Signaled active avoidance (SigAA) is the key experimental procedure for studying the acquisition of instrumental responses toward conditioned threat cues. Traditional analytic approaches (e.g., general linear model) often obfuscate important individual differences, although individual differences in learned responses characterize both animal and…

Behavior analysis has exploited conceptual tools whose experimental validity has been amply demonstrated, but their relevance to large-scale and fine-grained behavioral phenomena remains uncertain, because the experimental analysis of these domains faces formidable obstacles of measurement and control. In this essay I suggest that, at least at the…

Contact or touch detectors in which a subject acts as a switch between two metal surfaces have proven more popular and arguably more useful for recording responses than capacitance switches, photocell detectors, and force detectors. Components for touch detectors circuits are inexpensive and, except for some special purpose designs, can be easily…

The current article outlines a behavior-analytic approach to the study of so-called implicit attitudes and cognition. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), the conceptual basis of which was derived from relational frame theory, is offered as a methodology that may be used in the experimental analysis of implicit attitudes and…

Research emanated from the need to find a situation for experimenting with children for an extended number of sessions. (Author)

Children who observed a very generous adult model sharing, later shared more than those who observed a very stingy model. The effects of vicarious reinforcement on the amount shared, delivered by either the experimenter or the model alone, were also demonstrated. (Authors)

Results indicate that there is no simple relationship between type of observer present and children's aggressive responding following exposure to an aggressive model. (Authors)

This paper attempts to clarify some of the misunderstandings which have arisen in relation to a behavior analysis of child development. Five frequent criticisms of the approach are discussed. The first concerns the confusion of behavior analysis with learning theories. Although many of the concepts of behavior analysis arose from learning…

Main purpose of this study is to demonstrate a control procedure which allows the researcher to investigate behaviors which are lawfully related to charity stimuli and assess the influence of uncontrolled variables in charity situations. (Author)

Effects of response guided experimentation in applied behavior analysis on Type I error rates are explored. Data from T. A. Matyas and K. M. Greenwood (1990) suggest that, when visual inspection is combined with response guided experimentation, Type I error rates can be as high as 25%. (SLD)

Stevens postulated that we can use the responses of a participant in a ratio scaling experiment directly to construct a psychophysical function representing the participant's sensations. Although Stevens' methods of constructing measurement scales are widely used in the behavioral sciences, the problem of which scale type is appropriate to…

Provides evidence that subjects who have experienced deception in experiments exhibit altered behavior and/or attitudes in subsequent experiments. Bibliography, tables, and graph. (RW)