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Psychology Spectrum Disorder (PSD)
In a famous article entitled “Are Theories of Learning Necessary,” published in 1950, Skinner
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Happiness
Happiness pervades modern life. It is a major topic of talk-show interviews, best-selling books, psychotherapeutic interactions, everyday gossip (“How can she really be happy with him?”), and personal ruminations. Poets, cartoonists, and novelists have done as good a job as psychologists in understanding it. I personally have always preferred Charles Shultz’s (the creator of the comic strip “Peanuts”) rather structural definition of happiness as “a warm puppy.”
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As Useful as a Third Ear
When I was a graduate student in clinical psychology, lo those many years ago, I was as
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A Self-ish Behavior Analysis?
I just googled the word “self”: 3,540,000,000 hits, more or less. That’s three-point five billion, just to be clear. Wow. What a word. What a construct. Whoever came up with the idea of self? (In his recent book, Flesh in the Age of Reason, which I highly recommend, Roy Porter suggested it might have been the 16th-century French philosopher Déscartes.)
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Operant Behavior and Snowflakes
Sitting here at my desk on a cold, snowy morning watching the snowflakes gently descend to blanket the landscape outside my window (such descriptions reveal why I am a behavior analyst and not a poet), reminds me of the operant (another reminder, too, of why I am not a poet). The operant is one of our most important concepts. Operants are classes of responses that have a similar effect on the environment. That effect can be to operate something that allows their measurement (like a child’s block-stacking or a pigeon’s key peck) or to produce a reinforcer or punisher.
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When in Doubt, Make a Cumulative Record
The origins of cumulative frequency plots, as they were known, date back to at least a couple of centuries ago, and now appear frequently in popular media.
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What is Social Behavior?
“What constitutes social behavior?” The general conception is that social interaction involves two organisms in some form of interaction with one another. Learn more about this behavior from our experts here!
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Complex Behavior
When behavior is described as complex, it could mean “I don’t understand it” and the reason “I don’t understand it” is because there are many variables that contribute to it, making it difficult to isolate the causes of the behavior.
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Invasive Behavioral Events: Lessons from Invasive Species
Sometimes when invasive species appear, the ecosystem assimilates it without destroying extant species, but at least equally as often, there is a clear winner and a clear loser. The same is true of behavioral systems.
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Behavior in Translation
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?
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Dissing Ability
Ability becomes a trait, a universal, unchangeable something the person (or pigeon) carries from situation to situation.
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Behavior Analysis’s Not-So-Secret Agent
It is the difference between a science focused on the self or personality as an initiating agent of action and a science focused on behavior-environment relations.
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Kudos for One of the Home Team
… prominent behavioral psychologists as Jon Krapfl, Ed Callahan, Don Hake, and Rob Hawkins, she earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from WVU, during a time of intense exploration of concepts related to radical behaviorism and the importance of … prominent behavioral psychologists as Jon Krapfl, Ed Callahan, Don Hake, and Rob Hawkins, she earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from WVU, during a time of intense exploration of concepts related to radical behaviorism and the importance of …
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Immedium and Procrastinium: A Fable in Waiting
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?
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