Roger T. Kelleher, behavior analyst

Roger T. Kelleher, rightly known as one of the foremost contributors to behavioral pharmacology, also made many important contributions to the experimental analysis of behavior. He participated significantly in the development of the discipline, through both his research and his editorial contributions to thisjournal. This article summarizes his contributions to the field of behavior analysis. His most significant empirical and conceptual contributions to behavior analysis came in two domains-conditioned reinforcement and the power of schedules of reinforcement. His accomplishments in these two domains still serve as principal foundations for modern research and theory.     

Montrose M. Wolf (1935-2004)

Montrose Madison Wolf, who discovered the reinforcing power of adult attention for children and based on that discovery invented and named the nonviolent parenting procedure time-out; who discovered that absent speech and social development could be artificially created with operant conditioning techniques; who first engineered a token economy into a useful motivational system; who invented the good behavior game; who orchestrated the massive research program that developed and refined the Teaching-Family Model as a residential treatment solution for delinquent development; who reinvented field observation, repeated measurement, and single-subject research methods; who introduced and named the concept of social validity; and who led the founding of the discipline of problem-solving real-world research called applied behavior analysis, died of Huntington's disease on March 19, 2004, at his home in Lawrence, Kansas.     

The school psychologist as a behavior management consultant in a special class setting

The efficacy of the consultant's role in dealing with problems in large special classes and the value of introducing operant techniques through untrained teachers were investigated in the present study. Twenty-two out-of-control boys in a special class for emotionally disturbed children were brought under the control of a number of token reinforcement systems with a resultant increase in task-oriented behavior and academic productivity. With teachers acting as observer-recorders and behavior change agents the school psychologist was able to minimize his role as a consultant with considerable success.     

The significance and future of functional analysis methodologies

Iwata, Dorsey, Slifer, Bauman, and Richman (1982) presented the first comprehensive and standardized methodology for identifying operant functions of aberrant behavior. This essay discusses the significance functional analysis has had for applied behavior analysis. The methodology has lessened the field's reliance on default technologies and promoted analysis of environment-behavior interactions maintaining target responses as the basis for selecting treatments. It has also contributed to the integration of basic and applied research. Future directions for this research are suggested.     

Tactical contingencies in the experimental analysis of reinforcement and operant classes

In his “Tactics of Scientific Research” (1960), his work on avoidance, his discovery of equivalence classes and his cautions on applications of coercion, Murray Sidman created high standards for behavior analytic research. I illustrate his influence in the context of three examples he might have characterized as pilot studies. Each examined trial N+1 response probabilities depending on whether trial N responding had produced a reinforcer. Differentially reinforced interresponse times, keys pecked in arbitrary matching, and two-key response sequences provided no robust evidence that reinforcing some response property on trial N raises the probability of responding with that property on trial N+1. These negative findings shed light on the nature of operant classes and on the relation of reinforcers to the responses that produced them. Through selection, reinforcers create operant classes and engender variations of the responses within those classes; operant classes are held together by common contingencies. Sidman extended our understanding of operant classes by expanding them to include equivalence relations.     

Pioneer profiles: An interview with Don Baer

This is an interview with Donald M. Baer. The interview includes discussion of his education at the University of Chicago, his work at the University of Washington and the University of Kansas, events that influenced his career, and his perspectives on various issues. His accomplishments include developing the standards for the practice of applied behavior analysis, creating an empirical research base for language training for people with severe disabilities, initiating procedures that led to generalized imitation, formulating experimental designs for applied behavioral research, and devising procedures for generalization and maintenance of behavior.     

Steps and pips in the history of the cumulative recorder

From its inception in the 1930s until very recent times, the cumulative recorder was the most widely used measurement instrument in the experimental analysis of behavior. It was an essential instrument in the discovery and analysis of schedules of reinforcement, providing the first real-time analysis of operant response rates and patterns. This review traces the evolution of the cumulative recorder from Skinner's early modified kymographs through various models developed by Skinner and his colleagues to its perfection in the 1950s, and then into the 1960s when it proliferated as different scientific instrument companies began marketing their own models of the cumulative recorder. With the rise of digital computers, the demise of the cumulative recorder as a scientific instrument was inevitable; however, the value of the cumulative record as a monitoring device to assess schedule control of behavior continues. The cumulative recorder remains, along with the operant conditioning chamber, an icon of Skinner's approach to psychology.     

