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What Does it Mean to Say Ours is “A Science of Behavior?"
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? Are we not humanists?
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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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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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Pragmatism and Playing Well with Others
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 people find themselves in multidisciplinary settings, working with people who not only have different specialty areas—for example, medicine, rehabilitation therapy, social work—but, more importantly, a totally different way of looking at problems, both conceptually and methodologically
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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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Rules Rule, or Do They?
Rules often are derived to guide behavior under certain, often well-specified conditions.
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Are Bigger Reinforcers Better?
When it comes to reinforcement, it is difficult to say.
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Stay the Course?
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 or does not persist.
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Time for a Timeout from Timeouts?
In a recent article published in the Washington Post entitled, “Timeouts are a dated and ineffective parenting strategy. So what’s a good alternative?” the author of the article answers the question of the present blog affirmatively. She states, “I never used timeouts with my older kids and I don’t plan to rely on it when the baby I’ll give birth to in a few weeks is old enough to go into full-blown tantrum mode.”
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The Term DRO
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 differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior
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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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