Skinner described behavior analysis as the field of values and purpose. However, he defined these concepts in terms of a history of reinforcement and failed to specify whether and how human and nonhuman values might differ. Human values have been seen as theoretically central within a number of nonbehavioral traditions in psychology, including…

Throughout its history, laboratory research in the experimental analysis of behavior has been successful in elucidating and clarifying basic learning principles and processes in both humans and nonhumans. In parallel, applied behavior analysis has shown how fundamental behavior-analytic principles and procedures can be employed to promote…

This paper has two purposes; the first is to reintroduce Goldiamond's constructional approach to clinical behavior analysis and to the field of behavior analysis as a whole, which, unfortunately, remains largely unaware of his nonlinear functional analysis and its implications. The approach is not simply a set of clinical techniques; instead it…

Behavior analysis is a field dedicated to the development and application of behavioral principles to the understanding and modification of the psychological actions of organisms. As such, behavior analysis was committed from the beginning to a comprehensive account of behavior, stretching from animal learning to complex human behavior. Despite…

Several published reports have now documented the clinical effectiveness of motivational interviewing (MI). Despite its effectiveness, there are no generally accepted or empirically supported theoretical accounts of its effects. The theoretical accounts that do exist are mentalistic, descriptive, and not based on empirically derived behavioral…

Despite the central status of avoidance in explaining the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders, surprisingly little behavioral research has been conducted on human avoidance. In the present paper, first we provide a brief review of the empirical literature on avoidance. Next, we describe the implications of research on derived relational…

Cognitive bias refers to a well-established finding that individuals who suffer from certain clinical problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, etc.) selectively attend to, remember, and interpret events relevant to their condition. Although a body of literature exists that has tried to examine this…

In this article, I argue that a class of religious behaviors exists that is induced, for prepared organisms, by specific stimuli that are experienced according to a response-independent schedule. Like other schedule-induced behaviors, the members of this class serve as minimal units out of which functional behavior may arise. In this way, there…

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life. (Tolstoy, 1894)…

Whether explicitly acknowledged or not, behavior-analytic principles are at the heart of most, if not all, empirically supported therapies. However, the change process in psychotherapy is only now being rigorously studied. Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP; Kohlenberg & Tsai, 1991; Tsai et al., 2009) explicitly identifies behavioral-change…

Sidney W. Bijou is among the founders of behavior analysis, but the record of his contributions is incomplete. It has not systematically described his contributions beyond his tenure at the University of Washington (1948-1965). The purpose of this paper is to describe his contributions over the course of the next decade--his years at the…

The undermining effect of extrinsic reward on intrinsic motivation remains unproven. The key unresolved issues are construct invalidity (all four definitions are unproved and two are illogical); measurement unreliability (the free-choice measure requires unreliable, subjective judgments to infer intrinsic motivation); inadequate experimental…