We assessed problem and appropriate behavior in the natural environment from a matching perspective. Problem and appropriate behavior were conceptualized as concurrently available responses, the occurrence of which was thought to be determined by the relative rates or durations of reinforcement. We also assessed whether response allocation could…

The determinants of generalized imitation of manual gestures were investigated in 1- to 2-year-old infants. Eleven infants were first trained eight baseline matching relations; then, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors. Next, in a generalized imitation test in which matching…

The matching law was used to analyze whether the proportion of shots taken from two- or three-point range would match the proportional reinforcement rates produced by those shots when the reinforcement rate of three-point shooting was changed. Rule changes in 1994 and 1997 altered the distance of the three-point line in the National Basketball…

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 studies of function transformation, participants initially are taught to match stimuli in the presence of a contextual cue, X; the stimuli to be matched bear some formal relation to each other, for example, a relation of opposition or difference. In a second phase, the participants are taught to match arbitrary stimuli (say, A and B) in the…

Pigeons' choice in concurrent chains can adapt to rapidly changing contingencies. Grace, Bragason, and McLean (2003) found that relative initial-link response rate was sensitive to the immediacy ratio in the current session when one of the terminal-link fixed-interval schedules was changed daily according to a pseudorandom binary sequence (e.g.,…

Five adult humans were tested for emergent conditional discriminations under rapid-responding contingencies. During four-comparison matching-to-sample baseline training (AB and AC), limited-hold contingencies for responding to samples and comparisons were gradually restricted to the shortest duration consistent with at least 95% accuracy and no…

AS ONE PHASE OF RESEARCH IN APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY, YAQUI INDIAN AND MEXICAN MEN IN ARIZONA HAVE PARTICIPATED FOR THREE YEARS IN EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAMED COURSES IN BASIC ENGLISH AND ARITHMETIC. THE STUDENTS HAD PREVIOUSLY HAD AN AVERAGE OF FIVE YEARS' FORMAL SCHOOLING. A BATTERY OF STANDARD OBJECTIVE TESTS WAS GIVEN TO MEASURE IQ AND ABILITY TO READ…