Twenty years ago Michael (1993) refined and extended the concept of the conditioned establishing operation (CEO). With this paper he updated his previous treatment of the topic (Michael, 1982) by providing terminological refinements and conceptually clear descriptions of the reflexive and transitive CEOs. In the 20 years since the publication of…

Observational learning is an important area in the field of psychology and behavior science more generally. Given this, it is essential that behavior analysts articulate a sound theory of how behavior change occurs through observation. This paper begins with an overview of seminal research in the area of observational learning, followed by a…

Amid the novel terms and original analyses in Skinner's "Verbal Behavior", the importance of his discussion of multiple control is easily missed, but multiple control of verbal responses is the rule rather than the exception. In this paper we summarize and illustrate Skinner's analysis of multiple control and introduce the terms "convergent…

The discrimination of the onset of joint control is an important interpretive tool in explaining matching behavior and other complex phenomena, but the difficulty of getting experimental control of all relevant variables stands in the way of a definitive experiment. The studies in the present issue of "The Analysis of Verbal Behavior" illustrate…

In this article, the author shares an anecdote demonstrating one-trial learning which is commonplace in human behavior. The demonstration suggests that under some conditions, when people hear someone speak, their behavior changes, even in the absence of an apparent contingency of reinforcement, but only if they have in their repertoire verbal…

Drash and Tudor describe six sets of reinforcement contingencies which may be present in the environments of some children eventually diagnosed with autism and suggest that these contingencies account for the etiology of "autistic" behaviors. Nevertheless, merely observing such contingencies in the environments of these children is insufficient to…