Oper nts
2022 - I
ISSN 2476-0293
LEARNING
IN THE LAB:
live animals vs. computer simulation
REMEMBERING JERRY ULMAN (1938-2021)
science corner
A student sits down in front of a computer, and completes a selfpaced instructional module. Has the student learned anything?
If the student completes all of the components of the frame
correctly and completely, that is often the assumption made by the
instructor. This is a consideration of the form of the responding,
rather than the function, though. This distinction between form
and function is one that has been emphasized by Skinner in
Science and Human Behavior, and of course underlies much of what
is written in The Technology of Teaching. If the student is engaging
in selection-based responses (e.g., multiple choice) that they can
keep trying until they answer all correctly, then the function may
not including learning, but rather testing what is already known,
or simply persistence at a task with matching-to-sample that may
not be based on intraverbal responses. If, however, the student
is engaging in generative, intraverbal textual responses such as
those required in the fill-in frames in Holland and Skinner’s The
Analysis of Behavior, Pear’s Computer-Aided PSI, or other similar
technologies, then the instructor has set up a contingency that
selects for and reinforces learning. Only by examining the
contingencies of reinforcement in terms of form versus function
can we reveal whether or not learning is taking place.
Darlene E. Crone-Todd, PhD,
BCBA-D, LABA
Board Member
B. F. Skinner Foundation
As always, the Science Corner has been translated in many
languages. We would like to thank our volunteer translators
for their effort. To read a translation and to discuss any topic in
your language, please visit https://community.bfskinner.org/s/
operants-current-issue.
2
Operants, Issue I, 2022
from the president
Dear Operants Readers,
The B. F. Skinner Foundation has some noteworthy changes and events
to announce!
First, I am excited to report that this year I was appointed President of
the B. F. Skinner Foundation. I have worked for the foundation since
2002 –– beginning as Julie Vargas’s graduate student assistant! The organization, its mission and my co-board members have grown close
to my heart. I am honored and deeply humbled by the opportunity to
lead the foundation.
Lisa Kristina Tillman has taken a new role in the Skinner Foundation as
special project consultant. Kristina’s sharp talent managing organizations brought our operation into the 21st century. In two years as president of the foundation, Kristina spearheaded our community website,
the republication of Verbal Behavior and The Behavior of Organisms, the
relocation of the foundation office and the launch our new advisory
board. Kristina remains focused on reorganizing our community site
to offer continuing education events to everyone –– a great way to disseminate Skinnerian science!
Dr. Julie Vargas continues to lead the archival committee. In doing so,
the foundation is preparing to collaborate with a professional archivist
to categorize and digitize B. F. Skinner-related materials. This includes
letters written by and to Skinner, manuscripts and papers with Skinner’s handwritten comments, audio tapes and more. Stay tuned for announcements about what we’ll be doing with the archive!
Our very first Operants editorial board meeting took place this year,
with prior Operants contributors from around the world attending: Yasim Gulec Aslan, Sydney Berkman, Marie Celine, Bruna Colombo, Kenneth Madrigal, David Roth, Alice Schillingsburg, Darelene Crone-Todd
and myself. All of us on the board share a reverence of and commitment to the Operants –– a publication which is now 17 years old!
David Roth, our current Operants Editor-in-Chief, has a great issue in
store this quarter -- including articles on programmed instruction, precision teaching, animal training and addiction. It also includes Francesca Degli Espinosa’s book review on Henry S. Schlinger’s “How to Build
Good Behavior and Self-Esteem in Children.” We hope you enjoy it!
We are planning foundation activities at the 2022 ABAI Annual conference. On May 27th, we have arranged an exclusive tour titled, “B. F.
Skinner’s Legacy at Harvard,” lead by Dr. Sara Schechner (Collection of
Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University), Dr. Julie Vargas
(B. F. Skinner Foundation) and Dr. David Palmer (B. F. Skinner Foundation). This will be a unique opportunity to learn about Skinner’s years
at Harvard, and the people, places and ideas that inspired and influenced him. We will also participate in the ABAI Expo on May 28th, and
the ABAI Reunion event on May 29th. We hope to see you there!
Dr. Joyce C. Tu is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with a doctorate in educational
psychology from West Virginia University,
specializing in applied behavior analysis
(ABA). She has over twenty years’ experience as both a behavior analysis professor
and a practitioner, teaching behavior analysis in universities and providing ABA services, training, workshops and supervision
for parents and professionals working with
individuals with developmental disabilities
in the U.S. and abroad.
Dr. Tu’s specialization and research interests
are chiefly in verbal behavior, specifically,
joint control and its role in listeners’ behavior. She has authored several peer-reviewed
publications and serves as a behavior analysis journal reviewer. Additionally, in 2011,
Dr. Tu co-authored a Chinese-language textbook published by Peking University Press,
including chapters on topics such as shaping, prompting/fading, chaining and generalization. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Tu has
held workshops and speaking engagements
for national and international professional
organizations.
Prior to becoming the President of the B.
F. Skinner Foundation, Dr. Tu served as a
board member and a vice president.
Operants, Issue I, 2022
3
in this issue
Table of ConTenTs
editorial staff
Science corner .................................................................... 2
From the PreSident .............................................................. 3
From the editor ................................................................... 5
Editor-in-Chief:
David Roth
interview with dr. Patrick Friman .................................... 6
B. F. Skinner and develoPment oF Programmed
inStruction: a timeline ..................................................... 10
Ana Alice Reis Pieretti
Associate Editor:
Sheila Cornelius
Associate Editor:
Kathryn Glodowski
Managing Editor:
Konstantin Evdokimov
rememBering Jerome ulman ............................................. 17
Belinda Hughes
achieving Parity with Billy BlankS and BoB roSS ......... 20
Jim Mackie
Book review: henry d. Schlinger’S How to Build Good
BeHavior and Self-eSteem in CHildren ............................. 22
Francesca degli Espinosa
interview with elizaBeth haughton ............................... 24
my rememBrance oF Jack michael .................................. 30
Greg Stikeleather
ratS! the Squeakquel ..................................................... 32
Andrew D. Katayama, Michelle I. Nash, Ryan Neal
Dickman
We would like to thank those who contributed to this issue.
Operants preserves the intellectual tradition of Skinner’s
writings –– articles of interest to the field, but also written
without heavy use of citations and references. In most
articles intellectual credit to others is given, not by citing
and referencing specific studies or articles/books, but rather
through discussing the “big idea” or “concept”, and naming
the person/affiliation. In this way, the intellectual credit is
provided while still writing for a wider audience. Especially
today, we would like to continue to advance the relationship
between basic and applied science –– and its theory –– and
make that available to the public.
animal laBS For teaching and reSearch oF Behavior
analySiS in Brazil ............................................................. 37
Paola Esposito de Moraes Almeida, Amilcar Rodrigues
Fonseca Júnior, Emerson Ferreira da Costa Leite, Lucas
Cordeiro Freitas, Bruna Colombo dos Santos, Tiago
Sales Larroudé de Man
modern animal care: a Skinnerian PerSPective on
choice and control .......................................................... 41
Christy A. Alligood and Susan G. Friedman
viewing alcohol addiction aS the reSult oF Biology,
Behavior, and culture ...................................................... 46
Marilin Colón
From the noteBookS .......................................................... 48
Marilin Colón
Operants is produced by the B. F. Skinner Foundation. The opinions reflected in this Operants do not necessarily represent the views of
the Foundation. We reserve the right to edit all submissions for factual and scientific accuracy, however, as a rule, we preserve the author’s
grammar and punctuation.
©2022 B. F. Skinner Foundation. All rights reserved. This publication or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. For details, contact the B. F. Skinner Foundation at
permissions@bfskinner.org
4
Operants, Issue I, 2022
from the editor
David Roth received his master’s degree in Behavior Analysis at California State University,
Stanislaus. He is the outgoing editor-in-chief of Operants magazine and serves as a board member
for the B. F. Skinner Foundation.
David has been a passionate student of B. F. Skinner’s works for over 15 years. He currently consults
for public school classrooms serving students with autism in the state of Pennsylvania. David’s
behavior analytic interests include the applications of behavioral programming for individuals with
verbal deficits, conceptual issues related to molecular analyses of behavior, and the interpretations of
complex behavior that are currently on the fringes of our science.
Nearly 70 years ago, B. F. Skinner said, “A demonstration of basic behavioral processes under simplified conditions
enables us to see these processes at work in complex cases, even though they cannot be treated rigorously there. If
these processes are recognized, the complex case may be more intelligently handled. This is the kind of contribution
which a pure science is most likely to make to technology.” The continued evolution of modern technology along
with the growth of behavior analysis has led to refinements in the experimental analysis of behavior, the application
of basic principles to the technology of teaching, and our interpretations of behavior too complex for experimental
control. This issue of the Operants magazine features various contributions to these three main domains of behavior
analysis.
Within the experimental analysis domain Katayama, Nash, and Dickman, with the U.S. Air Force Academy, provide
an in-depth tutorial of their “Live Rat” program. The authors compare the outcomes of training cadets using a live
organism experimental preparation with a virtual analog. Another article within this issue is written by six experimental analysts from Brazil who detail the current inner workings of three experimental labs. Both of these essays on
the experimental analysis of behavior describe some of the barriers and solutions which resulted from the COVID-19
pandemic.
The animal behavior theme continues with an article by Alligood and Friedman on the concepts of “choice” and
“control” from a Skinnerian perspective. By providing an operational analysis of these terms within the framework
of experimentally validated principles, the authors discuss important ethical and procedural implications for incorporating them into the practice of caring and training animals.
The application of behavioral principles to the technology of teaching human behavior is reflected in five articles. In
an interview conducted by students of behavior analysis at Penn State University, Harrisburg, Patrick Friman shares
important wisdom to young behavior analysts entering the field. Pieretti provides a historical account of Skinner’s
teaching machines beginning in 1953 and extending through the 1960s. In an interview conducted by Sheila Cornelius, Elizabeth Haughton shares with readers the important influence Skinner’s work had on her career of educating
students using her Happy Learner model. Francesca degli Espinosa has provided a personal touch to her review of
Henry “Hank” Schlinger’s new book How to Build Good Behavior and Self-Esteem in Children. Sydney Berkman has
written an essay on the role of automatic reinforcement in learning new behaviors from a video model. Berkman’s
essay provides a conceptual analysis of the procedures and repertoires involved in learning from a video model.
Two essays are dedicated to the memory of recently deceased giants in the field of behavior analysis. Belinda Hughes
teaches us about the life and contributions of her mentor, Jerry Ulman. Greg Stikeleather recounts the important influence that Jack Michael had on his life and career. Readers of these essays will experience glimpses of the personal
repertoires of each of these influential behavior analysts.
Marilin Colón has contributed unique behavioral perspectives to the problem of addiction. Colón interprets the
current research on addiction within the framework of established behavioral principles and provides readers with
practical advice in dealing with addiction in one’s own life. Lastly, Colón has contributed to the recurring Notebooks
Corner with her own discussion of Skinner’s personal note on the topic of addiction as it relates to Freud’s own failure
to overcome his cigar-smoking addiction.
Operants, Issue I, 2022
5
interview
ON IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING,
COMPASSION, AND WILLINGNESS TO HELP
AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. PATRICK FRIMAN
The interview with Dr. Patrick Friman was conducted by students enrolled
in the Master’s Program in Applied Behavior Analysis at Pennsylvania State
University with the guidance of Dr. Kathryn Glodowski. Special gratitude
goes out to all students who assisted, listed in alphabetical order: Kathleen
Allen, Yasmin Bokhari, Aaishay Haque, Fibiya Japhet, Krystal Joubert, Konstantina Lentza, Nicole Mastromatto, Alex Miklos, and Karen Sauter.
Fibiya Japhet: It seems easier to develop and implement a behavior
change program for someone else than for one’s own self. How have
you applied this practice in your own life?
Dr. Patrick C. Friman is the director of clinical
services at Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home (Boys
Town) and a clinical professor in the Department
of Pediatrics at the University of Nebraska School
of Medicine. He also served as director of clinical
training and associate chair of the Department of
Psychology at the University of Nevada at Reno
and formerly held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins’ and
University of Kansas’ schools of medicine. He is
an internationally recognized expert in the application of behavior analytic methods to behavioral medicine. One of his specialties is behavioral
pediatrics, particularly focused on the successful
treatment of common but potentially serious
childhood behavior disorders, sleep problems,
oppositional behavior, and incontinence. He has
published more than 180 articles and two books
and is widely recognized as a preeminent lecturer
and disseminator of the values and applications
of behavior analysis to lay as well as scientific audiences. He has served as a reviewer or editorial
board member for virtually every major behavioral journal and was the editor of the Journal of
Applied Behavior Analysis from 2005 to 2007.
6
Operants, Issue I, 2022
Dr. Pat Friman: Let me start with a small parable. Imagine that you’re
late for work one morning and you’re in a big rush to get there. You
come up to a busy intersection and the light’s red, but you feel lucky
because there’s only one car in front of you. Then the light finally turns
green, but the car in front of you doesn’t budge. It just sits there, and
you look up, and you see there’s a woman in the driver’s seat, but she’s
not even looking out the window of her car. She’s messing around in
the back seat and then the light turns yellow and red again. You have
to sit through, hold on the revolution, and then finally it turns green
again. But the car still doesn’t move and she’s still not looking out the
window. She is still messing with the back seat. She doesn’t even know
the light is green and then it turns yellow and red again. Maybe you
get frustrated, and angry, and have to go check and see what’s going
on. You go up and knock on the window and she looks up at you, and
she’s got tears in her eyes and you look into the back seat. Then you see
that there’s a baby back there and it’s turning blue. In that instant, any
anger or frustration that you might have had would disappear immediately. What would take its place are an understanding, compassion,
and willingness to help.
My professional focus is on problem behavior. And my belief is that
there is always a baby in the back seat. There is always a set of circumstances that are functionally related to the problem behavior. That belief
makes it easier for me to deal with inappropriate behavior—it allows
me to more readily set aside my critical judgments of the behavior than
would otherwise be the case. Those critical judgments attribute the
problem to a flaw in the misbehaving person—flawed character, personality, morality or psyche. But behavior analysts (when being behavior analytic) assume the flaw, if there is one, is not in the person but in
the circumstances that have affected the person’s life. This view is easy
on the person and hard on the problem. We seek not to fix the blame.
We seek to fix the problem instead. One human commodity in short
supply in the world today is understanding. There is a surplus, however, of commodities such as irritation, frustration, and anger. Compassion, understanding and a willingness to help are all in short supply.
But the circumstantial perspective of problem behavior
reduces the former commodities and brings forth the latter. There is abundant resistance to this, however. For example, district attorneys all across this country do what
they can to keep the backstory of a defendant who’s been
convicted of a major crime out of the courtroom prior to
sentencing. Why? Because they know if the jury hears
that story, they’re going to be more compassionate, and
possibly reduce the severity of the sentence. So, in short,
the circumstantial view of problematic behavior is a behavior analytic superpower—or can be if practiced. That,
however, is a big if. Although the view is foundational to
the field, but it isn’t necessarily a foundational practice,
at least not outside the context of professional practice.
But it should be.
Fibiya Japhet: From your experience, what are some of
the potential pitfalls a young behavior analyst may encounter when entering the field and how can they best
handle these potential pitfalls?
Dr. Pat Friman: I don’t know if it is the biggest, but a
significant pitfall is something akin zealotry. Behavior
analysts can be a little…preachy and it is nowhere more
evident than in how we speak to people outside the field.
For most of its lifespan behavior analysis has been confined to a box. What is this box? Basically, it is what one
can look at, point to, or touch, and direct contingencies.
