Behaviors that are appropriate, inappropriate, or a combination of both can be linked together in a behavior chain. When the contingencies for one response change (e.g., reinforcement is withheld for the last response in the chain; the last response is reinforced even if it occurs without the other responses in the chain) or the environmental…

Disagreements and conflicts in families with disruptive children often reflect rigid patterns of behavior that have become overlearned and automatized with repeated practice. These patterns are mindless: They are performed with little or no awareness and are highly resistant to change. This article introduces a new, mindfulness-based model of…

Although reinforcement often leads to repetitive, even stereotyped responding, that is not a necessary outcome. When it depends on variations, reinforcement results in responding that is diverse, novel, indeed unpredictable, with distributions sometimes approaching those of a random process. This article reviews evidence for the powerful and…

Evidence about memory for order information comes from a number of different methodologies: human cognition, patient studies, neuroimaging studies, and animal lesion and behavioral studies. The present article discusses (a) evidence that order and item memory are separable; (b) proposed mechanisms for order memory (interitem associations, direct…

Awareness of optimal behaviour states of children with profound intellectual disability has been reported in the literature as a potentially useful tool for planning intervention within this population. Some arguments have been raised, however, which question the reliability and validity of previously published work on behaviour state analysis.…

This rejoinder discusses some common points raised in the commentaries of this special issue of JOBM, including (1) different definitions of positive and negative, (2) use of the terms reinforcement and establishing operation, and (3) concerns over the abandonment of behavior analysis for mentalistic research. In addition, a people-based approach…

Analysis of binary choice behavior in iterated tasks with immediate feedback reveals robust deviations from maximization that can be described as indications of 3 effects: (a) a payoff variability effect, in which high payoff variability seems to move choice behavior toward random choice; (b) underweighting of rare events, in which alternatives…

The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were separately summarized for people's beliefs (perceptions)…

The colorful misbehavior of college students trumps considerations of college students' relationships with their families. With broad coverage of behaviors such as binge drinking, on-line gambling, and risky sexual behavior, the image of the college student is one of a person worrying about what time the bar opens, rather than problems at home.…

In this article, the author discusses "The Et Tu Brute Complex." More specifically, this phenomenon occurs when a person, instead of supporting and befriending himself, orally condemns himself in front of other people and becomes his own worst enemy. This is a form of compulsive self-hatred. Most often, the victim of this complex is unaware of the…

The developmental origins of respect and disrespect among American children are seen in early childhood and in the transition to the school years. This chapter presents the first published research to focus on the development of both respect and disrespect as distinct concepts. The findings are examined in the context of both sociocultural and…

The purpose of the present research is to compare early adolescents beliefs about parental and friend jurisdiction over relational aggression to their beliefs about parental and friend jurisdiction over physical aggression and personal behaviors. One hundred three adolescents (X age = 12 years, 11 months; SD = 12.46 months) are individually…

A meta-analysis (k of conditions = 128; N = 4,598) examined the influence of factors present at the time an attitude is formed on the degree to which this attitude guides future behavior. The findings indicated that attitudes correlated with a future behavior more strongly when they were easy to recall (accessible) and stable over time. Because of…

There is a robust association between prenatal smoking and disruptive behavior disorders, but little is known about the emergence of such behaviors in early development. The association of prenatal smoking and hypothesized behavioral precursors to disruptive behavior in toddlers (N=93) was tested. Exposed toddlers demonstrated atypical behavioral…

I analyze the process by which we react cognitively to information that contradicts our culturally held sentiments in the context of affect control theory. When bizarre, unanticipated events come to our attention and we have no opportunity to act so as to alter them, we must reidentify at least one event component: the actor, the behavior, or the…