Questions regarding the generalizability of results from educational experiments have been at the forefront of methods development over the past five years. This work has focused on methods for estimating the effect of an intervention in a well-defined inference population (e.g., Tipton, 2013; O'Muircheartaigh and Hedges, 2014); methods for…

Background: Cigarette and alcohol use are common among youth. We examined sources of cigarettes and alcohol among youth who were current cigarette and alcohol users. Methods: We analyzed nationally representative data from the 2009 and 2011 national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys--biennial, school-based surveys of high school students in the United…

An important aspect of goal-directed action selection is differentiating between actions that are more or less likely to be reinforced. With repeated performance or psychostimulant exposure, however, actions can assume stimulus-elicited--or "habitual"--qualities that are resistant to change. We show that selective knockdown of prelimbic…

Rachlin's teleological behaviorism eliminates the first-person ontology of conscious experience by identifying mental states with extended patterns of behavior, and thereby maintains the materialist ontology of science. An alternate view, informed by brain-based and externalist philosophies of mind, is shown also to maintain the materialist…

An issue of "The Behavior Analyst" contained an article by Critchfield (2011), entitled "Interesting Times: Practice, Science, and Professional Associations in Behavior Analysis," about a rift between the field's scientists and practitioners. Critchfield observed that the science and practice of behavior analysis are subject to different…

Does modeling matter? We address this question by providing a broad survey of the computational models of cognitive development that have been proposed and studied over the last three decades. We begin by noting the advantages and limitations of computational models. We then describe four key dimensions across which models of development can be…

The present study examined proximal and distal barriers and supports within the Swedish service system that may affect implementation of early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for children with autism. A case study approach with roots in ethnography was chosen to explore this issue. Two preschools exemplifying "high quality…

In his article, the author claimed that studies of operant variability that use a lag-"n" or threshold procedure and measure the obtained variability through the change in U value fail to provide direct evidence that variability is an operant dimension of behavior. To do so, he adopted Catania's (1973) concept of the operant, which takes the…

The four commentaries all make excellent points; they are all fair and serve to complement the target article. Because they are also quite diverse, it makes more sense to respond to them individually rather than topically. This article presents the author's response to the comments by McDowell (2012), Schlinger (2012), Hutchison (2012), and Wojcik…

In his scholarly and thoughtful article, "Interesting Times: Practice, Science, and Professional Associations in Behavior Analysis," Critchfield (2011) discussed the science-practice frictions to be expected in any professional organization that attempts to combine these interests. He suggested that the Association for Behavior Analysis…

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and behavior analysts are key members of school-based teams that serve children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Behavior analysts approach assessment and intervention through the lens of applied behavior analysis (ABA). ABA-based interventions have been found effective for targeting skills across…

Reliability of direct observation outcomes ensures the results are consistent, dependable, and trustworthy. Typically, reliability of direct observation measurement approaches is assessed using interobserver agreement (IOA) and the calculation of observer agreement (e.g., percentage of agreement). However, IOA does not address intraobserver…

The purpose of this study was to develop a model for measuring experimental design ability based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during biological inquiry. More specifically, the researchers developed an experimental design task that measures experimental design ability. Using the developed experimental design task, they measured…

This study compared service use for families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who live in rural vs. non-rural areas. Participants were 415 caregivers of children with ASD, of whom 101 (23.7%) lived in rural areas of a southeastern state. Participants completed an online survey regarding access and quality of different services. For…

The advent of the Internet and the ever-increasing capacity of storage media have made it easy to store, deliver, and share enormous volumes of data, leading to a proliferation of information on the Web, in online libraries, on news wires, and almost everywhere in our daily lives. Since our ability to process and absorb this information remains…