One of my missions is to get people inside our field to
think outside that box. Another is to get people outside
of our field to recognize that we can and will think outside the box. Please do not misunderstand me; behavior
analysts have accomplished a great deal while confined
to that box. There have been many extraordinary contributions made by the experimental and applied portions
of the field—but most of these have been relevant for
persons residing in only one tail of the normal distribution. But the persons under the dome of the distribution
are not, nor do they want to be, confined that box. And
no amount of preaching is going to change that fact. The
world under the dome converses and thinks much more
in abstract, hypothetical constructional, and metaphysical terms than they do in the more concrete terms favored by in the box behavior analysts.
So I really think it’s important to avoid being zealous or
preachy about behavior analysis and to speak in terms
that are used by the person to whom you are speaking.
If that person is a behavior analyst, the box is not only
fine but possibly preferred. Although the language of
behavior analysis can be challenging even for persons
inside the field. But people outside the field and under
the dome of the distribution are not now, nor are they
ever going to be, fluent in that language. They’re fluent
in their own language and that language is suffused with
out of the box terms. Therefore, it is essential for behavior
analysts to be bilingual. They must be very fluent in the
technical language of behavior analysis and be able to
easily translate that language into everyday terms that
make the same points. In short, they must be able to go
back and forth like a translator. And it is the highest folly
to express (or even hold) a critical view of the way non
behavior analysts speak and think. I recommend tolerance of their point of view coupled with gentle attempts
to introduce our point of view and populating those attempts with their preferred language.
Fibiya Japhet: How can we seek additional professional support following certification, especially in areas or
countries with few behavioral analysts? For instance,
how can we seek support when we have a case that is
out of our boundaries of expertise and are in a relatively isolated area, professionally?
Dr. Pat Friman: I do not recommend practicing outside
your area of expertise. I have a good relationship with an
affluent segment of the population of Omaha, NE. Virtually all of my clients are very high functioning and well
educated. I am good at helping with the problems they
present but because of this, many of them seem to assume
that I’m good at everything. For example, recently an existing client asked me to work with a family member just
coming out of inpatient rehabilitation treatment for substance abuse. Methamphetamine. But I have no expertise with addictions. At first blush, one would think the
individual would be the perfect client for me—licensed
physician, former Eagle Scout, holder of black belt in karate, 4.4 GPA in high school, 36 on the ACT, double major
graduate of one of the most prestigious universities in
the United States. But the simple, incontrovertible fact
is that I have no training in the treatment of addictions.
Believe me, I was tempted to fake it because I have been
so successful with clients with similar demographics.
But addictions are beyond my scope and so I referred the
young man to drug and alcohol counselors who work
for me. But what if there were no readily available services, would that mean I should give it my best shot? In
my opinion, no because of the risk I might make a bad
situation worse. We would not settle for a nephrologist
to work on a tumor in our throat if an ENT was not available. Instead, we would ask the nephrologist to help
us find an ENT. The simple fact is that we cannot be all
things to all people. So instead of stretching outside your
range, I recommend hyper expansive professional networking across numerous professional domains—focusing especially on areas of expertise other than your own.
Doing this would multiply potential sources for referral.
Furthermore, with the rise of telehealth geography is no
longer as much of a barrier as it once was.
Fibiya Japhet: What are your recommendations for how
new behavior analysts can expand their network and
seek out continued mentorship?
Dr. Pat Friman: I guess it’s dependent upon a person’s
temperament. My practice has been to seek as much critical mentorship as I can get. In other words, I try to get
mentorship from people that are known to be very direct and who have areas of expertise outside my own.
Operants
7
I run a training program here. Training is hard because
not everyone who signs up to be trained actually wants
to be trained. All too often people in training programs
just want to be approved of regardless of the quality of
their performance. Personally, I’m not interested in approval unless I have really earned it. I want mentors that
don’t suffer fools gladly, but not everybody wants a mentor like that. Some people have a more delicate self-appraisal of their clinical skills. So they possibly need more
encouragement than critical direction. That is, they need
a bigger ratio of acknowledgments to critical comments.
As a potential trainee it is critical to evaluate your own
temperament and try to match that to the style of potential mentors. But I benefit from working with people that
are notoriously hard to please. Lastly but not leastly it is
important that the mentor has the skill set one wants to
develop.
establish and maintain positive collaborative relationships?
Aaishay Haque: It is clear in your publications and presentations that you have mastered describing behavior
analytic principles and procedures in layman’s terms.
What recommendations do you have for behavior analysts who want to further develop and refine this repertoire?
Nicole Mastromatto: What advice do you have for winning over (and not knocking over) other disciplines and
in your words, becoming a missionary for our field?
Dr. Pat Friman: Practice with family and friends. Describe as much of the field as they’re willing to listen
to and make sure that they understand everything that
you’re saying. When they ask, “what do you mean by
that?” as they inevitably will, revise and resubmit. Doing so will improve your ability. You will find yourself
resorting to use of mostly non behavioral language—that
is as it should be because that is the language they speak
and think with. To communicate effectively with them,
you have to use it. This is a brief restatement of my earlier admonition to become bilingual.
Aaishay Haque: How can we best work with parents
who struggle accepting their child’s diagnosis and are
hesitant to adhere to behavioral treatment?
Dr. Pat Friman: I want parents to follow my advice. If the
diagnosis gets in the way, I set the diagnosis to the side
because the diagnosis isn’t nearly as important as the
skills that I am trying to train. I don’t want to get stuck
on the front-end quibbling over whether or not the diagnosis is valid. What I do want is for clients to recognize
me as somebody that can help. Although having specific
diagnoses can increase access to specialized services, that
is not my primary mission. That is case management. I
deliver treatment so the client of concern is already accessing my services and I do not want quibbling over
diagnosis to interfere with my delivery of treatment. For
further consideration of this question it may help to consult Montose Wolf’s 1978 paper on social validity.
Aaishay Haque: Professional collaboration seems to be
the norm rather than the exception to ensure the best
care for individuals receiving services. Given your history of success, what recommendations do you have to
8
Operants
Dr. Pat Friman: My most prevalent collaborative relationships are with physicians. And there is a reasonably
well-established method for making that happen. Consult papers by Ed Christophersen, Keith Allen, Bill Warzak, Vinnie Barone nd others on this subject. Very briefly, these authors (and I) recommend reading medical
literature, attending medical meetings, collaborating on
medical research, acquiring knowledge of the physiology of presenting problems, and knowing your place (e.g.,
we are not medical doctors). To boil all this down, the
key is to make a study of the group you want to join to
determine its reinforcers and then deliver them. People
always protect their sources of reinforcement and they
keep them close.
Dr. Pat Friman: I work deductively in contrast to most
of the people in our field who work inductively. That is,
they assemble steps derived from behavioral processes
applying them incrementally until they achieve the desired effect. Whereas I look for anything with empirically supportive evidence (e.g., EMDR, ACT, PCIT) and I
assume that the reason it works is because at its core are
behavioral processes—and I try to identify them. I pay
little attention to how the people who invented or use
these methods talk about them—their talk is often suffused with what I call “psychowhatsit” (e.g. cognitive restructuring). So I can actually endorse treatments whose
descriptions are decidedly non behavioral because, if
they actually work, they do because their most significant components are actual behavioral processes. This
allows me to be ambassadorial—even in the presence of
psychowatsit.
Nicole Mastromatto: In your article in JABA in 1998,
“Why Behavior Analysts Should Study Emotions: The
Example of Anxiety,” you discussed the behavior conceptualization of private events as they relate to anxiety and emotions. How do you think the discipline
has advanced in our understanding of private-public
relations and mental health treatment since then? How
do you foresee the discipline continuing in this area in
the future?
Dr. Pat Friman: There is a slippery slope there somewhere. The simple fact is that the internal life of human
beings has an abiding and significant effect on their day.
But internal life will not readily surrender itself to become an independent variable. You can’t take a thought
and make it an independent variable because it’s a private event. There isn’t a practical way to isolate and operationalize it and expose it to a true functional analysis.
But our internal life has a very significant influence on
our experience. There is something very real there, it just
doesn’t lend itself to experimental disclosure. So it is critical for behavior analysts to acknowledge the importance
of the internal life of human beings in order to banish the
antiquated indictment that we don’t think people have
thoughts or feelings or that they do have them but they
are not important. We have to shed ourselves of those
false assumptions and let the world know that we do indeed take their internal life seriously. There’s a branch
of behavior analysis that some seem to think is heretical.
Specifically, the segment focused on derived relations
especially RFT and ACT. And a few studies from those
groups have revealed a functional role for select private
events. Some laud what they have reported, some ignore
or dismiss it. That division notwithstanding, the segment
of the field focused on derived relations is expanding
faster than virtually any other segment. And the virtue
in this is that derived relations bring behavior analysis
out from under the tail of the normal distribution to the
area under the dome.
Nicole Mastromatto: The documentary that featured
you and this way of thinking highlighted your work
at Boys Town and included the topics of mental health
and suicide. Can you share your behavior analytic perspective of suicide, suicidal ideation, and non-suicidal
self-harm?
Dr. Pat Friman: We are behavior analysts and thus is it
incumbent upon us to understand suicide and suicidal
behavior from a functional perspective. Suicide itself is a
solution. For example, young people who are truly suicidal will often seem improved once they have their plan.
The reason for this that they now believe they have a way
out, their troubles will soon be over. Some examples of
this are giving away possessions or a marked reduction
in the signs of suffering.
Suicidal ideation has multiple functions. It could be a
part of a chain of events leading to actual suicide, or it
could just be a way of alerting people that one is significantly troubled. Evidence of suicidal ideation or suicidal
planning needs immediate attention. For example, here
at Boys Town, our threshold for concern is extremely
low, lower than I would recommend for the community at large. If one of our residents uses an idiom with
a self-referential death theme (e.g., “I could just die of
shame”), they have to contract not to harm themselves.
If they will not they are placed on 24 hour a day watch
during which at least one set of eyes is always on them.
If after 72 hours they have not contracted, they are hospitalized. We take no chances. But it is important to note
that our threshold for concerned response is very low because we are working with an at-risk population.
Regarding non suicidal self-harm (e.g., cutting--here I
exclude the sorts of extreme self-injury conducted by
persons with severe developmental disabilities) there are
multiple possible functions including attention seeking,
communication of distress, peer mimicry, and analgesia.
Regarding the latter, when a person suffering from emotional anguish cuts themselves, the emotional suffering
subsides as the pain of the cut materializes and the result is virtually instantaneous negative reinforcement
(i.e., relief). This can become a durable habit. Another
possibility, real although remote, is that self-harm can be
part of a chain of events, distended in time, that if left unchecked could lead to actual suicidal behavior. Because
of the multiple possible functions, some of which are
unquestionably harmful, non-suicidal self-harm should
always be evaluated with a functional assessment prior
to treatment. It can also be necessary to treat the person
as if suicide were possible to curtail further injury.
Interviewers:
Students from The Pennsylvania State University – Harrisburg Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis program, left to right:
Fibiya Japhet, Aaishay Haque, Nicole Mastromatto).
Operants
9
history of science
B. F. SKINNER AND DEVELOPMENT OF
PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION: A TIMELINE
Ana Alice Reis Pieretti, PhD
B. F. Skinner developed programmed instruction (and teaching machines) to deal with inefficiencies that he had noticed in education.
His approach was based on behavioral principles observed in the
laboratory. To understand programmed instruction and the use of
teaching machines, it is essential to understand how this technology
developed over time. This article aims to present a historical timeline
for programmed instruction and Skinnerian teaching machines.
First, it is important to present the characteristics of programmed instruction, as outlined by B. F. Skinner, James Holland, and Ernest and
Julie Vargas:
(a) students progress at their own rate, which means they advance at a speed that matches their behavioral repertoire;
(b) advancing to the next unit depends on mastering previous
units;
(c) instruction should have characteristics that allow students
to almost always experience success;
(d) responses are constantly required of the students;
Ana has her Doctor and Master in Experimental Psychology: Behavior Analysis
from the Pontifical Catholic University of
São Paulo. She graduated with a Bachelor’s
in Psychology at the Federal University of
Mato Grosso do Sul. Ana was the Visiting
Scholar at the B. F. Skinner Foundation/
Harvard University between August 2019
and January 2020. Her main research interest is Applied Behavior Analysis in Education.
(e) and feedback to their responses is immediate – this feedback normally consists of access to the correct answers to the questions;
(f) items should be sufficiently clear so that students understand and are capable of providing their answer;
(g) to facilitate the process of generalization, concepts should
be presented in different forms;
(h) students’ responses are recorded, which allows them to be
reviewed by the program designer;
(i) behavioral targets should be set; they establish the behaviors that students should present at the end of the program;
(j) students should respond to the appropriate stimulus; in
other words, they should provide answers under the control of a certain stimulus and not others;
(k) successive approximations to a target behavior are
planned; in other words, the change in behavior occurs gradually in
the direction of its final form;
(l) fading out cues.
Programmed instruction (whether presented with learning machines
10
Operants, Issue I, 2022
or not) occurs in the following manner: students are
presented an item that consists of a fill-in-the-blank
sentence. After filling in the blank, students gain access
to the correct answer or, in the case of an error, parts
of the answer in the form of hints. As a last resort, students are allowed to repeat the item they got wrong until they arrive at the correct answer.
To construct the timeline for programmed instruction
and teaching, I looked at the third volume of B. F. Skinner’s autobiography, A Matter of Consequences, published in 1984, in which Skinner writes about events
from 1938 to 1983. I also consulted with a list compiled
by Matheus of Skinner’s publications about education.
To comprise the timeline, items from this list that contained one of the following search terms were selected:
“technology of teaching”; “programmed instruction”;
“teaching machine”, resulting in 31 articles and book
chapters. To these data, I have added information from
unpublished material found at the Harvard Library,
which was accessed during my time as an exchange
student with the B. F. Skinner Foundation and Harvard
University. Material was selected from this collection
if they had relation to the information presented in the
autobiography, which resulted in six items consisting
of teaching machines patents and research reports.
Timeline of Programmed Instruction and Teaching
Machines
The history behind Skinner’s first teaching machine
began on November 11, 1953, with a visit to one of his
daughters’ school on parent’s day. In this visit, Skinner
observed a class in which students tried to solve mathematics problems, while the teacher went from desk to
desk trying to correct any mistakes that she was able to
catch. Skinner noticed that some students finished early and had to wait and that others seemed frustrated. In
A Matter of Consequences, he recalls:
I suddenly realized that something had to be
done. Possibly through no fault of her own,
the teacher was violating two fundamental
principles: the students were not being told at
once whether their work was right or wrong (a
corrected paper seen twenty-four hours later
could not act as a reinforcer), and they were all
moving at the same pace regardless of preparation or ability.
Skinner realized that, for the teacher to be able to follow
these principles, some type of instrument was required.
The prototype of the teaching machine was built some
days later: the mathematics problems were presented on cards, and students answered using two levers.
If the answer was correct, a light turned on. Another
model of the teaching machine, built later, presented
arithmetic problems in an established order, and either
a new frame appeared in place of the previous one, if
the student answered correctly, or, if not, the student
had to start again. Skinner described the characteristics
of this version of the machine:
The student composes rather than selects the
answers. Unlike flash cards, the machine reports the correctness of an answer without
revealing the answer. The student must solve
one problem before moving on to the next
problem. The principal reinforcing consequences come from being right and making
progress. [I had added a bell which rang as a
new frame moved into place and I noted that
this event could be scheduled.] The student
must stop at the end of the tape for a teacher’s
review and for the loading of a new tape.
Skinner was interested in the mass production of teaching machines so that schools (and therefore students)
would have access to them. For this purpose, in 1954
Skinner contacted IBM (an information technology
company that has run since the end of the 19th century)
and, in September of that year, the company showed
interest in producing teaching machines. In November,
Skinner and IBM established that the company would
be responsible for producing the machines while Skinner would oversee the development of the programs.
