Skinner's definition of verbal behavior, with its brief and refined versions, has recently become a point of controversy among behavior analysts. Some of the arguments presented in this controversy might be based on a misreading of Skinner's (1957a) writings. An examination of Skinner's correspondence with editors of scientific journals shows his…

Presents Michael J. Meaney as one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions (2012). Michael J. Meaney has taken the phenomenon of "handling" of newborn rats and opened a new area of investigation that has given new meaning to epigenetics via his work demonstrating transgenerational…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. The 2012 winner is Friederike Range for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the complex social minds of nonhuman animals. Through ingenious experimental approaches,…

Presents a short biography of one of the winners of the American Psychological Association's Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology. The 2012 winner is Laurie R. Santos for creative and insightful investigations of cognition across a broad range of species and psychological domains, illuminating cognitive…

Choice may be defined as the allocation of behavior among activities. Since all activities take up time, choice is conveniently thought of as the allocation of time among activities, even if activities like pecking are most easily measured by counting. Since dynamics refers to change through time, the dynamics of choice refers to change of…

Delay discounting is the decline in the present value of a reward with delay to its receipt. Across a variety of species, populations, and reward types, value declines hyperbolically with delay. Value declines steeply with shorter delays, but more shallowly with longer delays. Quantitative modeling provides precise measures to characterize the…

Since 1992 C. J. Rogers has lived with wolves and studied their societies at Raised by Wolves, a licensed, nonprofit research sanctuary situated in a high valley of New Mexico's Zuni Mountains, not far from the Four Corners. Rogers, who has taught at Northeastern Illinois University and Western New Mexico University, holds doctorates in both…

This article highlights a core lesson that has been used in a number of Lincoln Park Zoo educational programs. The lesson teaches students to conduct an ethological, or animal behavior, study on a bird. This study can be implemented in a variety of outdoor settings, including a park, schoolyard, or zoo. Using an ethogram, students will practice…

Psychology texts often cite the work of Marian and Keller Breland and their business, Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), to demonstrate operant conditioning and the "misbehavior of organisms" from an evolutionary perspective. Now available on the Internet at the official IQ Zoo website (http://www3.uca.edu/iqzoo/), the artifacts of ABE's work, in…

The contributions of Joseph V. Brady to behavioral pharmacology span more than 50 years and range from early studies using the Estes-Skinner ("conditioned emotional response") procedure to examine drug effects and various physiological processes in experimental animals to the implementation of mobile methadone treatment services and to small group…

Four bonobos, seven gorillas, and six orangutans were presented with two small rectangular boards on a platform. One of the boards had a piece of food under it so that it acquired an inclined orientation whereas the other remained flat on the platform. Subjects preferentially selected the inclined board. In another experiment, subjects were…

The article discusses two important influences of B. F. Skinner, and later workers in the behavior-analytic tradition, on the study of animal timing. The first influence is methodological, and is traced from the invention of schedules imposing temporal constraints or periodicities on animals in "The Behavior of Organisms," through the rate…

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…

The notion that non-human animals are capable of episodic memory is highly controversial. Here, we review recent behavioral work from our laboratory showing that the fundamental features of episodic memory can be observed in rats and that, as in humans, this capacity relies on the hippocampus. We also discuss electrophysiological evidence, from…

Neuroscientific approaches to drug addiction traditionally have been based on the premise that addiction is a process that results from brain changes that in turn result from chronic administration of drugs of abuse. An alternative approach views drug addiction as a behavioral disorder in which drugs function as preeminent reinforcers. Although…