. There are a variety of paths that individuals take to enter the field of behavior analysis. A few take a direct route by entering a graduate program in behavior analysis after undergrad. Still, many pursue
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Pragmatism and Playing Well with Others
Tuesday, 01 October 2019
Guest Blogger: Andy Lattal Many applied behavior analysts find themselves in a different world from that in which they were trained. Most are trained by other behavior analysts in programs or even departments where the principal worldview is that of behavior analysis. Fast forward a couple of years (or more) and many of those same
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Planning and Leading Effective Meetings
Tuesday, 24 September 2019
Guest Blogger: Jackie Noto Effectively planning and leading meetings are beneficial for the success of employees and the company alike. Research has shown that productive meetings can have a significant return on investment for a company; however, few have received instruction on how best to plan or lead meetings. With the high levels of time
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