The author comments on the original article "The Cinderella of psychology: The neglect of motor control in the science of mental life and behavior," by D. A. Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum draws attention to the study of motor control and evaluates seven possible explanations for why the topic has been relatively neglected. The point of this comment is that…

Behavior analysts have offered accounts of the behavior involved in matching to sample and delayed matching to sample. But until recently have not offered a behavioral analysis of generalized matching-to-sample. The concept of joint control, however, seems especially suited to such an analysis The present study used a joint-control procedure to…

In the present study, joint-control training was applied when teaching manded selection responses to children with autism. Four vocal children with autism participated in the first experiment, two males (ages seven and eight) and two females (ages seven and nine). The results showed that it was only after object-word naming was trained under joint…

This paper reviews research based on the psychological autopsy (PA) method applied to the study of suicide. It evidences the presence of a number of methodological problems. Shortcomings concern sampling biases in the selection of control subjects, confounding influences of extraneous variables, and reliability of the assessment instruments. The…

Paired associates and serial list memory are typically investigated separately. An "isolation principle" (J. B. Caplan, 2005) was proposed to explain behavior in both paradigms by using a single model, in which serial list and paired associates memory differ only in how isolated pairs of items are from interference from other studied items. In…

Classrooms serving students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are complex environments that include multiple interactions such as those between (a) students and teachers, (b) students and peers, and (c) temporally distant or concurrent classroom-setting factors and subsequent behavioral episodes. As a result, the…

Objectives: An extensive literature base exists for behavioral parent training; however, few studies have focused on training direct care staff at group home and residential facilities for children. This study was conducted to determine whether a behavioral staff training program consisting of classroom training and in-home feedback would improve…

A study examined a series of seven experiments conducted in order to identify more precisely the hierarchical structure of the concept emotion, which presumably extended from superordinate to basic and finally subordinate levels. Subjects, 1,052 persons in all, participated in any of seven different experiments: (1) listing basic level categories…

Author's aim in this article was to present humanistic or "third-force" psychology as a perspective from which to consider political events and the way we study them in the social sciences. (Author/RK)

Behavior analysis has matured as a discipline such that there are now over a dozen peer-reviewed journals devoted exclusively to its subject matter. In recent years, researchers have published with increasing frequency a number of bibliometric analyses in which journal content has been quantified and used as an index of research and publication…

The study reported here evaluates the effectiveness of performing psychotherapy by means of written communication between client and psychotherapist--a technique that could make assistance available to individuals who are isolated from traditional methods of psychological treatment by psychological or physical barriers. (Author)

This study was designed to determine whether infants actually play with crib toys, and whether the toys affect the duration or onset of sleep. (CS)

Ten wilderness survival program participants responded to questionnaires before starting the program, immediately afterwards, and several months later; responses were compared to those of twenty-five nonparticipants. Results suggested that participants were enthusiastic upon returning and showed some longer-term benefits. Interest patterns and…

Eye Movements were used as a criterion of observing responses in a vigilance task. Time on watch and signal rates similarly affected both eye-movement rates and percentage of detections. Observing rate may account for detection data, and may be a more stable measure of vigilance than detection rate, especially when very few signals occur. This…

Two studies were done in which the subjects applied punishment contingencies to themselves for smoking cigarettes. After Baseline in Experiment I, the subject set a limit of 15 cigarettes for himself. If he exceeded the level, he was to tear a dollar bill into pieces for every additional cigarette he smoked. Every five days the criterion was…