In 1955, Skinner published an article titled “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching”, in which he
presented the characteristics of the first versions of the
teaching machine:
The important features of the device are these:
reinforcement for the right answer is immediate. The mere manipulation of the device will
probably be reinforcing enough to keep the average pupil at work for a suitable period each
day, provided traces of earlier aversive control
can be wiped out. A teacher may supervise an
entire class at work on such devices at the same
time, yet each child may progress at his own
rate, completing as many problems as possible
within the class period...
This quote reveals the influence of the observation of
his daughter’s classroom on the development of this
technology, which would allow teachers to monitor
the entire class while respecting each student’s rate of
progress – two aspects which he deemed problematic
in schools.
In the same year, in 1955, IBM presented a new version
of the teaching machine that used punched cards. After
this, Skinner sent some specifications for the production of these machines:
...We could anticipate from twenty-five to fifty
Operants 11
frames per lesson and about two hundred lessons per term. The machine should stand rough
handling, students should be able to load it
themselves, and it should not be possible for
cards to get out of order. Material could be more
easily improved if items on which errors were
often made were marked in some way, such as
by a smudge on the backs of the cards. Progress
would be more reinforcing if the cards told the
students how far they had gone through a set;
some kind of jackpot payoff might even be arranged ...
This excerpt shows some of the aspects that were important for the development of an adequate teaching
machine: maintaining the order of the content (which
allows for the complex content to be taught first); recording the most common errors for later revision of
the program; and information about the student’s
progress in the content.
After another year of waiting and no major progress
on the part of IBM, Skinner and the company reached a
new agreement in which the latter would make a teaching machine prototype to be tested and afterwards improved and marketed. The suggested schedule was as
follows: prototypes would start to be produced in 1956,
tested in the fall of 1957, and sold starting from 1958.
However, at the time of establishing said schedule,
there was still no contract –– only a verbal agreement.
Only in 1956 was there a formal and signed contract
between the parties, and it was agreed that, by the end
of that year, Skinner should have access to a prototype
with which he could test his programs.
In 1957, Skinner was awarded $25,000 in funding from
the Ford Foundation’s Fund for the Advancement of
Education to continue his research on teaching machines at Harvard. He hired a mechanic to build the
machines to be used in his research, which were ready
by 1957 and presented at an APA meeting. Furthermore, in this same period, Skinner acquired additional
funding from the Office of Human Resources and from
the Milton Fund at Harvard, which allowed him to hire
more people (Lloyd Homme and Susan Merkle Meyer)
to develop programs for the teaching machines.
The teaching machines were finished in 1957 for research purposes and allocated to a classroom at Harvard University. With these machines, Skinner and
James Holland (who joined the project after Lloyd
Homme’s exit) tested programs that they had been developing for a Natural Science course. Students in this
course started to use the teaching machines in March
of that year, and Skinner was able to observe favorable
results regarding their learning.
Despite some positive results with the first versions of
the teaching machine, Skinner wanted to develop an12 Operants
other model that would contain more frames and allow
for graphs and tables. He tried to convince IBM to produce this new model, but to no avail. Following this, he
contacted another American company, McGraw Hill,
but was unsuccessful.
In 1958, there was a conference on teaching machines
at the University of Pennsylvania, in which several
researchers in the field presented their work. Skinner
spoke about the programming of verbal knowledge,
referencing his book, Verbal Behavior, published in the
previous year.
Also in 1958, Skinner registered a patent for a teaching
machine that included the following description: “This
invention relates generally to mechanical aids to teaching, and more particularly, it relates to apparatus for
the teaching of arithmetic, spelling and so forth.”
Still in 1958, a representative from Rheem Company,
another information technology company, contacted
Skinner. The company was interested in producing
teaching machines, and Skinner reached a formal arrangement for their production in August of 1959.
The prototype versions of the machines produced by
Rheem Company (called Didak) would then be presented at an APA meeting in September. The prototype,
however, had several problems that needed correcting.
Sometime later, Skinner met with the president of
Rheem Company, who showed a construction plan for
a language laboratory that would facilitate his project
with teaching machines. So, in December 1959, Skinner
met with company representatives, and another version of the teaching machine (containing some of the
improvements he had requested) was presented. However, this model had almost the same flaws as the previous one, meaning few changes had been made.
After waiting for some time, in 1959 IBM sent a teaching
machine model for Skinner to test, and the machines
would be produced, after the necessary corrections, at
a different factory than the one that had been originally
agreed upon. Aside from this, production would also
suffer delays of over a month. Skinner then obtained
access to a model with which he could test an arithmetic program that Meyer had been developing. IBM
requested a detailed report about this teaching machine model, including “…testing principles used, the
optimal length of lesson, and the optimal length of time
students worked productively …” A lot of discussion
about the mass production of the teaching machines
took place, but it did not lead anywhere. In the following year, collaboration with the company ended. Figure
1 (p. 13) shows the development of Programmed Instruction between 1953 and 1959.
In 1960, Young published an article titled “The Coming
Boom in Teaching Machines”, in which he foresaw a
Figure 1
Timeline of Programmed Instruction and Teaching Machines Between 1953 and 1959
Operants 13
growing market for teaching machines in the next year.
Skinner recalls in his memoirs that in this same year,
there was an attempt to produce teaching machines
together with General Motors (vehicle manufacturing
company), but no deal was reached.
Still in 1960, Skinner received several requests from
people who wanted to buy the machines developed
with Rheem Company; however, no advances had
been made regarding their production. When Skinner
met with a representative from the company, there was
interest in producing simpler machines –– not in accordance with the behavior-analytic principles that had
been previously contracted with Skinner. After this, it
was decided that the company would develop a new
project, and these machines would be ready by February of the following year.
When production of the first version of these machines
finished in 1962, they showed several defects that had
to be corrected. Skinner pointed out that, at the time,
the company was also undergoing financial troubles,
which possibility hindered adequate production of the
teaching machines.
Based on research and Harvard students’ performance
in Skinner’s course, Holland and Skinner published The
Analysis of Behavior in 1961. This book presents frames
with blanks to be filled in by students, and the correct
answers appear on the following page.
During the same year, Skinner registered a patent for
another version of the teaching machine, which he described in the following manner: “This invention relates
to teaching aids, and more particularly to mechanical
devices of the general type which present an ordered
succession of questions, problems, or instructions to
a student and give him an immediate indication as to
whether his response in each instance is correct or incorrect.” This excerpt presents one of the essential characteristics of effective teaching: immediate feedback.
In 1962, Skinner pointed out his disagreements and
problems in a letter to an administrator at Rheem Company, as seen in the following quote: “We differ on 1)
the diligence with which Rheem has carried out the
terms of our agreement, 2) the direction and scope of
further activity, 3) the value of my services …”
In 1962, Skinner filed a patent for a teaching machine
that allowed students to create their own responses,
which was also an important characteristic of effective
teaching.
The company then suggested producing another machine, but, due to bureaucratic difficulties, this ended
up not happening, and, in 1963, collaboration with
Rheem Company ended.
Still in 1963, the first meeting of the National Society for
14 Operants
Programmed Instruction took place, to which Skinner
and Pressey were invited to become honorary members.
Also, in this year, Skinner presented a patent for another teaching machine version, one that would prevent
students from copying –– they would have to give a
response before having access to the correct answer to
a question.
In 1966, Skinner once more attempted to produce a
commercial teaching technology. This time he developed technology for teaching handwriting. For this, he
created paper on which the student’s target behavior
would be automatically reinforced by way of a chemical reaction that changed the color of the paper, which
indicated correct responses. In the following year,
Skinner registered the patent for this technology. After
this, he developed a program for teaching handwriting together with Sue Ann Krakover and, after a few
tests, sold the teaching technology “Write and see” to
schools.
Skinner started to write the book, The Technology of
Teaching, at the beginning of the 1960s. His initial plan
was to write 33 chapters about teaching. However, due
to the author’s changing interests, only part of the book
contained chapters written especially for it, and the rest
consisted of previously published articles. The book
was released in 1968.
Figure 2 (p. 15) shows the timeline for the development
of Programmed Instruction and Teaching Machines between 1960 and 1968.
From 1968 onwards, one can detect Skinner’s change of
interest regarding the topic of education and the production of teaching machines. After this year, no further information was found in the researched materials
about the production of new machines, and, as shown
in Figure 3 (p.16), there was less written about this topic.
However, despite the production of teaching machines
not having taken place as Skinner had wished, programmed instruction influenced the development of
other teaching technologies based on analytic-behavioral principles, such as the Personalized System of
Instruction (Keller, 1968), Interteaching (Boyce & Hineline, 2002), Direct Instruction (Becker, 1992), Precision
Teaching (White, 1986), among others.
In addition, with the emergence and popularization
of new teaching instruments, there are new possibilities for the development of Programmed Instruction,
which could lead to the popularization of this teaching technology and contribute to the development of a
more effective teaching method.
Figure 2
Timeline of Programmed Instruction and Teaching Machines Between 1960 and 1968
Operants 15
Figure 3
Timeline for Programmed Instruction and Teaching Machines Between 1969 and 1989
16 Operants
in memoriam
JEROME ULMAN
MY VIEW FROM HIS SHOULDERS
Belinda Hughes, MA, BCBA
Through Dr. Jerome Ulman’s passion for behaviorology and generosity,
I had the unique privilege to get acquainted with many leaders like
himself in the field of behaviorology. I was sitting with Jerry when I first
heard Patrick McGreevy say, “We stand on the shoulders of giants” as
he reflected on his relationship with his mentor, Ogden Lindsley. Mark
Sundberg and Hank Schlinger echoed this in their remembrances of the
great Jack Michael. Yes, my beloved mentor Jerome Ulman was in his
own right a giant who graciously allowed me to stand on his shoulders
and was my tour guide into the field of behavior analysis. This is my
view from his shoulders.
I was introduced to Dr. Jerome Ulman by Ball State University professor Dr. David McIntosh in 2005. This older gentleman shook my hand
and quickly said, “please call me Jerry.” He was humble and kind from
the moment we met and remained so throughout the rest of his life.
Jerry requested my assistance to recruit parents of children with autism
to participate in a study being conducted by his doctoral class. Parents identified target behaviors, the doctoral students were to provide
interventions and train parents on interventions, and parents were to
collect the data. As the students discussed among themselves what interventions to select, I shared various related articles which I had obtained from universities across the country. Jerry asked what brought
me to this research. In 2005, a Google search on autism did not render
the wealth of information it does today. Information was further limited by my inability to afford the books on autism. Instead, I noted the
researchers quoted in the books and found those researchers online.
Either I was sent an article or I was able to purchase information from
a university for a nominal fee. Jerry was both surprised and impressed
with my perseverance to learn effective methods to help my son, Gabe.
Jerome Ulman
May 13, 1938 - November 22, 2021
Much later, Jerry shared with me that it was in that moment that he
identified me as a kindred spirit eager to explore the science of behaviorology which had captivated his over 40-year-long career. A few weeks
after sharing my research, David and Jerry offered me an assistantship,
working with Jerry’s wife, Jean, in the adaptive technology lab. This
afforded me the opportunity to further study behavior analysis and introduced me to a career as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Over
the following 15 years, Jerry and Jean became my parents through academia and grandparents to my three boys. In some of Jerry’s correspondence, he professed feelings of isolation as the lone behaviorologist
among psychologists at the university. Being aware of these contingencies Jerry experienced, I could understand more of his drive behind the
Ulman–Skinner Letters. In Jerry’s response to Donahoe in 2014 he stated
the theme he was attempting to convey to Skinner in his letters expostulated attempts to transform psychology into a natural science in which there
were no supposed inner agencies postulated to explain behavior. From my
Operants, Issue I, 2022
17
review thus far of Jerry’s correspondence, he faced more
challenges than support on his quest of behaviorology.
published. Jerry risked making a mistake by his unique
application, and instead enhanced our science.
The 2014 Skinner–Ulman
Jerry was excited to be
Letters were published for
among his Skinnerian colthe second time in the Euleagues, he enjoyed engagropean Journal of Behavior
ing in conversation that
Analysis for commentary.
broadened his experience
Jerry opened up his ideas
and philosophy of behavioand correspondence for
rology. Especially when that
scrutiny by his colleagues.
conversation included a
Jerry welcomed the convergood scotch on the rocks…
sation. This conversation
or two. It was an honor to be
Jerry initiated could be a
invited by Jerry into several
catalyst of change for genof these meetings and conerations of behaviorists to
versations by Jerry. Whencome. He was thorough in
ever I was asked to conhis research and in his retribute to the conversation
sponses to his colleagues.
by one of these esteemed
colleagues, Jerry would
Late into his career, Jerry
look at me as if this were an
went on to focus on behavJerry kept this photo with B. F. Skinner (right) in his office.
oral exam I would pass. My
ioral research methodology,
responses were reinforced
applied behavior analysis in
by his smile and nod of apspecial education, and the sociocultural implications of
proval. If he canted his head to the side, I had to either behaviorology.
expand or he would provide me with a prompt. I again
looked for these physical prompts from him when he ob- Jerry’s final area of interest post-retirement was the exploration of what a school of heterodox economists—that is,
served my presentations or teachings.
institutional/evolutionary economics–have to offer for
After receiving my master’s degree, I interviewed for a examining human behavior phenomena behaviorologiteaching position to work alongside Jerry and David to cally at the institutional level of analysis. Jerry had hoped
further develop the Master of Arts program in behavior to eventually develop this into a book with his friend
analysis and autism. Jerry insisted on being the facul- and colleague, Ernest Vargas. What interested Jerry in
ty member to call me with my interview results. Jerry particular is that among these evolutionary economists
paused for a few minutes, building suspense, before he are some who are Marxist-oriented to varying degrees.
congratulated me on my new job! I screamed and apol- From my understanding, without a “macroscopic” perogized for doing that in his ear, he laughed out loud. It spective based on the science of behaviorology, Jerry did
was exciting for the opportunity to work and continue not think that radical behaviorism (which he preferred
to study alongside Jerry. I knew I had so much more to we refer to as behavioral materialism) will accomplish
learn. I was so right!
much in changing society. Jerry was not a strong believer
My favorite Jerome Ulman quote is still displayed on my in the viability of piecemeal reform. Jerry did collaborate
office wall: “Don’t become overly concerned about mak- with Ernie to further define macrocontingency as the
ing mistakes; instead, focus on what can be learned from conjoint actions of two or more individuals under comthem.” I have been inspired through my search over Jer- mon contingency control. When analyzing institutional
ry’s documents and writings. I have discovered a man arrangements, macrocontingency relations function as
who continued to research, ask questions, and to even the “behavioral glue,”given an institution coherence and
make mistakes in the process.
endurance over long periods of time. Ultimately, Jerry
The chair for Jerry’s doctoral thesis, Beth Sulzer-Alzaroff, believed an appropriate conceptual framework would be
was taking another position at another university. Jerry necessary to approach the issue of a socialist experiment,
was faced with the dilemma to either finish in time or one that is based on the science of behaviorology (i.e.,
be forced to pay for his chair to fly back to allow him the analysis of contingency and macrocontingency relato defend his dissertation. Jerry shared with me that he tions). Some of Jerry’s views could have been seen as too
was taking too long to finish anyway. Jean agreed to political and a mistake to be so vocal, Jerry did it anyway
assist and fulfill the teacher role in his study. To speed for the greater good.
his study along and finish in time, Jerry used what he
called a “multi-element design” for his data. This study
was never published, however his work developed from
necessity, the multi-element design, added an experimental design to our field that was further studied and
18 Operants
It was such an honor to have the opportunity to work
and learn alongside this Materialist (anti-agencyism)
Skinnerian, correspondent with B.F. Skinner, founder of
multi-element design, avid scholar, advocate for working class, reenactment enthusiast, daily walker of the
dog, devoted friend, loving husband of 52 years, and
caring father to James and Amanda (and he added me to
that list in 2005). No one who encountered Jerry would
have been intimidated by this brilliant scholar. Instead,
Jerry viewed most humans he encountered as having
their own unique learning experience that provided
value to the conversation. Jerry encouraged questions
and pushed all of us around him to continue to seek our
own interests. For behavior analysts he encouraged us to
avoid mentalism and view behaviorology as natural science. He was adamant that we view our science as a field
of study that holds more value to mankind than only being viewed as a treatment for autism.
