Constraint-induced (CI) therapy is a term given to a family of efficacious neurorehabilitation treatments including to date: upper extremity CI movement therapy, lower extremity CI movement therapy, pediatric CI therapy, and CI aphasia therapy. The purpose of this article is to outline the behavior analysis origins of CI therapy and the ways in…

A series of experiments on operant variability by Neuringer and colleagues (e.g., Neuringer, 1986, 2002; Page & Neuringer, 1985) have been repeatedly cited as showing that behavioral variability can be reinforced by making reinforcement contingent on it. They showed that the degree of variability in pigeons' eight-peck sequences, as measured by U…

Humans often make seemingly irrational choices in situations of conflict between a particular smaller-sooner reinforcer and a more abstract, temporally extended, but larger reinforcer. In two experiments, the extent to which the availability of commitment responses--self-imposed restrictions on future choices--might improve self-control in such…

Now spanning 31 years, the "Journal of Organizational Behavior Management" ("JOBM") continues to generate new conceptual ideas and high-quality research in the field of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM). However, it is a bit disheartening to realize that the growth (in terms of number of practitioners and researchers) and expected impact of…

The lead article in this issue by VanStelle et al. (2012) presents a meta-analytic review of "Journal of Organizational Behavior Management" ("JOBM") publications during its third decade and is a follow up to two previous reviews presenting similar analyses for the first (Balcazar, Shupert, Daniels, Mawhinney, & Hopkins, 1989) and second (Nolan,…

Studies have evaluated a range of interventions to treat food selectivity in children with autism and related developmental disabilities. The high-probability instructional sequence is one intervention with variable results in this area. We evaluated the effectiveness of a high-probability sequence using 3 presentations of a preferred food on…

Standardized effect size measures typically employed in behavioral and social sciences research in the multi-group case (e.g., [eta][superscript 2], f[superscript 2]) evaluate between-group variability in terms of either total or within-group variability, such as variance or standard deviation--that is, measures of dispersion about the mean. In…

It has been argued that to increase societal impact behavioral researchers must do more to address problems of obvious practical importance. The basic science wing of behavior analysis has been described as especially detached from this goal, but is it really necessary that basic science demonstrate social relevance? If so, why hasn't this…

Three experiments with rat subjects examined resurgence of an extinguished instrumental response using the procedure introduced by Epstein (1983) with pigeons. There were three phases: (1) initial acquisition of pressing on a lever (L1) for pellet reward, (2) extinction of L1, and (3) a test session in which a second lever (L2) was inserted,…

Memory deficits have been shown to hamper decision making in a number of populations. In two experiments, participants were required to select one of three alternatives that varied in reinforcer amount and delay, and the effect of a concurrent task on a behavioral choice task that involved making either an impulsive, self-controlled, or optimal…

A go/no-go procedure with compound stimuli typically establishes emergent behavior that parallels in structure and typical outcome that of conventional tests for symmetric, transitive, and equivalence relations in normally capable adults. The present study employed a go/no-go compound stimulus procedure with pigeons. During training, pecks to…

Applied behavior analysts have been helping people to enhance the quality of their lives for decades. Its characteristics as described by Baer, Wolf, and Risley continue to guide efforts to help clients and their significant others. Yet, this knowledge often languishes unused and unappreciated. Distortions and misrepresentations of applied…

In our increasingly multicultural and multilingual world, an understanding of how we perceive language, dialects, and linguistic variation and the relationship these features have to language attitude, plays an increasingly important role in shaping social behavior and policy. This study, situated at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience,…

The purpose of this literature review is to provide an overview of the research on sleep problems in autism spectrum disorder. Topics explored are the prevalence of sleep problems, the importance of studying sleep problems, as well as the objective and subjective measures used to measure sleep. Research on the relationships between sleep problems…

One common application of structural equation modeling (SEM) involves expressing and empirically investigating causal explanations. Nonetheless, several aspects of causal explanation that have an impact on behavioral science methodology remain poorly understood. It remains unclear whether applications of SEM should attempt to provide complete…