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…

Previous research has found that swim stress during a classical conditioning trial attenuates conditioned taste aversion (CTA). In the current study, rats were used to examine the effects of inescapable swim stress on the habituation of neophobia to a flavored solution and reacquisition of an extinguished conditioned taste aversion. In Experiment…

Reinforcing an alternative response in the same context as a target response reduces the rate of occurrence but increases the persistence of that target response. Applied researchers who use such techniques to decrease the rate of a target problem behavior risk inadvertently increasing the persistence of the same problem behavior. Behavioral…

If judiciously applied, cognitive terminology can encourage further examination of phenomena in useful ways that may not otherwise be studied. I give examples of 3 phenomena, the study of which have benefitted from a cognitive perspective. For the first, transitive inference behavior, it appears that non-cognitive accounts cannot satisfactorily…

The effects of reinforcer magnitude and response requirement on pigeons' say choices in an experimental homologue of human say-do correspondence were assessed in two experiments. The procedure was similar to a conditional discrimination procedure except the pigeons chose both a sample stimulus (the say component) and a comparison stimulus that…

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…

Basic research with pigeons on behavioral momentum suggests that differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) can increase the resistance of target behavior to change. This finding suggests that clinical applications of DRA may inadvertently increase the persistence of target behavior even as it decreases its frequency. We conducted…

Chen, Lakshminarayanan, and Santos (2006) claim to show in three choice experiments that monkeys react rationally to price and wealth shocks, but, when faced with gambles, display hallmark, human-like biases that include loss aversion. We present three experiments with monkeys and humans consistent with a reinterpretation of their data that…

This study tested the effects of post-session wheel running on within-session changes in operant responding. Lever-pressing by six rats was reinforced by a food pellet under a continuous reinforcement (CRF) schedule in 30-min sessions. Two different flavored food pellets were used as reinforcers. In the wheel conditions, 30-min operant-sessions…

In Experiment 1, rats were trained on a discrimination in which one occasion setter, A, signaled that one cue (conditioned stimulus, CS), x, would be followed by one outcome, p (unconditioned stimulus, US), and a second CS, y, by a different outcome, q (x [right arrow] p and y [right arrow] q); a second occasion setter, B signalled the reverse…

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…

Article reviews evidence on the effects of contrast and matching, that these effects are related, and that both effects are reactions to the same independent variable. (Author/RK)

Effects of repeated administration of cocaine to animals behaving under operant contingencies have depended on when the drug is given. Moderate doses given presession have generally led to a decrease in the drug's effect, an outcome usually referred to as tolerance. When these same doses have been given after sessions, the usual result has been no…

Two experiments examined pigeons' postponement of a signaled extinction period, or timeout (TO), from an ongoing schedule of response-dependent food delivery. A concurrent-operant procedure was used in which responses on one (food) key produced food according to a variable-interval schedule and responses on a second (postponement) key delayed the…

The effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the resistance to change of operant behavior have not been examined. In addition, the effects of rate of conditioned reinforcement on the rate of observing have not been adequately examined. In two experiments, a multiple schedule of observing-response procedures was used to examine the effects…