I treasure the time Jerry and I spent engaging in fun
weekly debates and philosophical conversations, and
this continued following his retirement. Sadly, it has been
about three years since Jerry and I spoke at this level.
He continued to read and to write for a while because
textual communication was easier for him than speaker-listener units of verbal behavior. As much as I have
missed those conversations, I am honored to have been
a part of Jerry’s life. I am the Materialistic, third generation Skinnerian from his influence. As we look forward
at the evolution of our field of study, I hope Jerry’s correspondence never gets lost, and that this conversation of
behaviorology continues.
Jerry and his wife Jeanie (her favorite picture)
My youngest son, Jake, at a school “wax museum” project. Jake
portrayed Skinner and had to give a history lesson to Jerry. Jake loved
learning from Jerry almost as much as I did! For several years, Jake
took special care to make sure Jerry had his Dr. Pepper at every meal we
shared together
Our last outing together. September 2021 Dinner Party, the far left is
my son Gabe.
Jerry walked his favorite dog, Ginger, everyday, typically twice a day
until the last two weeks of his life he was too weak.
Operants 19
theory
ACHIEVING PARITY WITH BILLY BLANKS
AND BOB ROSS
ON INTERMEDIATE AND TERMINAL CONSEQUENCES
IN LEARNING FROM VIDEO MODELS
Sydney Berkman
Video models are so popular that you, dear reader, might already be
a regular consumer. Do you get pumped up with Tae Bo, ripped with
P90X, or lean with Peloton? Have you looked up how to change a spark
plug or carve a turkey on YouTube? Maybe you appease your appetite
with assistance from Bon Appétit or the Cooking Channel. The more
artistically inclined readers might remember painting serene nature
scenes with the calm guidance of the late Bob Ross. Countless skills
can be learned by video, but behavior analysts and special educators
know that not everyone learns from video models. Some individuals
with autism, for example, fail to learn from video models. But why?
And how can we induce learning via video modeling with individuals
who otherwise fail to do so?
Sydney Berkman is pursuing his doctorate
in Behavior Analysis at Western New England University under the advisement of
Dr. Rebecca MacDonald. Sydney started
working at the New England Center for
Children in 2010 and currently works as
a residential Program Specialist. Sydney’s
behavior analytic interests include observational learning, group instruction, assessment and treatment of challenging behavior,
and staff training on creating high-quality
graphs. Sydney’s non-behavior analytic
interests include collecting and playing
stringed instruments, growing and learning about bonsai, competing in triathlons,
developing cooking skills, enjoying the great
outdoors, and spending time with his family
however he can.
20
Operants, Issue I, 2022
Behavior analysts generally agree that learning from a video requires
sustained attention to a video and the ability to learn by imitating
others. Various other skills – delayed imitation and delayed matching,
for example – are also correlated with performance on video modeled
tasks. But an open question (a mystery, perhaps) in the literature requires
explanation and leaves open the possibility that another prerequisite is
missing from the list. Specifically, Dr. Rebecca MacDonald and colleagues
point out that in several studies, participants learned from video models
without programmed reinforcement. Similarly, it’s unlikely that you
receive programmed reinforcement for your successful imitation of
Billy Blanks or Bob Ross. How do we explain learning via video models
in the absence of programmed reinforcement? What is the nature of
reinforcement for imitating a video model? Answering these questions
might help us bridge the gap for individuals with autism who fail to
learn from video models.
Two important concepts may help us answer the question: achieving
parity as a reinforcer and intermediate versus terminal consequences.
Regular readers of Operants are familiar with Dr. David Palmer, one of
the great behavior-analytic thinkers and writers of our time. Palmer’s
ideas –– and his willingness to talk about them –– have influenced a
generation of budding behavior analysts, myself included. In 1996,
Palmer wrote Achieving Parity: The Role of Automatic Reinforcement. His
thesis is that we recognize when our responses match the responses of
others (or when the products of our responses match the products of
others’ response) and that “achieving parity with” (or matching) others’
responses is itself reinforcing. In Verbal Behavior, Skinner gives this
example: “The child is reinforced automatically when he duplicates the
sounds of airplanes, streetcars, automobiles, vacuum cleaners, birds,
dogs, cats, and so on” (p. 164). Palmer and Skinner focus on the influence
of automatic reinforcement on verbal behavior, but the implications of
their interpretations are broadly applicable and can be
extended to learning via video models. Imitating a video
model is automatically reinforced when the imitator’s
responses achieve parity with, or match, the model’s
responses.
Note my word choice: responses (plural). More often
than not, training videos and video models developed for
educational and research purposes demonstrate response
chains composed of multiple responses. Yet in discussions
about imitating video models, behavior analysts tend
to focus on the importance of observing some terminal
consequence. For example, when the student in a video
(i.e., the model) completes a conversational exchange
with his peer or finishes building the Lego structure, a
nearby caregiver might praise the model and deliver a
toy or a treat. In creating such video models, researchers
operate on the assumption that the learner observes the
modeled behavior and the terminal consequence then
imitates. But with video models, we are just as likely to
follow along with the model – sometimes overtly and
sometimes covertly – rather than waiting to observe
some terminal consequence. I don’t wait for Billy Blanks
to finish his workout, watch him get high fives from his
students, then start my work out. I don’t wait for Bob Ross
to complete the painting and get paid by the producer.
I imitate each of their intermediate responses, and each
of my responses is automatically reinforced when it
matches the model’s response (or when the product of my
response matches the product of the model’s response).
My jabs and hooks are automatically reinforced when I
observe that my jabs and hooks match Billy’s. My paint
mixing is automatically reinforced when the color of my
paint matches the color of Bob Ross’s paint, and my brush
strokes are reinforced when the shapes and textures of
my painting match Bob’s. These consequences occur
intermediately, and in some cases nearly continuously, as
the learner follows along with the video. In considering
this possibility, the relative importance of observing some
terminal consequence is minimized and the importance
of intermediate consequences comes into focus. (As
noted above, sometimes the learner behaves, e.g., echoes
or tacts, covertly along with the video model. Those
covert responses are reinforced at those intermediate
points as they achieve parity with the video model and
allow the individual to imitate in the relevant context at
a later time. For more on this concept, see Palmer’s 2005
paper, Ernst Moerk and the Puzzle of Zero-Trial Learning).
Individuals who fail to learn from video models but
demonstrate the other prerequisite skills (delayed
imitation, delayed matching) might fail to learn
because of an insensitivity to automatic reinforcement
by achieving parity with a model including when
opportunities to match occur intermediately during the
video model. Behavior analysts need practical empirical
methods for establishing whether parity is a reinforcer. If
we determine that parity as automatic reinforcement is
indeed lacking, our next course of action becomes clear:
we should work to develop methods of establishing
parity as reinforcing.
In preparing to do so, it is important to remember that
the automatic reinforcement obtained by achieving
parity is likely conditioned. Skinner wrote in his 1984
paper, The Evolution of Behavior, “When organisms
are behaving because of prevailing contingencies of
reinforcement, similar behavior in another organism is
likely to be reinforced by the same contingencies” (p.
221). In other words, reinforcement for achieving parity
is established and maintained by the same naturally
occurring contingencies of reinforcement as those that
operate on the model. When those contingencies reverse
(i.e., imitation is punished) or cease (i.e., imitation is
extinguished), achieving parity loses its value as an
automatic reinforcer.
It is also important to remember that even when
reinforcement for achieving parity is well-established, for
parity to be reinforcing the learner must “be motivated”
to do the modeled skill. The learner may need to
“understand the point” of the modeled task to want to
do it. Few people would do Tae Bo without knowing the
long-term benefits, but knowing the end goal doesn’t
guarantee motivation either. Folks with no interest in
painting a Yosemite-esque scene won’t be reinforced
for imitating Bob Ross’s brush strokes. In developing
strategies for establishing parity as reinforcing, behavior
analysts may benefit from targeting skills and activities
for which the learner can “understand” the end goal
and from targeting skills and activities that are likely
reinforcing for the learner.
Some individuals with special needs may fail to learn via
video models because they lack a sensitivity to automatic
reinforcement by achieving parity. We may be able to
address failures to learn via video models by assessing for
the “presence” or “absence” of parity as reinforcement,
by establishing parity as a reinforcer, and by considering
the role of reinforcement occurring intermediately along
response chains. Keeping in mind issues of motivation
and naturally occurring reinforcement, we might induce
learning from a video model for individuals who didn’t
do so before and without the need for programmed,
externally provided reinforcement.
Author’s Note: I would like to thank my PhD advisor, Dr.
Rebecca MacDonald, for allowing me to pursue my reinforcers.
I’d also like to thank Dr. David Palmer for listening to and
helping shape my ideas about this topic and related topics. A
final thank you goes out to Chelsea Hedquist, Stephen Blaisdell,
and Zach Berkman for their invaluable input and feedback on
earlier drafts.
Operants 21
books
HENRY D. SCHLINGER’S HOW TO BUILD GOOD
BEHAVIOR AND SELF-ESTEEM IN CHILDREN
Francesca degli Espinosa
Being a parent is one of the most difficult jobs in the world. As we hold
the little human, so desperately dependent upon us, we wonder who
they are going to become, what they will look like when they are older.
We love them, more than we have ever loved anyone else and we vow
to protect them and do the best that we can to help them fulfill their
potential.
Francesca degli Espinosa began her career in
behavior analysis working as a tutor for a child
with autism, in the UK in 1996. During that
time she became interested in interventions that
could both define and establish generalized learning: the ability to demonstrate novel responses
within and across operant classes without each
individual response having been previously reinforced. She was the Lead Clinician for the first
UK-based EIBI outcome study at the University of Southampton and within that context
developed the Early Behavioral Intervention
Curriculum (EBIC) an intervention framework
derived from functional analyses of language to
establish generative multiply controlled verbal
behavior, which subsequently formed the principal focus of her Ph.D. (2011). Her clinical and
research interests focus on advanced applications
of contemporary analyses of verbal behavior as a
basis for teaching generalized verbal repertoires,
and, thereby, as a means of minimizing the need
to teach specific individual verbal responses.
Currently, she runs a small diagnostic and assessment clinic in the UK and teaches behavior
analysis at the University of Salerno, Italy, her
home country.
22
Operants, Issue I, 2022
As the little helpless baby becomes a fully talking and walking child,
we encounter new challenges. As a behavior analyst and a psychologist
with a keen interest in development, I thought I knew a thing or
two about raising children, yet with my own children I often found
myself doing the very things clients paid me to correct in their own
parenting. I engaged in circular reasoning, attributing much of the
responsibility for my children’s tantrums, non-cooperation and the
occasional bouts of selective eating to their personality, rather than my
inadvertent teaching. Of course, I was slightly better equipped than
most parents, and my children successfully transitioned into sulky
screen-worshiping adolescents. On most days, they help with chores,
generally say “please” and “thank you” after an expectant look, work
reasonably hard at school and can engage in conversations with adults
beyond three monosyllabic exchanges. However, when 15 years ago
my third child was born and his 18-month-old brother turned into a
screaming, demanding, attention-seeking monster, I could have used
Henry D. Schlinger’s book, How to Build Good Behavior and Self-Esteem
in Children.
As an applied professional working with families and their children, my
shelves are filled with books from a range of disciplines, from behavior
analytic ones to developmental psychology, as well as parenting books
from well-meaning pediatricians, educators, and psychologists (and
supernannies, I must admit) who offer reassuring words and poorly
operationalized strategies on how to help your difficult child turn into
a model little citizen. The strategies described in these books often have
a behavioral flavour to them, but are based typically on common sense,
anecdotes and experience, rather than on solid scientific principles of
behavior.
Interestingly, applied behavior analysis, the discipline that most
has to offer to effect behavior change has been somewhat silent on
the subject of parenting. Schlinger’s book finally fills the gap. In this
book, Schlinger’s stylistic academic prose is replaced by writing that is
accessible to all parents, regardless of their background.
The book has one main goal: to teach parents how to harness the power
of behavioral principles to build good behavior in their children. And
Schlinger meets this goal well, by organizing the content
in a step-by-step guidebook divided into seven aptly
sequenced sections, each containing between two and
three interconnected chapters, each chapter focusing on
a behavioral process and application.
The first two chapters center on identifying the problem
that has plagued the field of psychology for decades, the
belief that behavior comes from within the individual
who chooses to act in a certain way. Schlinger explains
in simple and effective terms how a science of behavior
views what children do and why, without falling into
technical jargon. The tone of the book is instructional,
without being condescending. Each chapter begins
with an explanation of a behavioral principle, such
as reinforcement, with many examples from real life
parenting scenarios that help the reader contextualize
what are sometimes difficult concepts to grasp. Many
behavioral strategies are described in each chapter
based on the type of change required and the derived
principle at work. At the end of each chapter is a fill-inthe-blank quiz to strengthen one’s understanding of the
content. The book covers many concepts and common
parental challenges, largely focusing on consequence
manipulations. Although antecedent manipulations
are mentioned throughout the book, a chapter solely
dedicated to antecedent strategies may have been
useful in showing how all parts of a contingency can be
effectively manipulated.
In the very last appendix, the author expertly dispels
some of the myths regarding the concept of reinforcement
and common but erroneous views, for example, that it is
bribery, it doesn’t work with humans, it is manipulative,
and that it undermines intrinsic motivation. This is a
section that every professional working with children
should read.
While the book is written with parents in mind, it is a
book that should be on the shelves of every professional
working directly with families, such as teachers, social
workers, psychologists and behavior analysts. Although
behavior analysts will be fluent in the theoretical
concepts, the book offers them many examples that could
be borrowed to explain to parents and professionals, in
simple terms, the scientific principles behind behavior
change intervention.
Parents are a child’s first educators, but unlike educational
professionals, they receive no training on how to carry
out the difficult and important task of bringing up
children. How to Build Good Behavior and Self-Esteem in
Children empowers them with the knowledge not only
that change is possible, but it also provides them with an
instructional manual describing scientifically informed
methods to achieve it.
Henry D. (Hank) Schlinger Jr. received his PhD in
psychology (applied behavior analysis) from Western
Michigan University (WMU) under the supervision
of Jack Michael. He then completed a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded post-doctoral fellowship
in behavioral pharmacology also at WMU with Alan
Poling. Dr. Schlinger was a full tenured professor of
psychology at Western New England University in Springfield, MA,
before moving to Los Angeles in 1998. He is now professor of psychology and former director of the M. S. Program in Applied Behavior
Analysis in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. Dr. Schlinger has published more than 80 scholarly
articles and commentaries in more than 30 different journals. He also
has authored or co-authored three books, Psychology: A Behavioral
Overview (1990), A Behavior-Analytic View of Child Development (1995) (translated into Japanese), and Introduction to Scientific Psychology(1998). He is past editor of The Analysis of Verbal
Behavior and The Behavior Analyst and sits on the editorial boards
of several other journals. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of
the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and on the Advisory
Board of The Venus Project (https://www.resourcebasedeconomy.org/
advisory-board/). He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from
the Department of Psychology at Western Michigan University in
2012, and the Jack Michael Award for Outstanding Contributions
in Verbal Behavior from the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group
of the Association for Behavior Analysis International in 2015. Since
2020, Dr. Schlinger serves on the Advisory Board of the B. F. Skinner
Foundation.
