Procedural fidelity refers to the degree to which procedures for an assessment or intervention (i.e., independent variables) are implemented consistent with the prescribed protocols. Procedural fidelity is an important factor in demonstrating the internal validity of an experiment and clinical treatments. Previous reviews evaluating the inclusion…

Rules/verbal behavior governing applied behavior scientists since Skinner have achieved great success resolving challenges experienced by individuals with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. We extend prior work by Dixon, Belisle, Rehfeldt, and Root (2018, "Why We Are Still Not Acting to Save the World: The Upward Challenge of…

The language of behavior analysis is precise in the sense that it focuses attention on functional relations between behavior and the environment that are extended in time. However, to non-behavior analysts, behavior-analytic terms and explanations are difficult to understand and awkward sounding. Evidence suggests that this has had deleterious…

"In the late 1950's, Jack Michael, a bright but irritating young psychology instructor, moved from the Universities of Kansas to Houston to Arizona State. Along the way he befriended two nontraditional students, protected them through their Ph.D. programs, and turned them loose on the world: Teodoro Ayllon…and Montrose Wolf…" (Risley,…

It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the focus of systematic research rather than mere discussion, and describe five studies that illustrate how publicly available lists of word-emotion ratings can be used to estimate the responses…

Learning Skinner's (1957) verbal behavior taxonomy requires extensive study and practice. Thus, novel classroom exercises might serve this goal. The present manuscript describes a classroom exercise in which two students analyzed Lady Gaga's song "Applause" in terms of its metaphorical arrangements. Through the exercise, students…

The purpose of the current paper is to describe the impact of applied behaviour analysis on language treatment for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) diagnoses. Specifically, this paper will describe Skinner's theory of verbal behaviour and its contributions to evidence-based treatments for communication deficits among individuals with…