How research in behavioral pharmacology informs behavioral science

Behavioral pharmacology is a maturing science that has made significant contributions to the study of drug effects on behavior, especially in the domain of drug-behavior interactions. Less appreciated is that research in behavioral pharmacology can have, and has had, implications for the experimental analysis of behavior, especially its conceptualizations and theory. In this article, I outline three general strategies in behavioral pharmacology research that have been employed to increase understanding of behavioral processes. Examples are provided of the general characteristics of the strategies and of implications of previous research for behavior theory. Behavior analysis will advance as its theories are challenged.     

New directions in behavioral process research: Implications for social psychology

Current theories of social judgment and social decision making emphasize dynamic process perspectives, but the methods used to investigate these processes have been relatively static and limited in scope. This paper describes a set of evolving procedures designed to capture process data and discusses how this approach may be used to study various psychological phenomena, including control schemata, attribution theory, attitude formation, impression formation, implicit personality theory, verbal report accuracy, postdecision dissonance reduction, attraction, choice behavior, time constraints, gender stereotypes, agenda effects, and task feedback effects.     

Methodological observations on applied behavioral science

Policy makers and administrators have become frustrated with single-subject designs because these designs appear unable, at first blush, to provide them with essential information that they can use in planning or change at the organizational or institutional level of management. Practitioners have become frustrated with prior exclusive reliance on traditional group experimental designs because they fail to provide useful information for conducting therapy or delivering services. The following article by Professor Gingerich makes a large and important contribution toward mitigating these two apparently divergent needs. Gingerich describes how meta-analysis can provide useful information for managers through aggregations of data obtained from single-subject, time-series designs. The article also discusses the use of meta-analysis of time-series data as a basis for improving the quality of scientific investigations.     

Digital filters in behavioral research

Behavioral control is almost always less than perfect. Rate of response is rarely as constant as it could be even when the greatest care is given to experimental procedures. Experimenters should always attempt to identify the causes of variation. Some fluctuations in response rate will be random, i.e., sometimes positive and sometimes negative, usually small but occasionally large. Digital filters are objective methods for reducing or eliminating such unsystematic “noise” components while preserving the systematic changes in response rate under study. Digital filters function in a manner that is strictly analogous to electronic filters. The major purpose of this technical note is to describe digital filters and to provide an example of their usage.     

Interface systems in behavioral research

The methods and criteria to be used for the design of a general interface system are evaluated in the light of the number, variety, and variability of the data points in behavioral experimentation. A simple and flexible interface scheme is presented that should satisfy the needs of a behavioral research laboratory.     

Organizing intelligence: Development of behavioral science and the research based model of business education

Conventional history of the predominant, research‐based model of business education (RBM) traces its origins to programs initiated by the Ford Foundation after World War II. This paper maps the elite network responsible for developing behavioral science and the Ford Foundation agenda. Archival records of the actions taken by central nodes in the network permit identification of the original vision statement for the model. Analysis also permits tracking progress toward realizing that vision over several decades. Behavioral science was married to business education from the earliest stages of development. The RBM was a fundamental promise made by advocates for social science funding. Appraisals of the model and recommendations for reform must address its full history, not the partial, distorted view that is the conventional account. Implications of this more complete history for business education and for behavioral theory are considered. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Functional research and cognitive‐process research in behavioural science: An unequal but firmly connected pair

Drawing on illustrative examples of the functional and cognitive psychology in contemporary research, the present article emphasizes the primacy of functional relationships, which provide the fundament for all attempts to uncover invisible cognitive processes. Cognitive research is not only inherently more difficult and much more ambitious than functional research. It also suffers from several home‐made problems, such as unwarranted inferences from model fitting, the mediation‐analysis cult and the failure to take environmental influences into account. However, despite the primacy of functional psychology and the problems associated with the ambitious goals of cognitive research, the two partners in this unequal pair are firmly connected and jointly responsible for the most impressive examples of progress in behavioural science.     

Mediation of artifacts in behavioral research

An integrative artifact model is developed from a combination of role theory and McGuire's information-processing theory of social influence. The main extraneous sources of systematic error are reduced to three conjoint mediators, the end product of which determines the likelihood that a subject will positively or negatively react to demand characteristics. Conditions thought to affect the mediating variables are noted, and the practical advantage of this combinatory view is discussed as it applies to estimating the inferential validity of experimental findings in psychology.     

Part 1 behavioral science scores: after a summer psychiatric research clerkship: failure to replicate.

The present study did not replicate Holmes,' et al.'s (1987) findings that medical students who participated in a summer psychiatric research clerkship scored statistically significantly higher than matched controls on the Behavioral Science portion of the National Board of Medical Examiners' Part I Exam. Group ns in this replication were 39 each.