Behavior Analysis

I was in Ellicott City, Maryland a while back, visiting my daughter and her family on the night when 21 cars of an 80-car train hauling coal from near my home in West Virginia to Baltimore derailed.…

I am not sure how to introduce the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain. I don’t want to say it is about “introverts” because, as a professional behavior analyst and psychologist, I know the dangers to self…

The 19th century author Rudyard Kipling spoke of meeting triumph and disaster and treating both those imposters just the same. Indeed Kipling’s twin imposters both can result from going with one’s…

Most people probably are familiar with the duck version of the title of this commentary. In 1950, the famous mathematician regarded as the “father of digital computing,” Alan Turing, mused about the…

A story on NPR’s All Things Considered (October 30, 2012) caught my attention. The gist of the story, about supercomputers, was that the 30 billion dollar a year video game industry was driving the…

On a cold winter’s night, or a hot, humid afternoon, nothing is more reassuring than knowing that my handy-dandy automatic thermostat is on the job keeping my house, and me, at a balmy, even, and…

This book was an enjoyable read. The authors’ choice of topics, use of data, and integration of analyses of both biological and cultural evolutionary principles were extremely valuable and kept me…

I just read another “drives me crazy” NYT article.  This is not unusual as Times writers often write about behavior, based on the research of business and economics professors.  However,…

We often are reminded that we live in the “information age.” Ours is the period of human history when our decisions are guided by data. Data typically are collected by observation; scientific data…

The year 2013 marked the centennial of the publication of one of psychology’s most important papers. In 1913, John Broaddus Watson wrote “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist” (The…

I wrote this as the Pentagon released its decision to allow women to participate in combat operations, opening a host of new opportunities, and dangers, for half of America’s population. One issue…

So, after his death, it was ‘discovered’ that a superstar of the BBC was a not-so-closeted pedophile for most of his long career. It’s not as if there were not a thousand clues in everything he did…

“Why is the sky blue, Daddy?” How many of us asked our Moms or Dads that one? “Why did she do THAT?” How many times have we asked that question as children AND as adults? Explanation is the Holy…

A pigeon landed on the balcony of our 15th floor apartment tonight. In my response to my wife’s musing as to why it keeps coming back to our specific balcony, I casually replied “habit.” In so saying…

Ever read an article in the local paper that gives fairly categorical advice about how to exercise, eat, sleep, relax, or whatever?   I read them all the time, in everything from the most…

We’re a combination of levers; that’s how we move.  Paul Vanderburgh, U. of Dayton Physiologist; Quoted in NY Times, November 5, 2012 (“Why Women Can’t Do Pull Ups”)   Is man a machine?…

“What we need to do is to start work upon psychology, making behavior, not consciousness, the objective point of our attack.” –  John B. Watson, Psychology 1913 In this the 100th anniversary…

Be Careful What You Read : Can it be that only some people like positive reinforcement? The older I get, the more half-truths and unsupported declarations bug me.  Nowhere is this more evident…