Operants 23
interview
ELIZABETH HAUGHTON: MEASUREMENT
IS INTEGRATED INTO MY LIFE
Interview by Sheila Cornelius
During an interview in 1968, Skinner shared that with R. Evans that his most important
contribution was the use of rate of response, also known as behavior frequency, as the most
sensitive measure of response strength, combined with visual analysis using the cumulative recorder, a standard graphic display for monitoring moment-to-moment changes in
behavior frequency. These methodological elements enabled laboratory scientists around the
globe to discover how specific events and arrangements of events function to influence behavior, defining, for example, discriminative stimuli, reinforcing stimuli, and schedules of
reinforcement. Elizabeth Haughton has been applying Skinner’s variable, rate of response,
in teaching children longer than any currently active professional. Starting her career in
the mid 1960’s as a classroom teacher without technical background in behavior science,
she learned to measure the count per minute frequencies of her students’ skilled behavior
from Eric Haughton, Co-Founder with Ogden Lindsley of Precision Teaching. Precision
teaching was and is Lindsley’s methodology for bringing Skinner’s measure and visual
analysis into classrooms. She learned to record frequencies on the standard behavior chart,
also known as the standard celeration chart, which is a graphic display created by Lindsley
for teachers to monitor changes in behavior frequency, that is learning, over time.
Elizabeth has designed and revised countless curriculum sequences, instructional programs, and teaching procedures by measuring students’ rate of response as they learned
and practiced, just as Skinner conducted single-subject laboratory analyses using behavior
frequencies to assess the impact (i.e., function) of events arranged in relation to behavior
(i.e., contingencies). Despite never having learned the technical language of Skinner’s science, Elizabeth’s career has produced a remarkable number of discoveries, based on her use
of Skinner’s measure. For example, she created a widely used hand-writing program by measuring response rates of behavior components in brief
timings as children learned and practiced writing letters and composing text. She discovered missing behavior components related to auditory discrimination as she created a program able to “cure” deficits in what reading specialists call auditory processing. She has developed flexible protocols
for engaging students’ attention and enthusiasm, sequencing learning and practice activities that combine relatively fluent activities that they enjoy,
with those they are still working to acquire. In over five decades as a teacher (and still going strong), Elizabeth Haughton has combined Skinner’s
measure with a “big heart” – known for her compassionate and inspiring care for her students, their families and for countless colleagues whom she
has guided, mentored, advised, and inspired. She is, indeed, one of the very best examples of how we can apply measurement and analytical guidelines
derived from Skinner’s science to benefit both individuals and society. The living testament to her contributions are students and parents who return,
year after year, sometimes decades later, to thank Elizabeth for having changed their lives for the better.
Carl Binder
Sheila Cornelius: Can you tell us how you learned about B. F. Skinner?
Elizabeth Haughton: I first learned about B. F. Skinner in my educational psychology classes during the mid-sixties.
At that time there was no indication offered as to how his research could be implemented in my teaching. Yet today
I consider Skinner as part of my professional family, the great grandfather of the work I do. I did have the honor
and privilege of meeting Skinner at Harvard. I went to his office with Eric Haughton for tea and conversation. I
remember being so impressed that the legendary Skinner took the time to talk with us and answer Eric ‘s questions.
I was really pleased to have met him.
S: Wow, I never knew that you met Skinner. Thank you for sharing your story, Elizabeth. What do you believe is
his most significant contribution?
E: This question leads to three topics I would like to address. Of course, the first item deals with the rate of response
or the frequency of the behavior. I often use “pace” with parents now because they tend to equate frequency with
speed. So, I talk to them about the pace of the behavior, and whether the pace is sufficient to be useful in an academic
skill building. Parents understand pace while terms like rate of response and frequency don’t resonate with them. For
me, of course frequency is a great gift.
24
Operants, Issue I, 2022
The second crucial gift, derived from Skinner’s work, via
Ogden Lindsley, is having a standard graphic display
of a behavior’s frequency. A key element of Precision
Teaching is the standard celeration chart, which I call the
standard learning chart. This is really, really important
because over the years it has allowed me to look at
learning in a standard way so that I can make quick
decisions to enhance learning efficiency and established
aims which insure retained fluent behaviors, or fluencies
for short. Standardized measurement and the chart also
enables effective communication with other practitioners.
In the early days of Precision Teaching chart sharing was
a key element in furthering the development of not only
our own individual skills but the whole discipline as
well. The third gift is the idea that the learner knows
best; this means that what we learn from the student’s
performance needs to continually guide our arrangement
of their practice. These three gifts have been tremendous
in my life and have allowed me to help a lot of learners.
S: Why do you think Skinner saw the importance of
frequency when measuring behavior?
E: As a result of his experiments with various apparatus
Skinner created a paradigm shift in the study of behavior
which in turn led to the maxim that responses need
immediate feedback to enhance frequency. In so doing
Skinner was essentially pointing out a need which was
filled by Ogden Lindsley’s Standard Celeration Chart.
When you add practices, which carefully manage the
difficulty of stimuli and provide positive reinforcement
from the perceived growth illustrated on the chart,
and compound it with the secondary reinforcement
of celebrating those good outcomes as personal bests,
you have what I consider the ideal environment for
accelerating learning success.
It was not always thus; I taught for five years before I
started measuring frequency, and concluded that we
needed something far more sensitive to measure learning;
at that time, I only had percent correct and accuracy. I
wondered if what I was looking for could resolve the
great disparities I was observing in the learning rates
between individuals. I took courses and workshops in
a quest to discover how to help learners who were not
getting up to grade level, especially students who were
not reading well.
The addition of the concept of frequency allowed
Precision Teaching practitioners, like myself, to quantify
changes in each student’s rate of performance and use
that data, rather than hunches, to adapt curriculum to
their unique learning style. It seems obvious in hindsight
but that was a game changer.
It took me a while to get used to the application of
behavior frequency to my teaching. But one thing that Eric
Haughton taught me was that everything has a frequency.
You’re breathing at a certain frequency, blinking at a
certain frequency, you read at a certain frequency, speak
at a certain frequency, and so on. Eric, following on
Skinner’s discovery that frequency was the best measure
of probability or strength of response, taught us how to
apply that insight to the process of learning. I continue to
try to move others forward, to add frequency to accuracy,
by counting both correct and incorrect responses over
time, followed by making instructional decisions based
on that information.
S: Who else saw measurement as a significant
contribution to the field?
E: Here is where I would like to talk a little bit about
my professional family. Of course, we start with all the
benefits of B. F. Skinner’s science, for I consider him
to be my professional great grandfather. His student
Ogden Lindsley, whose contributions included Precision
Teaching with the standardized chart, is my grandfather.
He wisely understood that standard measurement was a
prerequisite to having a community of practitioners who
communicate through a shared world view. I was drawn
to his work because he used Skinner’s measurement in
Special Education and I was a Special Education Teacher.
My quest finally paid off when I bumped into Og and
Eric at their workshop at the Behavior Modification
Conference in Napa, California. I think that was 1970.
There were two events that changed my life: that
workshop, and seeing Precision Teaching in Ann Starlin’s
classroom in Eugene, Oregon, where I saw her students
using it with much apparent enthusiasm. It was clear to
me then that her students had been given a tool by which
they could not only see their growth in real time but
also organize strategies as to how to improve it. I knew
Precision Teaching was the method I had been looking
for and that I needed to learn all that I could about it.
So, there is Skinner, then Lindsley, then my chart father
Eric Haughton. Eric taught me a tremendous amount
about helping students. Then came my chart brother, Carl
Binder, who gives me a tremendous amount of support
and is a model for combining compassion with science.
All of these people were directly influenced by Skinner. It
is heartening to see how all of my senior charting family
left Harvard with courage, integrity, and a commitment
to make the world a better place.
S: And it is significant that you and your chart brother
continue to take Skinner’s science to the world to make
it a better place.
E: Yes. And you might laugh if I started listing all the
aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on. As the family develops
it does great work. I’m really pleased, it does go on.
S: How do you use measurement in what you do?
E: I developed a model which I call the Happy Learner. I
think it is a good place to start. It organizes how Precision
Teaching, my measurement plan, integrates into and
governs both my instructional plan and my practice plan.
It helps me explain to parents what I do. When we call
it Precision Teaching it can get confusing, so I just say my
measurement plan. I tell them the steps I follow; I pinpoint
Operants 25
the behavior as precisely as I can, I count and time the
practice of the behavior, I chart correct and incorrect
responses, and I use the data to continually adjust my
instruction and practice, which is the key to maximizing
learning efficiency.
Some people collect data, but don’t analyze it. Using
the data for decisions is the whole point of its collection.
I even teach the students about the data. I continually
share it with them when the chart is going up, staying
flat, or going down, and it tells me when we have to
make changes to increase efficiency. Doing so assures
them that I am constantly aware of their progress, and
it is a key element in insuring that their practice is selfreinforcing.
As a person steeped in the application of Precision
Teaching I was always asking Eric, my wise chart father,
questions that arose in the classroom. Once I told him
of a kindergarten teacher who reported that her student
knew her colors but when I pointed to different colored
objects, she could not tell me their colors. I asked the
teacher how the child had demonstrated her knowledge
of colors, and she indicated the student could point to
colors when asked. This interchange pointed out that our
communities need to better refine, or standardize, our
descriptions of the modes of student output and input.
People would define a skill as “identify your colors” but
put this way it is a goal that might obtain only partial
literacy because you can both see/say and hear/point to
indicate colors when prompted. So, Eric, with the help of
his students, began identifying student channels of input
and output which he then organized into a matrix. This
work has led to what we are now call learning channels.
A learning channel consists of a verb, specifying the
mode of the teacher’s prompt, for example see or hear
input, which is paired with the output verb indicating
the mode required in the response; for example, say,
write, or mark. When we use channels, we often employ
many channels, or forms of behavior, to teach a skill. Our
data show that adding channels can increase learning
efficiency.
I really believe in the necessity of using current data to
determine the courses of instruction and practice. I think
the most challenging part of doing the measurement is
pinpointing the behavior, because once the data tell you
that you need to change, you have to go back and find
out what is going on. At this point one has to review
the learner’s foundation skills, past performances, and
their practice aims to craft achievable chunks that ensure
learning success. Another way to say this is that we
have to identify missing or non-fluent components or
behavior elements. When we see that the student isn’t
making progress, we must always ask ourselves if too
much is being given and whether the program reflects
an optimal balance between the use of an individual’s
strengths and needs.
Now, Jonathan Amey, Richele Yeich, and I continue this
26 Operants
principle by teaching others to channel wrap, which
is to take a pinpoint, identify the forms of input and
output that could be employed, and arrange them for
application. We may not use all of them with a learner,
but when a chart goes flat the solution is often to support
with added channels. When a student’s data with see/
write math facts are flat we would use see/say and hear/
say channels in our practice to strengthen the see/write
channel. An expansion of channels can also lead to the
discovery of overlooked strengths that can be applied to
other pinpoints. It’s amazing what you can do with one
channel to develop fluency in another.
Not only do I use measurement in my academic life with
my students, I use it personally. I keep track of the steps
I take per day and I chart them. I also channel wrap
with data, measuring my daily moments of gratitude. I
write them, I say them, and I think them, and I keep
track on the chart. This has really helped me through
the whole negative cycle we’ve undergone with COVID.
It’s measurement that is integrated into my life. It is a
great science, with very practical applications, which I
appreciate.
S: After the time you spent in public schools, why did
you decide to go private?
E: I’m actually very committed to public education,
though critical of some its recent trends. After 20
years there, I decided to start my own business with
encouragement from grandfather Og and chart brother
Carl. And I will say that, even now, the business side is
a challenge for me. But I never would have missed the
opportunity to go private. It gave me a chance to do
what I believe is really needed in education. That is, to
apply what I call the Big Heart plus Science –– empathy
for the learner combined with rigorous application of
standardized measurement.
Unencumbered by a bureaucracy, I was free to see
what could be done. This freedom allows for the best of
personal support that you can give learners, families, and
teachers. It allowed the compassion of the Big Heart to be
fully integrated with the science of Precision Teaching in
ways that would be thwarted in curriculum driven public
education which focuses on accuracy without regard for
frequency. I was able to put into practice the Precision
Teaching moto that the learner knows best, by creating an
environment in which knowledge was recorded and
interpreted through the objective lens of standardized
measurement. Analysis of these data in turn reinforces a
no-fault approach to learning by refocusing the attention
created by errors on adaptation rather than blame.
Eric liked to stress positivity and called errors learning
opportunities.
At the Haughton Learning Center (HLC) we made
many discoveries in the sequencing of curriculum, the
understanding of foundation and component skills, the
delivery and sequencing of programs for students, the
sequence of playing a game, working on strengths and
needs, and so on.
Our work at the HLC led to the development of new
instructional strategies, curriculum, and procedures,
like our metaphor of the Learning Bank, which defines
student fluencies as assets deposited in their banks.
When they reached a pre-set number of fluencies, they
were remunerated with a twenty-dollar check. People
used to say it was wrong to pay students for learning,
and my response was to relate how my bookkeeper came
to me one day for an explanation of the many uncashed
checks we had on the books: Those checks, representing
the student’s first payment from outside the family,
were worth more as symbols of achievement than their
monetary value to purchase things. Later I switched to
currency and today my classroom walls are lined with
pictures of smiling learners holding up their ten-dollar
bills.
A colleague of mine, who had a very successful private
center of her own, told me shortly after I opened, that
my students would need four hours a day and five days
a week of intensive work. I thought no one would ever
pay me for doing that. I was wrong, the parents whose
children needed in-depth emersion did pay, and they
were very appreciative of the results. In fact, some of
those parents ended up spreading their appreciation of
our work with their friends which made it possible to
spend most of the marketing budget on those student
rewards.
One of the families I worked with over 17 years ago
recently called to thank me for the center’s role in their
daughter’s achievements. The mother and I both ended
up in tears while talking. After we talked, I was struck
by the fact that my classroom still displays a poster,
given to me by the father, which lists 101 ways to praise
a child. That poster had a special significance in light of
our first interaction. When their daughter and son first
started at Haughton Learning Center, the father was very
skeptical; he later confessed that he thought we were all
about fun and games because his kids liked coming so
much. I arranged for him to visit during their tutoring.
We showed him our data driven approach, all of our
documentation of their progress, and how it was used
for carefully arranged reinforcement. That poster about
child motivation was his way of saying he got it. He
ended up taking our brochures and business cards to
share with his dental patients and everyone else he could
in Napa.
I no longer have a large staff whose direction absorbs
much of my time. Instead, I develop curriculum and
help other teachers with pinpointing; but mostly I spend
my time with the students, which affords me a dynamic
relationship in which I learn just as much as they do, and
this is very fulfilling.
S: Is there anyone special at HLC that helps you right
now.
E: First there is my sister, Gina Spencer, who has been a
teacher almost as long as I, and who is still active. We’ve
been teaming for years. I also want to back up and say
that this work is all about having a team of people to
help, including the student, the parents, and the teachers.
Ogden set the example with what people now call the
“credit lines” on the bottom of the standard celeration
chart. These are places to write the names of people who
are involved in the student’s learning. If you don’t have
a team, you’ll be pretty lonely. I cannot over-stress the
importance of the team. People who don’t team usually
stop the measurement because they do not know what
to do with it, and do not have anyone to ask for help
with new ideas. Community also reinforces. My team
includes Carl, Richele, Jonathan, Clay Starlin, Jennifer
Baker, Mary Schmidt, and a whole lot of other chart
siblings.
S: You do functional behavior analysis with another
tool that was used by Eric Haughton, his student, Owen
White, and others, described as the IS-DOES plan. Can
you explain this?
E: The IS-DOES plan can be used to structure the analysis
of students’ behavior and is one of the reasons for my
instructional success. It requires the teacher to list the
elements of the teaching procedure –– the behavior, what
comes before it, what is arranged to alter it, and how
it is arranged –– as they are under IS –– what behavior
scientists would call an operational definition. When we
try the procedure, and change any element of what IS, we
discover if it DOES anything to the student’s behavior,
what behavior scientists would call functional definition.
