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:

Measurement of performance and performance appraisals strike fear in the hearts of employees and supervisors alike.

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.

 

It’s COVID-19, and everyone is talking about new shows to binge-watch or new hobbies to start. How nice.

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

Ever heard the expression “closing the barn door after the cows are out?”  It basically means coming up with a solution that is

The Future just got a Restart on the Meaning of UnpredictableIn the Spring of 2020, the world is engaged in very large behavioral changes that we hope will lead to positive outcomes.

Punishment, by definition, reduces, weakens, or eliminates (depending on one’s theoretical bias) the responses on which it depends. But punishment also reinforces other behavior, notably that of the one administering the punishment.

“Wash your hands for as l

In an old experiment, Boren (1966) placed two Rhesus monkeys in separate operant chambers so that