A survey was conducted of 406 elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers to determine their understanding, acceptance, and use of the principle of operant conditioning. The treatment of data was by percent and chi square analysis primarily according to sex, experience, degree, and position. Subjects reported that a) they believed that the…

The present experiments investigated the effects of several classical conditioning manipulations on the performance of young children in an instrumental discrimination learning situation. Two predictions from general conditioning-extinction theory were tested: (1) acquisition of an instrumental response to a stimulus for a positive reinforcer in a…

Two studies were done to examine aggressive behavior in humans. In Experiment One, adults working on a plunger pulling task could receive a 3.5 ma shock at 75% probability every two minutes. The shock was unrelated to their plunger pulling behavior. Subjects could press a toggle switch to deliver electric shock to the experimenter, who was in the…

An attempt is made to determine whether a behaviorally-oriented conditioning approach, "covert sensitization," is more effective in the treatment of alcoholism than the commonly used problem-solving approach, and whether female counselors employing covert sensitization were more successful than males. Thirty-two subjects selected on…

The influence of spatial features of the counseling environment on conditioning of self-reference statements was examined in two studies conducted at disparate geographical locations. The variable of room size was found to be the most significant variable in both studies. Smaller rooms tended to inhibit the conditioning process. (Author)

This case study demonstrates the value of conceptualizing functional somatic disorders as operants. The subject, an adolescent girl, diagnosed as having a "hysterical neurosis," manifested the symptoms of incessant coughing and mutism. The cough and mutism were treated by extinction and shaping, respectively. Positive results were obtained.…

The Babkin reflex is a reaction to the simultaneous pressing of the palms of the hands of the infant. (Authors)

A review of Behavioral Sociology: The Experimental Analysis of Social Process (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969) compiled by Robert L. Burgess and Don Bushell, Jr. (DB)

A conditioned taste aversion experiment examined the role of the retention-interval context (between conditioning and test stages) on the modulation of long-delay latent inhibition (LI). A super-LI effect was obtained only when the animals spent the retention interval in a context that was different from that of preexposure, conditioning, and…

Effects of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure on the subsequent acquisition of mand operants were investigated. An attempt was made to shape novel sounds that emerged through the pairing procedure into a mand. Six children, aged two to five years, with moderate to severe language and communication delays, participated. Two conditions were used…

Papini and Pellegrini (Papini, M. R., & Pellegrini, S. "Scaling relative incentive value in consummatory behavior." "Learning and Motivation", in press) observed that, within limits, the level of consummatory responding of rats exposed to incentive downshifts in the concentration of sucrose solutions was similar when the ratio of test/training…