In Eric Haughton’s coursework at the University of
Oregon, we not only had to use the IS plan, we had to
time ourselves while practicing to become more fluent
using it to document our teaching plans and what worked
in our applications. The columns consisted of program,
program event, movement cycle, and events arranged
to accelerate the project. At one point, when we were
working with children who had been institutionalized,
Eric became concerned that we were overly focused on
decelerations so he came up with what he called a Fair
Pair, hence forth our programs should have at least as
many acceleration as deceleration pinpoints shifting our
perspective towards positive growth. Learning to use the
IS-DOES plan fluently taught me to pay attention to how
you sit with a student, what time of day you are working
with the student, and all of the other little aspects that
are in the environment that can effect how the student is
going to learn. It also helped to multiply our ideas, and
then see what worked.
I live in the program event world. I am a teacher so I
am always studying new ways to do things. There are
many other things to consider like the movement cycle
itself and the arrangement you make after the response.
For example, are you going to give a sticker or are you
going to praise the child? I do not write out an IS plan
for every project. But it is worth using, and knowing the
Operants 27
kinds of options that are available if you need to make a
phase change. It might be a simple change, or it might be
a very complex instructional change. But you have to be
aware of the options, and the IS plan is the place to start.
Eric’s insistence on our becoming fluent in generating
options was an important part of my development as a
teacher. The IS plan taught me to identify the details of
what you plan, and then to use the data to discover what
works. And if it is not working, then we can consider
the changes that need to be made. That follows exactly
Skinner’s single-subject experimental science.
S: When providing ABA services with new families,
we have a method that we go through to establish a
relationship with the families. You have an unbelievable
way of connecting with your learners, me included. I
remember the first time we met. Do you have a specific
way of connecting with your learners?
E: Well, I actually do. At first it was a conscious effort
guided by suggestions from my mentors and now,
practiced to fluency, it has become second nature. The
first thing I want to say about what I do is that I am a
learner myself. And to have a relationship with another
learner you need to show that you are also a learner.
When I first assess a child, I ask them about their feelings;
this is fundamental if you want to avoid being linked to
the child’s prior negative academic experiences and any
inattention to their distress which followed the event.
Usually, the students I see have had many painful failures
of the system, failures which they may have internalized
as their own. I have a sheet for them that shows a happy
face, a straight face, and a sad face. I ask them how they
feel about school, and how they feel about math, reading,
and whatever else it is we will be working on. I also mix
in hamburgers, coffee, friends in the neighborhood; all
they have to do is mark the face that reflects their feelings.
When they mark it, I don’t ask them for an explanation, I
just want them to know that I want to be attuned to their
feelings. Usually there is a positive difference in their
demeanor when they finish, as compared to when they
start. I try to identify the things that bug them as well
as things which give them pleasure and thereby indicate
someone is listening to them. Then I can work on their
strengths as well as their needs with some guidance of
where emotional land mines may lay. This activity is a
subtle start of my ongoing message to them that ‘I am a
student here as well as you and I will apply what I learn
from you to the work we will be doing together’.
My husband has observed that my initial description of
a new student invariably stresses how smart they are.
That is always my working assumption from the outset
which means the challenge is for me to translate their
unformed abilities, through efficient practices, into the
skills our society requires. We all have strengths, and I
strive to bring those out so they feel confident, and so
they will bring energy to the practice sessions which
fuel their performance. I also devote time to point out
and honor each of their personal bests, that is, the best
28 Operants
frequencies they have achieved to date; I image personal
bests as motivational rungs in the ladder of learning
performance, and I am particularly pleased to hear
someone plead ‘I can do better, let’s try it again.’ That in
a nutshell is the cycle of reinforcement which drives both
student and instructor forward.
However, sometimes we work with students with very
complicated issues. I learned another approach from Dr.
Jack Downing who was a psychiatrist. I would consult
with him when I had challenges with a student in my
class for students with emotionally disturbed behavior.
These were students who were resistant to interacting at
all; they had known so much failure they did not want to
engage and risk more failure. He taught me a procedure
from his own practice which was to model how to
breathe and relax, while watching their behavior, thereby
alerting me as to when to give them more, and when
to hold back; through this we could build a repertoire
together. The breathing and relaxing becomes matching.
This might not work with every learner, but it will
work with some. When they find that they can engage,
make progress, and see things change, your relationship
changes. Jack’s brilliant insight was that this process of
building respect for each other could start at the most
basic level of breathing, something essential to all of us,
and the first meaningful act of our lives.
The other thing which I really pay attention to when
establishing a learning relationship is the sequence of
the daily program. I usually start with a game or favorite
activity. I move carefully into their strengths, then
their needs, then their strengths, then their needs, and
if possible, end with one of their strengths so they close
with a good feeling. The order is so important. Also, I
maintain a routine in most of their sessions, because
most students like a predictable order in their program.
I can’t express too strongly that students love routine,
all too often it is the adults who don’t. Learners embrace
the practice required for their development when it
comes wrapped in the comfort of routines that provide
immediate feedback on their performances of tasks,
crafted to contain an appropriate mix of challenge and
achievability. I love my students, and my students love
me. A mother whose son is coming back to me for help
with math, told me, “I mentioned you, and he smiled, so I
knew it was fine.”
It’s caring, it’s that big heart, it’s that big heart with the
science. You need the science, and I really want to stress
that for sure. But I really believe that you also need the
care. And I learned that from my own mother, who was
a very caring teacher. She was trained as a teacher but
mothering six children took all of her time. She knew
how to foster relationships of mutual understanding
which was marvelous. So, I attribute that to her.
S: When you are with your learners, do they use the
measurement system?
E: When I first started with Precision Teaching, I taught
a classroom of first and second graders and there came a
point where I had to teach the children to chart or greatly
restrict what measurements I could collect and analyze.
I was calling my unrecorded measurement data, but Eric
Haughton said, that numbers weren’t data until I put
them on a chart. Until I did, I couldn’t use it effectively
to see learning patterns to make decisions. With over 30
students, each with multiple pinpoints, I was unable to
keep up with recording the data, let alone make decisions
from it. So not only did I teach the children to chart, I
first had to teach them about the chart. That is, they
learned to say the days of the week, forward and back.
I had to teach them the numbers on the chart, 1 to 10, 10
to 20, and even more important, how to estimate. While
this took time, that investment was repaid by subsequent
increases in their performances made possible by the
chart’s feedback.
Now I work one-to-one with students in the learning
center, and most students do not need to learn how to
chart. It takes so much time, and they are so far behind,
plus I doubt most parents would want to pay me to teach
them how to chart. However, I do teach some of them
to count things. For example, one of my learners on the
spectrum never asked questions, in fact he barely spoke
at age ten when he first arrived at the center. He could
answer a question but then no back and forth dialogue
would ever ensue. We determined that getting him to
ask questions would be the next step towards the goal
to initiate conversation. So, I gave him a counter, put
it on his arm, and told him that every time he asked a
question, he should count it. Oh my goodness those prior
years of counting all of his practices must have made an
impression. He would look at you, count, then ask you
a question. The desire to count triggered the question.
He asked questions all day. A week later we limited the
counting to just the morning and he continued asking
questions and using the counter. After three weeks
of counting in the mornings he had developed a key
conversation skill to pair with answering a question. His
drive to count got him to initiate speech.
I had another student count two pinpoints (1) his urges to
fight, and (2) his actual fights on the playground, which
he recorded on two wrist counters. Teachers had been
viewing him as a problem, but once they were shown data
on how many urges to fight he had managed to suppress,
his behavior could then be framed in the context of his
struggle to overcome those urges and the deceleration of
his fights. It is really affirming when objective data can
be used to reconfigure peoples’ negative preconceptions.
So, I do involve a student if they needed to count their
own behavior.
Learning to measure your own behavior can also be
very valuable. When Eric Haughton was very ill, we
had his hospital room covered with charts. The nurses
even attended to his data because he would know things
before they did; they came to trust that his data were
more sensitive, and therefore more predictive of where
he was headed at any particular point in his treatment
cycle. I think Eric got more attention and better care from
the nursing staff because of those charts.
S: Why do you think we need to continue emphasizing
Skinner’s work with measurement?
E: We need competent and confident people to make
decisions in the world, in our country, in our communities,
and for themselves. For that to happen they need to
have standardized, objectively obtained data. I sat in my
doctor’s office and had her tell me, “There are no data.
I need one or two pieces of data, but I really want three
pieces, to make a decision.” I was so pleased with her
for saying that because my life was the subject of those
decisions. I collect and act on data for the good of society,
for the good of the individual to be confident to want to
learn, and to solve the problems that we are facing as a
world. Percentage correct is not enough, it is part of it, but
it’s not enough. I just want Happy Learners with good
quality of life. I think Skinner’s measurement of rate of
response, and all the steps we go through in applying it,
are really worth the effort.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:
Sheila Cornelius received her master’s degree in Behavior
Analysis from Ball State University. Her professors and mentors
highlighted the significance of B. F. Skinner’s research throughout
and after her studies. Sheila embraces volunteering with nonprofit organizations throughout studies and her career. As the
past editor-in-chief of the Operants magazine, Sheila treasures
her experiences with the B. F. Skinner Foundation. She spent
over 15 years active in a variety of environments. She loved the
opportunity to take behavior analytic principles to a classroom
environment. Currently, Sheila enjoys overseeing ABA services
provided in homes and schools in her community.
Operants 29
reflections
MY REMEMBRANCE OF JACK MICHAEL
Greg Stikeleather
I read B. F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior as a college
freshman in Illinois. This was not assigned reading for any class,
the book was given to me by a recent behavioral convert who
was not a student at the time, but was always on campus: Joe
Layng. I devoured the book, and it devoured me. Before the
year ended I applied to transfer to Western Michigan University,
which at the time, in the early ‘70s, was the nexus of behavioral
psychology. I didn’t know a soul in Kalamazoo, but I knew
about some people, and Jack Michael was one of the key people
I knew about.
Greg Stikeleather is an advisor, producer, serial
entrepreneur, and investor with a behavioral
learning sciences background. He was President
and CEO of Headsprout, a venture-backed
company he co-founded to make behaviorallysound instruction available to learners via
the Internet. Headsprout products have
taught millions of children how to read. He
was previously a managing director at a San
Francisco venture capital firm. Prior to that,
Stikeleather successfully led, as CEO, two
venture-backed, high-tech companies: Aha!
Software and Portola Communications, acquired
by Microsoft and Netscape, respectively.
Earlier, Stikeleather applied his learning science
training as an instructional and user interface
designer at Apple, where he developed and ran
its first usability testing laboratory. Stikeleather
was educated in the learning sciences with a
graduate degree in experimental psychology from
Northeastern University, working with Murray
Sidman, and a BS in behavior analysis from
Western Michigan University.
I was reading everything Skinner I could get my hands on
and remembered hearing that Jack had a copy of Skinner’s
unpublished William James Lectures. I was new in town and
hadn’t yet met Jack, but one Saturday morning I picked up the
phone and called him at his home number (no cell phones or
texting or email at that time). Jack answered—people did that
back then—and I introduced myself and told him of my interest
in the “William James Lectures.” He invited me to drop by his
house and he’d loan me his copy for me to use to make my own
copy (no internet then, so no PDF downloads).
There were a number of people at Jack’s place when I arrived,
with lots of conversation going on. (I remember meeting Marty
Greenberg there, who was visiting Kalamazoo from North Texas
State, where he worked with Don Whaley.) I was pretty excited
to get Jack’s personal copy of the William James Lectures, and Jack
paid attention to any attention students paid to Skinner.
30
Operants, Issue I, 2022
I signed up for all Jack’s classes I could, starting with
Verbal Behavior, and soon after About Behaviorism, and
he OK’d my enrollment in his graduate seminars, too. I
also ended up serving as a Teaching Assistant for Verbal
Behavior, which provided even more opportunities to dig
into the subject matter. Mark Sundberg and Linda Parrot
Hayes were in a number of these classes, too, and the
discussions everyone had during and after classes served
as part of the verbal community for many developing
repertoires.
Jack loved teaching, thought experiments, and dancing.
And laughing. Lots of parties in those days. I remember
in particular that Jack loved Fleetwood Mac. Ever since
those days at Western, whenever I hear Fleetwood Mac I
always think of Jack; I can see him dancing.
Jack had some well-known pet peeves. He was keen on
correcting certain pronunciations that students growing
up in the midwest tended to have in their repertoires.
I did an Honor’s College thesis in my last year as an
undergraduate and Jack was on my committee. We’d
had numerous discussions about my thesis work, “A
behavioral analysis of mnemonics,” and I knew he liked
where the analysis ended up. I was hoping he would
echo his complimentary views to the entire committee
during my oral defense of the thesis. This is what I recall
of Jack’s brief remarks, (in Jack’s characteristic staccato
voice): “Yes, yes, very good, very good. Remember,
nuclear is pronounced ‘new-clear,’ not ’new-cue-ler’. Too
many people say ‘new-cue-ler’.’”
Jack told me in the ‘80s that he wished I would have
chosen an academic professional path, but he got over
that—and he did like that I stayed involved in behavior
analysis through the decades that followed. We’d always
get together to catch up at behavioral conferences, and
Alyce Dickinson and Jack and I would always have a
meal together whenever I visited Kalamazoo—except
the last time, when our visit together was at the facility
where Jack lived his last remaining years. We didn’t eat
together that last time, but we laughed together.
Jack was a major intellectual influence on so many great
behavior analysis professionals: Mark Sundberg, Hank
Schlinger, Linda Hayes, Margaret Vaughn, Caio Miguel,
Matt Normand, and Dave Palmer are just a few. But
Jack’s impact on me and so many others wasn’t just as a
teacher and writer, it was also as a life-long friend.
Operants 31
in the lab
RATS! THE SQUEAKQUEL
THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF REACTIVATING A LIVE RAT PROGRAM
IN THE MIDST OF A PANDEMIC
Andrew D. Katayama, Michelle I. Nash, Ryan Neal Dickman
United States Air Force Academy
Introduction
After two years in the making, the department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Air Force
Academy relaunched our “Live Rat” program with full
accreditation by the Institutional Animal Care and Use
Committee (IACUC) and the American Association for
Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC)
who oversee the care and use of laboratory animals. This
article highlights the processes involved in reestablishing
such a program for use in a laboratory setting in higher
education even during the recent Covid-19 pandemic.
Part of this process is an ongoing effort sustaining and
renovating lab equipment as well as amending our protocols concerning the use of rats for class and laboratory
sessions with cadets. It is our hope that other institutions
interested in starting up such a program will find our
processes helpful in building their own live rat program
in concert with an undergraduate learning course.
Fortunately, for us, we did not have to start from scratch.
We were able to obtain the blueprints from a previous
protocol that was approved back in 2015. Our 2018 article
in Operants details a brief history of our live rat program
over the decades going as far back as 1997 until the temporary shutdown of our program during the 2017-2018
academic year (see Katayama, Mastroianni and Blitch’s
article in the 2018 Q3 issue of Operants). This article also
highlights some observations of how we utilized a virtual rat program called “Sniffy” to augment the Learning
and Cognition course for two years when our live rat
program was temporarily halted.
While our implementation of Sniffy, the virtual rat,
seemed to accomplish some of the basic goals of the lab
portion of the course (i.e., bar pressing and grooming behaviors), it was unable to replicate the overall experience
of conditioning the rats to perform more intricate behaviors (i.e., hurdles, climbing, maze running). Course
evaluations also indicate that our cadets “missed out”
on the physical interactions with their rats that simply
could not be achieved with Sniffy on their laptop computers. The consensus from both faculty and cadets was
that while Sniffy was an adequate consolation or substitute to training live rats, it clearly was not the same
32
Operants, Issue I, 2022
experience.
Reinstating the Live Rat Program: The Squeakquel
During our transition of not having live rats in our lab to
implementing Sniffy, we began a search for a new lab director. This process took nearly a year to plan, advertise,
recruit, and execute the hiring of our new lab director.
