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The behavior of punishing. When behavior is reinforced it becomes more likely the next time, and the next, often in an ever-escalating spiral.

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.

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.

 When it comes to reinforcement, it is difficult to say.

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.

“A lot of people get queasy when thinking about this; we’re considering an individual with an established set of preferences and related utility for reinforcers associated with those preferences, and then we want to start manipulating those preferences. Well, some people think that’s not a good idea—preferences are what preferences are.”

“For a lot of the populations that we work with, it is difficult to extract very clear, very useful information on what sort of things might function as reinforcement for them.” Dr. Iser DeLeon, PhD, BCBA Abstract 

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.”

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.

Part 3 - Issues of Multicultural Diversity in the Ethical Practice of Applied Behavior Analysis with Dr. Danielle DeLong

As behavior analysts, we constantly try to determine why people do what they do. Often this is in a clinical context. Why does Johnny tantrum? Why does Jane flop during transitions?

This month on Operant Innovations - Thought Leaders, we are back with Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz as he answers the questions "Where do you see the field going?" and/or "Where would he like to see the field go?" as he dives into The Constructional Approach and asks us to continue to better practices and our field!

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

“Identifying reinforcers is absolutely essential when we are working on acquisition. In order to teach someone a new behavior, we need to be able to reinforce that behavior when it occurs.” Dr. Meagan Gregory, BCBA  Abstract 

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.