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Generalists and Specialists
Some children from an early age appear to know the direction they wish to take and set out to make it happen. Others are less focused and may indeed engage in reinforcer sampling. Both groups of children need parental encouragement and support.
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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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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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Kudos for One of the Home Team
… significant contributions to OBM over many years and in many roles. For almost 10 of those years, she was the Director of Children’s Services for a Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center across a four-county region i n West Virginia . In … and prison systems, providing behavioral training and coaching to prison guards, training parents raising high-risk children living in conditions of poverty, illiteracy, and potential (and actual) abuse. At Valley, she and other colleagues … significant contributions to OBM over many years and in many roles. For almost 10 of those years, she was the Director of Children’s Services for a Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center across a four-county region i n West Virginia . In …
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Getting to the Cause of Things
“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.
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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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Obsessing Over OCD in these Days of COVID-19
The current hygienic practices of many of us blurring the lines between normal and OCD, I imagine that it also might be disconcerting to someone suffering from OCD to see personal behavior patterns for which there were at least mild societal and social punishers become not only acceptable but also necessary.
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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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Rules Rule, or Do They?
Rules often are derived to guide behavior under certain, often well-specified conditions.
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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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