The target paper by Barba (2012) raises issues that were the focus of the author's first two publications on operant variability. The author will describe the main findings in those papers and then discuss Barba's specific arguments. Barba has argued against the operant nature of variability. (Contains 2 figures.)

To vicariously condition either fear or a positive emotional response, films in which a 5-year-old male model manifested one or the other response were shown to nursery school children. The measure of vicarious conditioning was the children's rate of response to the conditioned stimulus and a controlled stimulus in several operant situations after…

Based on the assumption that inferential statistics can make the operant conditioner more sensitive to possible significant relationships, regressions models were developed to test the statistical significance between slopes and Y intercepts of the experimental and control group subjects. These results were then compared to the traditional operant…