Adverse effects of differential parental attention

In two independent parent training projects (Kansas and Mississippi), mothers of deviant young children were observed to follow almost all child behaviors with attention. The mothers were then trained to use differential attention procedures to increase their child's appropriate behaviors and to decrease deviant behaviors. Contrary to expectations, the differential attention procedure produced substantial increases in deviant behavior for four of the children. This adverse effect was maintained over many sessions and was replicated in single organism, reversal designs. A fifth child showed no change. A sixth child showed some improvement. However, this effect was not recovered in a second application of differential attention, and the child became worse. The results underline the importance of subject generality in applied behavior analysis and strongly suggest that service programs using operant techniques must carefully evaluate their effects on behavior.     

Murray Sidman: A life of giving

Murray Sidman's contributions to the science of behavior span many areas including avoidance behavior, coercion and its effects, stimulus control, errorless learning, programmed learning, stimulus equivalence, and single-subject methodology. He was also a great mentor to many and helped shape the discipline we now call behavior analysis. In this memoriam, we briefly highlight his scholarly legacy and share some personal anecdotes.     

Response latency as a measure of behavior in the assessment of elopement

Elopement is a common form of problem behavior but is relatively underrepresented in the functional analysis literature. One barrier to assessing elopement experimentally is the need to retrieve the subject following an instance of elopement. This retrieval confounds programmed session contingencies when the goal is to obtain repeated measurement of free‐operant behavior. The current study evaluated latency to elopement as an alternative to free‐operant measurement. We first compared response latency to allocation in 5‐min sessions and then measured latency alone in a trial‐based format. The identified reinforcers matched across both data analysis modalities in the session‐based assessments, and the trial‐based functional analysis showed a significant time savings in identifying the function of behavior over a session‐based assessment. Results indicated that elopement serves idiosyncratic social functions in young children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and that a latency‐based assessment saves time while yielding equally clear results.     

A daughter's retrospective of B. F. Skinner

This paper describes characteristic behaviors of my father, B. F. Skinner, using family documents and my own recollections. Early contingencies in his upbringing strengthened his love of building things and his independence in discovering how the world works. Those skills, combined with a lack of supervision in graduate school, set the stage for his discovery of the operant. He did not stop with laboratory research. He extended his discovery of how consequences select behavior into education and the design of cultural practices. As well as solving society's problems, my father was always concerned with improving his own behavior. Some of the contingencies he set up to maximize his own productivity are described.     

Effects of reinforcement schedule on facilitation of operant extinction by chlordiazepoxide

Learning and memory are central topics in behavioral neuroscience, and inbred mice strains are widely investigated. However, operant conditioning techniques are not as extensively used in this field as they should be, given the effectiveness of the methodology of the experimental analysis of behavior. In the present study, male C57B1/6 mice, widely used as background for transgenic studies, were trained to lever press on discrete-trial fixed-ratio 5 or fixed-interval (11 s or 31 s) schedules of food reinforcement and then exposed to 15 extinction sessions following vehicle or chlordiazepoxide injections (15 mg/kg i.p., administered either prior to all extinction sessions, or prior to the final 10 extinction sessions). Extinction of operant behavior was facilitated by drug administration following training on either schedule, but this facilitation only occurred once a number of extinction sessions had taken place. The extinction process proceeded more rapidly following fixed-interval training. Resistance to extinction was equally high following training with either schedule type, and was reduced by drug administration in both cases. These phenomena were evident in individual cumulative records and in analyses of group data. Results are interpreted in terms of phenomena of operant extinction identified in Skinner's (1938) Behavior of Organisms, and by behavioral momentum theory. These procedures could be used to extend the contribution of operant conditioning to contemporary behavioral neuroscience.     

The etymology of basic concepts in the experimental analysis of behavior

The origins of many of the basic concepts used in the experimental analysis of behavior can be traced to Pavlov's (1927/1960) discussion of unconditional and conditional reflexes in the dog, but often with substantial changes in meaning (e.g., stimulus, response, and reinforcement). Other terms were added by Skinner (1938/1991) to describe his data on the rate of lever pressing in the rat (e.g., operant conditioning, conditioned reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and response induction and differentiation) and key pecking in the pigeon (shaping). The concept of drive, however, has largely disappeared from the current literature.     

