Blog Posts in Educational

The distinction between contingency governed (or “shaped”) and rule-governed behavior is an old saw for most behavior analysts. Like most dichotomies, this one doesn’t hold up under careful analysis.

Bad or Possibly Redeemable Label?A procedure in which each target response postpones a scheduled reinforcer most often is described in both the basic and applied research and practice literature as a

I, like many people of my age, am gravely concerned about getting infecte

For the past six months I have had the pleasure of livin

 When it

The following article appeared recently in the New York Times. It describes how police in Mumbai, India, undertook an experiment to control the excessive blowing of car horns by drivers caught in what must be nightmarish traffic in that largest of Indian cities.

The A-B-A, or reversal, design is one of the most recognized, single-case experimental designs in both research and practice (although in practice, the return to baseline is followed by a return to the treatment, or B, phase). In non-experimental settings, A-B, or non-reversal designs, occur often.

“Why did Johnny just throw the mother of all temper tantrums?” is a question many of you have asked and been asked, in some form or another. The response to this question, under scrutiny, may have been different. The perpetrator may have been different. The circumstances may have been different.

Every behavior analyst (hopefully) has learned that ours is a science of behavior. We do not learn that ours is a science of the individual or a science of the person. Why is that? Are we not, however, concerned with people, you may ask? Are we not concerned with the human condition?

A few days into the “home-isolation” policy during the Coronavirus outbreak of 2020, David, one of my colleagues at the Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas made a smart suggestion:

As behavior analysts, we are specifically trained to find functional alternatives to ongoing issues. We are frequently called on when a child or an adult becomes overly aggressive, either towards themselves or others.

Suddenly, an observable response pattern—reading—is turned into an internal state.