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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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What’s Free About the Free Operant?
There is another question to be answered before considering the question in the title of this commentary: “What is a free operant, anyway?” It is an expression that sometimes appears in talks and articles, but it isn’t as common
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Out of Thin Air?
In speaking of the origins of operant behavior, Skinner famously observed that “[o]perant conditioning shapes behavior as a sculptor shapes a lump of clay.
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Professional Development through Animal Research
Behavior analysis today gets most of its mainstream recognition for the work being done in applied settings, referred to as applied behavior analysis (ABA). The progress of behavior analytic applications has been important for the dissemination of the science and even better for the clients across the world who require behavioral services.
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Staff Training That Clicks
Respondent ConditioningAuditory stimuli used for changing behavior dates back to the 189
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The Parallels between ABA and OBM
Applied Behavior Analysis is more than just a bag of tricks known as Discrete Trial Training, the VB-MAPP, and token systems. However, when we begin to conceptualize our science as such, we lose the fundamentals upon which we found them. We rely too heavily on them in practice, and we fail to individualize our services.
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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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9 Things You Didn’t Know About Generalization
Generalization is one of those areas in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) that is critical to the success of any child, student, and adult with autism or autism spectrum disorder. The concept of generalization is introduced in any college academic course when learning about how the scientific principles of behavior analysis apply to changes in human behavior.
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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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Keep Pressing the Lever
Behavior analysis has made a name for itself in the areas of developmental disabilities, mental health, and autism. Though less known in other fields, behavior analysis has a history of thriving in business, healthcare, education, animal training, and climate change. Where ever behavior is occurring, behavior analysts are found putting the tried-and-true tools of our science to work.
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Kudos for One of the Home Team
… While a Ph.D. student, she studied with faculty very interested in the then-developing field of OBM, among the first operant programs to offer a specialty in behavioral systems, influencing the rest of her career. Her dissertation was on … While a Ph.D. student, she studied with faculty very interested in the then-developing field of OBM, among the first operant programs to offer a specialty in behavioral systems, influencing the rest of her career. Her dissertation was on …
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How Can We Improve Our Dissemination Skills in Behavior Analysis?
by Megan Galban
To individuals who are unfamiliar with or are not fluent in behavior-analytic terminology, the language can seem displeasing and off-putting. Many technical terms used in the science have a very different meaning than their everyday use and may even have a negative connotation.
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Honk More—Wait More
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.
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Q&A ABA in Spain with Dr. Javier Virues Ortega
Intro:¿Qué es el análisis aplicado de Conducta? ¿Es una ciencia independiente?
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Antecedents Have Last Names
In the latter years of his life, Dr. Jose Martinez, the founder of ABA Technologies. Inc., and the driving force behind the creation of the School of Behavior Analysis at Florida Tech, was heard to utter the title of this blog in every one of his presentations relating to the influence of antecedent conditions on behavior, “Antecedents have last names.”
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