Multiple‐stimulus preference assessments: a comparison of free‐operant and restricted‐operant formats

We compared free‐operant and restricted‐operant multiple‐stimulus preference assessments with three children diagnosed with mental retardation. The methods produced comparable results, although the free‐operant assessment identified fewer potential reinforcers than the restricted‐operant assessment. The highest‐ and lowest‐ranked stimuli from both methods were subsequently evaluated in a concurrent‐operants reinforcer assessment. All participants engaged in behavior that resulted in access to the highest‐ranked stimuli the majority of the time, thus validating both preference assessment methods as effective in identifying reinforcers. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

REVIEW OF THE BOOK SNIFFY THE VIRTUAL RAT PRO VERSION 2.0

Sniffy the Virtual Rat Pro Version 2.0 is the most recent update to the Sniffy the Rat program modules. It has an extensive set of simulations related to Pavlovian and operant conditioning. Many of the standard conditioning paradigms and phenomena are contained within this program. Pavlovian effects such as blocking, overshadowing, and stimulus competition are demonstrated in the data output. Operant manipulations allow shaping the behavior of the virtual rat, observing cumulative records of interval and ratio schedules, as well as conducting operant discrimination procedures. In both Pavlovian and operant paradigms, one can generate histograms that predict the degree to which various stimuli control the virtual rat's behavior. On‐screen presentations may keep most users interested, but working with the generated data files sometimes can prove difficult. Overall, this program has a strong potential for facilitating the instruction in undergraduate conditioning courses, serving as an addendum to traditional undergraduate conditioning laboratories and as a supplement to the use of live animals.     

An Analysis of Feedback from a Behavior Analytic Perspective

The present paper presents a systematic analysis from a behavior analytic perspective of procedures termed feedback. Although feedback procedures are widely reported in the discipline of psychology, including in the field of behavior analysis, feedback is neither consistently defined nor analyzed. Feedback is frequently treated as a principle of behavior; however, its effects are rarely analyzed in terms of well-established principles of learning and behavior analysis. On the assumption that effectiveness of feedback procedures would be enhanced when their use is informed by these principles, we sought to provide a conceptually systematic account of feedback effects in terms of operant conditioning principles. In the first comprehensive review of this type, we compare feedback procedures with those of well-defined operant procedures. We also compare the functional relations that have been observed between parameters of consequence delivery and behavior under both feedback and operant procedures. The similarities observed in the preceding analyses suggest that processes revealed in operant conditioning procedures are sufficient to explain the phenomena observed in studies on feedback.     

Operant renewal of desirable behavior in a simulated workplace: A translational model

Organizational settings are replete with changing stimulus contexts and contingencies, which makes relapse a particularly relevant framework for understanding the ways in which controlling stimuli influence employee responding. The purpose of the current study was to develop a translational model to assess renewal of desirable behavior in a simulated workplace with neurotypical adults. Experiment 1 assessed renewal of desirable behavior using a computerized check processing task. Experiment 2 extended the findings and the translational utility of the experimental arrangement to implementation of a behavior-analytic teaching procedure. Results across both experiments demonstrated renewal of desirable behavior. Overall, the current methodology and findings extend the human operant literature on renewal and demonstrate a translational model that brings together operant renewal and organizational behavior management.     

Eliminating nail-biting by the habit reversal procedure

Fingernail-biting is prevalent among children and adults alike. About 43% of children bite their nails during the puberty ages (Wechsler, 1931); 25% of college students are nail-biters (Coleman and McCalley, 1948), and 10% of adults bite their nails (Pennington, 1945).A variety of treatments including negative practice, operant procedures and psychotherapy have been used in treating nail-biting but no single treatment has been generally effective in eliminating nail-biting. Smith (1957) using negative practice reported that 21 of 57 (39%) of his nail-biting clients were cured. 9 improved and 27 (47%) were unimproved. Bucher (1968) reported that 13 of 20 (65%) college students stopped nail-biting by using a self-administered operant shock procedure. However, he reported many relapses after the withdrawal of shock for nail-biting. No evaluation of psychoanalytic treatment for nail-biting appears to have been made.