Much of the process involved necessary steps specific to
the Department of Defense (DoD). The hiring of a new
lab director was the first step in reinstating our live rat
program. It was vital to hire the right type of person for
this very meticulous and sensitive job involving acquiring, feeding, cleaning, and maintaining the overall wellbeing of the rats.
Rewriting the new protocol to house live rats in our labs
consisted of many updates. For all intents and purposes
the majority of the information pertained to how we will
care for and maintain a livable environment for the rats
(please contact the lead author to obtain a copy of the
full protocol). This protocol includes the essential whos,
whats, and hows of the laboratory: Who will be overseeing the wellbeing of the rats (i.e., name and contact info
for our new lab director); who will have access to the vivarium (i.e., faculty, cadets, care/cleaning contractors);
what are the processes for feeding, cleaning and weekly
inspections; what are the plans for emergency care (i.e.,
attending veterinarian, alternate veterinarian); how long
will the rats be trained each semester; how many rats
will be trained and used for demonstrations; and how
often do we need to replace the colony to sustain the program? Answering these and other questions detailing
the processes of maintaining a viable rat lab were critical
to obtain the rigorous animal care standards of the DoD,
IACUC and the AAALAC.
As soon as we hired a new lab director on staff, we were
also able to obtain a new service agreement for the cage
washer that is housed in the biology department and
was in need of repairs. Our cage washer is the key piece
of equipment that cleans our rat cages and ensures that
we meet DoD, IACUC, and AAALAC standards. In addition, various rat apparati (e.g., hurdle boxes, ladders,
and mazes) needed to be updated and repaired due to
the required constant cleaning after each lab session.
Our lab director inspected each obstacle for any safety
and usability issues.
As our IACUC protocol specifies, we have licensed and
credentialed veterinarians to help oversee our program
to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our rats. As such,
our lab director works directly with our veterinarians to
review our Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) biannually. Our veterinarians are always on call to answer
questions regarding our protocols and any abnormal behaviors of our rats, and to make suggestions to improve
our animal care and use procedures. From our last IACUC inspection, our attending veterinarian prescribed
an upgrade for our euthanasia equipment which we
were able to update over the summer.
Currently, we house 33 Sprague Dawley rats in our vivarium. This particular species has been used in our labs
and classes since the 1990’s. As seen in Johnson’s 2012
study on Sprague Dawley rats, they are one of the most
commonly used rats in laboratory settings and are widely known for their calm temperament and easy handling.
They are also quick learners and are less prone to developing tumors commonly found in other strains of albino rats. Our rats are specifically bred for us at Charles
River Laboratories located in Hollister, California. Bedding and feed are purchased from a trusted local vendor.
Transportation of our rat colony must also adhere to the
strict guidelines of AAALAC recommendations.
Our care and cleaning contract personnel were trained
on existing SOPs and supervised during interactions
with the rats by the lab director. Protocols were retrained
as needed; for instance, we noticed some rats’ behavior
changed dramatically if contractors rushed the handling
of the animals, which had an indirect effect on cadet-rat
relationships. Levels of compliance with our SOPs are
strictly followed in order to maximize the care of rats, as
well as satisfy government record keeping.
iors of real animals. The simple fact is that some rats are
much more difficult to train than others due to a variety
of factors. In addition, the ability of the program to expedite training (through the application of “control + i”)
left cadets with unrealistic expectations of operant conditioning procedures, especially when trying to compare
the different schedules of reinforcement.
Sniffy bar pressing in the virtual Operant Chamber Box
One unique benefit of the virtual rat program was the
built-in data tracking graphs of the rat’s behavior (i.e.,
bar pressing behaviors in real time). In this case, such
graphs were helpful in discerning the different schedules
of reinforcement. This built-in graphing function would
be ideal for charting the live rat behaviors in our current
classes. Perhaps we could employ the services from the
computer science department to track the behaviors of
our rats, which would be great for demonstrating a variety of skill acquisition timelines. The department cost
of maintaining our rat colony is approximately $5,000
Weighing the Cost-Benefits of the Live Rat Program vs
Sniffy
In the fall of 2018, we implemented Sniffy the Virtual Rat
Lite by Alloway, Wilson, and Graham, published by Cengage in 2011, into our Behavioral Science Learning and
Cognition course. The purpose of implementing Sniffy
was to allow cadets an interactive yet controlled environment to condition the behavior of a “rat” in the absence of conditioning the behavior of live rats. This was
an attempt to capture the essence of hands-on learning
without actually having a hands-on learning experience.
Although it can be debated on both ends, it was our experience similar to Hunt and Macaskill’s 2017 study which
suggests that the virtual lab rat experience is much more
passive than active. This assessment is based on the instructors observations over a two-year period as well as
the end-of-course feedback by cadets.
While the Sniffy program is well written and the virtual
rat behaves in similar manners to live rats, the program
simply cannot account for the various nuanced behav-
Live Rat bar pressing in the Operant Chamber Box
Operants 33
Observed Advantages
Observed Disadvantages
· Experiential Learning that uniquely captures cadet
engagement
· Double-period scheduling can be challenging (need
to coordinate with the registrar’s office months in
advance)
· Affords high impact learning experiences
· Lab space upkeep and maintenance
· Increased cadet interest = higher motivation
· Rolling contracts for care and cleaning personnel
and staff turnover
· Bridges the gap from conceptual to application
· Security and sanctification of the rats in the vivarium
· Cadets thoroughly enjoy the learning experience
· Cost: $6,100 vs $2,000 per year
Table 1
per year and $2,200 for the maintenance contract for
the cagewasher every two years. In contrast, the cost of
purchasing Sniffy the Virtual Rat was $2,000 per year (included CD-ROM with purchase of the book) and $300
for external CD-ROM players to install the software. Of
important note, the annual care and cleaning contract
costs approximately $28,000 and is paid by the Dean’s office; therefore, our department does not have any direct
costs associated with this contract. Similarly, appropriated funds cover the salary of our lab director. In contrast,
the expenses of implementing a virtual rat program,
like Sniffy, are considerably less. The direct expense of
purchasing Sniffy (texts, software, and ancillaries) to run
the program is roughly one-third the cost of running an
in-vivo rat program (rats, food, and bedding). However,
in our experience, the costs associated with a live rat program are certainly worth the experiential learning that
occurs in our labs and classrooms.
ly worked with rats and had never used operant conditioning principles in a purposefully sequential manner
with cadets. Thus, when live rats were re-introduced to
the course in spring 2020 we decided to scale back Rat
Olympics from its six events (hurdles, rope climb, ladder
climb, maze, weight pull, and long jump) to three events
(hurdles, ladder climb, and maze) with the plan to add
additional events as our lab director gained more experience. Weight pull and long jump events were added as
optional events in fall 2020 and the rope climb as added back to Rat Olympics in spring 2021. Rat Olympics
Table 1 provides a summary of some of the more notable
advantages and disadvantages of having live rats as observed by cadets and instructors.
Rat Olympics
Given our department’s long history with Rat Olympics in our Learning and Cognition (formerly Learning
and Memory) courses, we eagerly anticipated bringing
back this tradition. Our new lab director had experience
working with various animals, but had never previous-
34 Operants
is an exciting time, not only for Learning and Cognition
faculty and cadets, but for our entire department. Other
department faculty members typically volunteer as Rat
successfully pulled between the start and end locations
(with weights also being gradually increased based on
cadet discretion). Once all events have been completed
by all rats, the lab director works with the judges to tally
up the top three in each category. Winners are announced
within each section, photos are taken of the winning cadet/rat teams, and any record breakers are recorded so
our plaque can be updated.
Challenges During the Pandemic
Olympic judges and also come to observe this culminating event. Rat Olympics occurs during both periods
(for each class section) and at least three judges are used,
rotating among each cadet pair to time their animal in
each event. Fastest times for the hurdles, ladder, rope,
and maze are calculated based on when the animal is
placed on the apparatus until they reach the goal box at
the end. Long jump is calculated based on the length between the start and end devices (measured to the nearest
half-inch), with the distance gradually increased based
on cadet discretion. Weight pull is calculated based on
the maximum amount of weight (measured in grams)
Unfortunately, during the first semester we re-integrated live animals back into our Learning and Cognition
course, COVID-19 struck. We had just finished lesson 20
and cadets were training their rats on the maze when USAFA senior leadership instructed departments to meet
separately to discuss the eventual arrival of COVID-19 to
USAFA. Three days later the lower-three classes of cadets
were sent home and the challenges associated with teleteaching set in. Of primary concern in our Learning and
Cognition course was safety for our animals, cadets, and
faculty/staff. We opened up a wall divider in the Learning and Cognition laboratory and moved the tables to
ensure six-feet separation between chairs with only one
cadet per table instead of the typical two cadets. These
changes were extreme and completely new to our faculty and cadets, similar to other institutions who managed
live rats for classes, such as those described by Candelaria, Zabaleta, and Howell in 2021.
Laboratory protocols already required hand washing before and after laboratory, donning laboratory coats, wearing disposable gloves, and cleaning laboratory surfaces
at the end of each laboratory. These protocols remained
and we added the requirements of wearing disposable
facemasks, thoroughly cleaning all laboratory surfaces
before and after each laboratory period, and maintaining
six feet separation between individuals. In order to meet
the required six feet of separation between individuals,
we broke up cadet lab partners so human-to-rat ratios
went from 2:1 to 1:1. All cadets who remained at USAFA
were able to continue training with their original rat with
the exception of one who was assigned an animal from
a lower-class cadet pair. All remaining rats continued to
be trained by the lab director, course instructor, and other
department volunteers, and Rat Olympics was moved to
occur four days after its original date (34 calendar days
after classes resumed).
The unexpected death of two senior cadets (non-COVID
19 related) shortly after resuming classes resulted in another brief academic halt; however, Learning and Cognition laboratory continued during this time to give our
cadets a chance to meet together with their animals and
faculty to grieve and start the healing process. Rat Olympics was moved again but laboratory meetings took on a
very somber feel for the rest of the semester, which ended up occurring much sooner than planned as USAFA
decided to fast-track the graduation for the class of 2020.
Classes were paused for the lower-class cadets for two
weeks, while faculty focused on finishing course objecOperants 35
tives for the seniors. Thus, we had a small Rat Olympics
10 days after the new graduation date was announced
for seniors. Animal performance varied greatly, likely
due to the disruptions in training and trainers, as well as
the reduced focus of our cadets. However, we focused on
what the cadets had been able to accomplish with their
animals despite all of the additional stressors and even
had two USAFA senior leaders as guest judges.
Conclusions
Elcoro and Trundle’s 2013 article in International JournalSoTL found that students preferred training live rats over
training virtual rats. Among some of the noted benefits
of training live rats included: gaining hands-on experience, bonding with the rat, interactions with animals
which are more rewarding and interesting, the ability to
manipulate more behaviors, and teaching the ethics and
responsibilities of animal care. Among the disadvantages were: maintenance cost, fear of rats, and more time
consuming. Similar to the Elcoro and Trundle study, we
found similar advantages and disadvantages. Another
finding from both studies suggests that a deeper understanding of the schedules of reinforcement was much
greater when working with live rats as opposed to the
virtual rat. This might be explained by observing the live
rats’ behavior over a longer period of time and having
that direct control over the schedule of reinforcement.
Perhaps the extra time and effort invested in working
with a live rat encourages more engagement and ownership over the process which in itself leads to greater
active learning, as suggested by Cherney in 2011.
In a class like our Behavioral Sciences Learning and Cognition class at the Air Force Academy, an enormous value
is placed on active learning as a part of the lab experience. While Sniffy was an inexpensive and pragmatic
replacement to live rats, it was quickly and noticeably
different from the real thing. The closest analogy we
could think of was the classic sociology experiment back
in high school when we learned about the commitment
of parenthood. In this week-long experiment, students
had to carry the 10 pound bag of sugar (or flour) all day
(including gym class) and had to simulate feeding and
changing the inanimate bag of sugar 8-10 times a day.
The object of that experiment was to afford us (the students) the experience of what it would be like to take care
of an infant for an entire week. While this experience was
beneficial to “appreciating” what it might be like to care
for a child, it really wasn’t like the real thing of raising
a child 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a
year! We know this first handedly, as all three authors
have multiple children and would agree that although
the simulation could give you a taste of what it would
be like to care for an infant, it really doesn’t do justice to
what it would really be like to take care of a child. In a
very similar fashion, Sniffy surely afforded our cadets to
gain an appreciation of how behavioral techniques can be
helpful to train Sniffy; however, it is really not the same
experience of holding, bonding, training, feeding, and
36 Operants
really taking ownership of the “parenting” necessary to
condition a live rat to do some pretty incredible things.
Department of Defense Disclaimer
This manuscript has been approved for public release by the
office of Public Affairs and Dean of Faculty Research Office
(DFRO) at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The views expressed
in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air
Force Academy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or
the U.S. Government.
Andrew Darrel Katayama is a professor of Behavioral Sciences at the United States Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs. He teaches classes
in Learning and Cognition, Educational Psychology, Research Methods, Statistics, and teaches the
Introduction to Behavioral Science course in the
Academy Scholars Program. Andy has taught
at the Air Force Academy since 2002. He has
served as the Director of Academics, Director of
Research, and Senior Scientist since coming to the
Air Force Academy. Prior to his tenure at the Air
Force Academy, Andy taught on faculty at West Virginia University
and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Andy currently lives
in Colorado Springs with his wife Kelly, three children, Katelyn, Addie, Kobe and their cat Kiyota.
Lieutenant Colonel Michelle “Olive” Nash, PhD,
is an assistant professor for the Department of
Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United
States Air Force Academy. She teaches classes in
Learning and Cognition, Brain and Behavior, Research Methods, Introduction to Behavioral Sciences, and Creating Influence and Managing Power.
She has served as the Deputy Department Head
and Director of Operations during her current assignment at the Air Force Academy. Prior to this
assignment, she was the Chief of the Continuous
Learning and Performance Assessment Branch in the Warfighter
Readiness Research Division of the 711th Human Performance Wing
at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. Lieutenant Colonel Nash has served
in the Air Force for over 22 years.
Ryan “Neal” Dickman has served as the lab director
in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Air Force Academy since June
2018. He has worked at USAFA since 2014 serving
as a lab technician in the Department of Biology. Prior to USAFA, he worked for the Department of Agriculture’s Forrest Service at Hoosier National Forrest
in Indiana. He also served as a lab technician at the
University of South Alabama in their Biochemistry
Department in the School of Medicine. Mr Dickman
received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology from Spring Hill
College in Mobile, AL. Neal served five years active duty in the Air
Force before receiving his degree. Neal and his wife Shannon and their
two sons, Nicholas and Bradley live in Colorado Springs, CO.
For future correspondence and to obtain references please
contact Andy Katayama at andrew.katayama@afacademy.edu.
in the lab
ANIMAL LABORATORIES FOR TEACHING AND
RESEARCH OF BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS IN BRAZIL
Paola Esposito de Moraes Almeida, Amilcar Rodrigues Fonseca
Júnior, Emerson Ferreira da Costa Leite, Lucas Cordeiro Freitas, Bruna
Colombo dos Santos, and Tiago Sales Larroudé de Man
Behavior analysis in Brazil started with Professor Fred
Keller at Universidade de São Paulo (USP) in 1961. As reported by Matos in 1999, Professor Keller’s assistant,
Professor Rodolpho Azzi, was able to improvise a small
laboratory with conditioning chambers. In this lab, the
first students of behavior analysis in Brazil (the old gang,
as Keller referred to them) performed operant conditioning experiments based on the discussions in Principles of
Psychology.
From the beginning, the animal lab had a significant
role in behavior analysis training in Brazil. However, we
have been watching the closure of animal labs, especially
didactical ones, due to legislation changes and costs in
Brazil, as reported by Gonçalves and colleagues in 2020.
In October 2008, the government approved Law 11.974
and the creation of the National Council of Animal Experimentation (CONCEA) that orients teaching and research
activities with non-human subjects in Brazil. Behavior
analysis scientific associations, like the Brazilian Association of Behavior Analysis (ACBr) and the Brazilian Association of Behavioral Sciences (ABPMC), have spoken
in defense of animal labs.
