Allen Neuringer: Behavioral Variation

Allen Neuringer’s Insightful Research on Behavioral Variation  The Aubrey Daniels Institute is pleased to recognize the outstanding contributions of Allen Neuringer, Professor Emeritus at Reed…

3D Printing, Laser Cutting, and Behavior Analysis

Note from the Institute: Dr. Rogelio Escobar is a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. He is an expert in not only the experimental analysis of behavior, but also…

Extinction 102

The first commentary in this series of three on extinction addressed some basic observations about extinction. As with many things in life, extinction is a little more complicated than it may appear…

“Mind the Gap”: Inconsistencies between Rules and Consequences

Anglophiles will recognize the first part of the title as being borrowed from the London Underground (subway, for the uninitiated). It is an instruction admonishing users to be aware of the space…

Extinction 101

Extinction has two meanings in behavior analysis. It first refers to the procedure of withholding or eliminating reinforcement. A technical aside is that it also can refer to the procedure of,…

Over-Instructing

As noted in the previous Behavior Watch commentary, rules, a.k.a. instructions, are valuable in establishing and maintaining behavior wherever people live and work. Rules are created to both…

When Rule-Following Is and Is Not Negotiable

  It is hard to overstate the value of instructions, or, more broadly, rules, in working with both things and other people. They often are an efficient way of establishing new behavior without…

The Ethics of Reinforcement

Let’s start with the premise that reinforcement is as much a part of the “natural order of things” as is Boyle’s law, Newton’s second law of thermodynamics, or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.…

Why Reinforcement Isn’t Bribery

Reinforcement is something quite different from bribery, despite the occasional equating of the two in some quarters. Because reinforcement is so important in behavior analysis both theoretically and…

Replication and Another Misrepresentation of Behavior Analysis

No sooner do I write about how neat it is that behavioral psychology has built-in mechanisms of replication in many of its investigations than journalist Andrew Ferguson confuses, indeed, seems to…

Office Worker Health is Under Attack!

Institute’s Note: Our guest commentator, Nick Green, received his M.S. in organizational behavior management at the Florida Institute of Technology and is now a doctoral student in psychology at the…

There’s No Such Thing as “Human Nature”

Well, of course there is, but “human nature” is not what many seem to think that it is. Human nature is not a thing (see my commentary on “things”) that exists somewhere at our “very human core” that…

Zombies and Resurgence: A Halloween Analysis

Zombies are known as the living dead, creatures that arise from their graves, eat human flesh, and do other disgusting stuff just to stay semi-alive. Even though this is a well-documented phenomenon…

Spooked

This being the Halloween season and all, it seems appropriate to bring up the subject of being spooked. Someone is said to be spooked by a circumstance or situation when they exhibit fear. The person…

Research Replication in Behavior Analysis

Research replication is a core tenant of science. Thus, the surprising recent report that only 60 psychology research studies out of 100 attempts were replicated has raised general concerns about “…

The Naked Truth about Treating Behavior Problems

Institute’s Note: Our guest commentator, Tyler Nighbor, is a doctoral student in behavior analysis at West Virginia University. He earned his M.A. degree in behavior analysis from the University of…

Stimulus Control and the Avoidance of Evils

When a child learns that asking his mother for money results in getting that valued item and that asking his father does not, it isn’t hard to guess who he’s gonna ask. In out lingo, we say that Mom…

Leadership Behavior: Focused Listening

Institute Note: Jamie Daniels is an experienced behavioral consultant who an was a senior member of Aubrey Daniels International for many years, co-authoring with Aubrey Daniels, The Measure of…