Straehl, in 2019, conducted a study with professors of
experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) in Brazil, who
teach in public and private universities. The study intended to characterize didactical practices in the EAB
discipline and accommodations to the legislation. The results showed that a gradual change in didactical practices occurred in the last ten years. Although we still have
didactical courses with real animals in some universities,
we observe the substitution of software or experiments
with humans. However, as Gotti and colleagues in 2021
and Straehl and colleagues in 2022 describe, there are still
no standardized procedures for the didactical human
lab. Furthermore, there is no evidence confirming the didactical human lab as a valid alternative to teach with
the same quality to cover what the animal lab teaches,
and satisfactorily replicating the controlled teaching conditions. Most worrying, Straehl’s study shows that there
are universities with no experimental practice at all.
In the face of this scenery, we would like to present the
experience of three animal labs that still have didactical
and research activities in Brazil: The Laboratory of Experimental Psychology from Pontifícia Universidade Católica
de São Paulo (PUC-SP), São Paulo, Brazil; The Laboratory
Experimental Psychology of Universidade Federal de São
João Del Rey (UFSJ), Minas Gerais, Brazil, and The Laboratory of Experimental Psychology (LAPE) of Universidade Estadual de Feira de Sananta (UEFS), Bahia, Brazil.
It is essential to say that these labs are not the only ones
in Brazil. We have many others. They are labs from three
different geographical locations in Brazil and were created at different moments. We hope this article helps us
get visibility about the defense of experimental practices in psychology training. The international community
can know what has been done in Brazil to maintain these
practices.
The Laboratory of Experimental Psychology
of PUC-SP
The Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of PUC-SP
was founded in 1950. PUC-SP is at São Paulo state, in
the southeast of Brazil. In the beginning, the laboratory
served the philosophy, science, and language courses.
The aim was to produce knowledge about psychological phenomena from empirical methods of investigation
and, as Guedes wrote in 2019, contribute to structuring
Psychology as a scientific discipline. At PUC-SP, this
objective was fulfilled by different researchers, among
them, Professor Maria do Carmo Guedes, who invited Professor Carolina Bori to teach Behavior Analysis in 1966,
which motivated the opening of a part of this lab designated for animal research.
In 1968, PUC-SP created the Psychology College and
linked the Experimental Psychology Laboratory. Later,
the Human Sciences and Health College (FACHS) recognized the laboratory as part of it. The Experimental
Laboratory attends research, teaching, and extension
activities from psychology undergraduate courses and
graduate courses in experimental psychology (behavior
analysis). The division of the laboratory is 1) Laboratory of Basic Principles Studies with non-human subjects;
2) Laboratory of Basic Principles Studies with human
subjects; 3) Laboratory of Historical Studies in Behavior
Operants, Issue I, 2022
37
Analysis (LEHAC).
The Basic Principles Laboratory has an animal facility
with about 170 Wistar rats. The animals participate in
didactical and research activities at undergraduate and
graduate levels. The laboratory has a classroom reserved
for lectures and discussions about the practical exercises
and an adjacent room equipped with 10 operant conditioning chambers. The lab also has research rooms and
operant conditioning chambers with acoustic and visual isolation. These chambers can have other devices like
an activity wheel, choice bars, light panels, etc. Next to
the animal facility, there is an area for supplies storage,
cleaning, equipment accommodation, and a room for
employees.
The lab has adapted its activities to the national ethical
principles established by CONCEA. PUC-SP adopted
guidelines suggested by CONCEA to guarantee animal
welfare by supervision of teaching and research projects
by an ethical committee (CEUA) and the adoption of
actions such as a) use of sucrose diluted in water, in replacement of water deprivation; b) cage sharing between
animals to guarantee contact with another species member; c) student sharing of the same animal to reduce the
number of animals involved in didactical activities; d)
hiring a veterinarian to be responsible for animal health,
supervising of employees, and training students and researchers in principles and practices of animal welfare.
Besides that, the lab has the tradition to prepare students
for executing research practices and teaching, so the lab
trains undergraduate students as monitors. The monitors help beginning students in didactical exercises and
elaboration of scientific reports. They also participate in
research about methodological refinements of didactical
practices, gathering and analyzing data produced by students, supervised by one or more professors.
Some examples of research carried out in the lab are a)
sucrose use (without water deprivation), and water use
(with water deprivation) during the acquisition of operant discrimination, and b) the effect of previous exposure
to sucrose during selection and maintaining of operant
behavior with different topographies. The results guide
the didactical practices by pointing out that sucrose use
does not slow the acquisition of operant discrimination.
The previous exposure to the substance would not be
necessary to guarantee the conditioning of operant behavior within the time specified in the class schedule.
Both results indicated the viability of using sucrose to
increase animal welfare during teaching activities, supporting the defense of didactical actions that are part of
behavior analysis teaching.
At PUC-SP, the maintenance of teaching and research
activities with animals is being defended by behavior
analysis professors, highlighting their importance for
teaching necessary skills to psychologists’ scientific and
professional formation. The animal lab creates a context
to learn repertoires such as systematic observation of behavior, measuring, variable manipulation, elaboration
38 Operants
of strategies to control external factors, hypotheses formulation, new research questions, data treatment and
communication, and the maintenance of a research environment and animal care. Also, by permitting access
to the history of the subjects and better variable control,
the animal lab decreases the probability of mentalism in
interpreting the phenomena observed and gradual assessment of the studied behavioral changes. These are
essential skills useful in psychology training, in complex
environments, like the applied ones.
Because of the importance of these activities in psychology training, the Experimental Lab maintained them
during the COVID-19 pandemic. The activities respected
all the sanitary protocols established by the sanitary authorities. One student at a time conducted the exercises
in the experimental room. The classes were also recorded
and simultaneously streamed online to the students who
chose not to attend the lab in person. Aiming to permit
all students to have an active role in their learning process (e.g., manipulating variables, collecting data, etc.),
analogous experiments with humans were planned and
developed.
At the end of this hybrid course, the students evaluated
the teaching experience. The result was that the activities
realized with animals were generally assessed as having
contributed more to comprehension of basic principles
of behavior analysis than activities developed with humans. In addition, the students evaluated the animal
lab as a better experience to learn about behavioral observation, variability between subjects, data collection,
graphic reading, and ways of doing research in behavior analysis. These results are compatible with others
that compared animals and software in the simulation of
behavioral experiments, as reported by Zicardi and colleagues in 2009, Elcore and Trundle in 2013, and Hunt
and Macaskill in 2017.
Beyond the didactical activities, students and professors
use the animal lab for research activities. Among the research themes are feeding behavior, self-control, insight,
conditioned suppression, motivating operations, choice,
schedules of reinforcement, chronic mild stress. The professors promote research and professional training in behavior analysis in psychology undergraduate courses by
allowing the students to conduct research as requirement
to earn a psychology degree, scientific initiation, and research classes. In addition, they continue to promote the
training in graduate courses for master thesis and doctoral dissertations since 1999.
The Experimental Laboratories of Federal University
of São João del Rei (UFSJ) and State University of
Feira de Santana (UEFS).
UFSJ is at São João del Rei, a city in Minas Gerais, also in
southeast of Brazil. The lab is linked to the Psychology
Department and was founded in 1997 by Professor Marina
Bandeira. Before the foundation of the lab, the experimental practices with animals already occurred with Professor
Antônio Ribeiro de Almeida.
Until the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Experimental Psychology II’s didactical activities involving
animals were part of the discipline where students performed classical and operant conditioning exercises. The
subjects were heterogeneous Wistar rats. The practices
were done by undergraduate students in pairs using operant conditioning chambers. Throughout the discipline,
the students conducted an average of 10 experimental
sessions. The ethical committee from the University approved the discipline project at the time.
With the adoption of remote teaching due to the pandemic, the laboratory started to use activities involving
videos, software, and games as alternative practices.
Currently, the laboratory is studying a way to combine
different practices due to the need to adapt to sanitary
and biosafety protocols - in terms of the laboratory infrastructure - and the need to comply with ethical recommendations.
UEFS is at Feira de Santana, a city in Bahia, in northeast Brazil. The Laboratory of Experimental Psychology
(LAPE), created in 2015 by Professor Tiago Sales Larroudé
de Man, is part of the Psychology Undergraduate Course,
and the Biology Department regulates it.
LAPE is at a university animal facility. This animal facility is equipped with the correct structure to breed and
house animals, mainly Wistar rats. The animal facility
produces and provides animals to other courses of the
University, like biology. It has employees trained to assure animal welfare, a veterinarian, and a biologist.
LAPE has 10 operant conditioning chambers and has four
professors of psychology course as permanent members.
LAPE develops didactical and research activities with
non-human subjects. The didactical activities occur at
the beginning of the Psychology Undergraduate Course
in Experimental Analysis of Behavior II. The goals of the
discipline are to teach the same skills described in the report made by PUC-SP. We understand the lab as the first
practical experience with a living organism. Hence, it is
an experiential process that helps the psychology student to have a closer look at the behavior of an organism.
In 2020 and 2021, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we did
not realize didactical activities because the University
closed. This year we are resuming these activities.
LAPE also has research projects, one of them with
non-human subjects. The project is about relapse, entitled “Animal model of differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO).” We intend to verify if behavioral
resurgence occurs after DRO and if DRO increases resistance to extinction. This project is a translational research where we are trying to emulate the clinical steps
of treatment using DRO. Undergraduate students assist
the project in collecting data about procedure integrity
and interobserver agreement (IOA). The other research
project developed by LAPE has human participants. The
project aims to evaluate and treat repetitive behavior in
individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This
project also has undergraduate psychology students
as collaborators. Finally, LAPE counts as an extension
project. Extension projects are designed to promote direct interaction between the University and society. The
knowledge produced by the University directly benefits
the community, and the knowledge that comes from the
community impacts the University. Our extension project occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was
a virtual orientation program for family members of individuals with ASD.
Final thoughts
We hope that the reader caught at least a glance at some
activities realized in three animal labs in Brazil. We emphasize the importance of these practices in psychology
training, not only behavior analysis. The skills learned in
the lab are basic skills that every psychologist or person
interested in behavior should have. Therefore, we expect that more people will join us in defense of qualified
teaching in psychology, especially behavior analysis, in
Brazil.
We also would like to leave an invitation for any reader
that wants to know more about the production of these
Experimental Laboratories. PUC-SP has some of their
works available at https://www.pucsp.br/pos-graduacao/mestrado-e-doutorado/psicologia-experimental-analise-do-comportamento, and LAPE (UEFS) has a
page on Instagram that anyone can access (lape_uefs).
About the Authors:
Bruna was an undergraduate in psychology at Universidade Estadual de Londrina
(UEL). She obtained her Master’s degree at
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) and her PhD at Universidade
Federal do Pará (UFPA). During her PhD,
she did an internship at Harvard University
and B. F. Skinner Foundation. Currently, she
is a professor at Universidade Estadual de
Feira de Santana. In addition, she is vice-coordinator of the Laboratory of Experimental
Psychology (LAPE) at the same University.
Tiago was an undergraduate in psychology at
Ruy Barboswas an a College, and he obtained
his Master’s degree at the Federal University
of Para. Currently, he is a doctoral student in
behavior analysis at Western New England.
He is a professor of Experimental Analysis of
Behavior at Universidade Estadual de Feira
de Santana (UEFS). He is the coordinator of
the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology
(LAPE) at the same University.
Operants 39
Lucas was an undergraduate in psychology
at Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei
(UFSJ). He has a Master’s degree and a Ph.D.
in Special Education at Universidade Federal
de São Carlos. During his Ph.D., he did an internship at Louisiana State University. He did
his post-doc at Universidade Federal de São
Carlos. Currently, he is a professor at Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei and coordinates the graduate program in Psychology.
Amilcar was an undergraduate in psychology
at Centro Universitário Padre Anchieta. He
has a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Universidade de São Paulo. He is a professor at
PUC-SP, working at undergraduate psychology course and Graduate Program of Experimental Psychology: Behavior Analysis. He researches aversive control, behavior variability,
education, and politics.
Paola was an undegraduate in psychology at
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). She has a Master’s degree in
Experimental Psychology: Behavior Analysis
from the same university. She has a PhD in
Experimental Psychology by Universidade de
São Paulo (USP). Currently, she is a professor at PUC-SP and coordinates the Behavior Analysis Training Core. In a graduate
program, she teaches and researches clinical
psychology, experimental models of psychopathology, interactions between verbal and non-verbal behavior, functional analysis procedures.
She is also a behavior therapist and clinical supervisor since 1994.
Emerson was an undergraduate in psychology at Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São
Paulo (PUC-SP). He has a Master’s degree
and a PhD from the same university. He did a
graduate course in Behavior Therapy at Universidade de São Paulo. Currently, he is a professor in Experimental Psychology: Behavior
Analysis at PUC-SP. He researches behavior
variability, experimental models of feeding
disorders, procedures for teaching reading and
writing skills. He is also a behavior therapist.
April 23 is designated as a World Book Day. In 2022, the B. F. Skinner Foundation is celebrating by launching a hard cover
version of the Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Please visit our bookstore to purchase your copy.
40 Operants
reflections
MODERN ANIMAL CARE: A SKINNERIAN
PERSPECTIVE ON CHOICE AND CONTROL
Christy A. Alligood, Ph.D., BCBA-D1,3 and
Susan G. Friedman, Ph.D.2,3
1
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
2
Utah State University
3
Behavior Works, LLC
As academics and scientist practitioners, we have each
enjoyed many years of teaching the fundamental principles of behavior to undergraduate and graduate students as well as to animal professionals such as trainers,
zookeepers, and veterinarians. One of the great joys of
this endeavor is sharing Skinner’s philosophy of behavior as a physical science, and his widely applicable analyses of complex behavior. Within the past two decades,
there has been a surge of interest in the science of behavior within the animal training community. This is a positive development for the discipline of behavior analysis,
the field of animal training, and the animals who benefit
from the humane application of these principles. Perhaps inevitably, with that surge of interest we have seen
misinterpretations of the tenets of operant conditioning
and of Skinner’s philosophy. Recently we have been
dismayed by explanatory articles connecting behavior
science and animal training from a more limited, essentially Watsonian perspective. We respond in particular to
an article by Farhoody in a previous issue of Operants,
though others have made similar points. Here we offer
a broader, radical behaviorist perspective on some key
issues in animal training.
Behavior as a Physical Science
One misunderstanding of the tenets of operant conditioning is that the causes of behavior must exist outside
the individual. Skinner’s analyses of behavior were revolutionary not because he insisted upon external causes, but because he insisted that behavior is determined,
follows natural laws, and is subject to the same analyses
as any other physical science. A single behavior is often
determined by multiple factors. If we know all of the correlates, we can predict precisely what an individual will
do in any given context. If we are able to manipulate all
of the correlates, we can control behavior with precision.
Although we are unlikely to be able to know and manipulate every determining factor in many practical circumstances, we don’t need this degree of precision to make
meaningful changes to socially important behavior. As
with other physical sciences, we understand that behav-
ioral phenomena are determined by physical events, are
lawful, and are knowable even if not yet fully known.
While external environmental determinants play a critical role in behavior, individuals bring their own genetics
and reinforcement histories to their interactions with the
environment, making the precise prediction and control
of behavior incredibly complex in practical circumstances, including those involving animals in human care.
On Terms: Choice and Control Defined
Animal care professionals often discuss environmental enrichment as a means of providing opportunities
for choice and control to animals in human care. They
also sometimes discuss choice and control as desirable
features of animal training and an important characteristic of animal welfare. Some behavior analysts have
criticized the use of these terms as colloquial and have
opined that they are cognitive explanations of behavior.
While that type of use can and probably does occur, the
terms “choice” and “control” both have long-established
definitions in the behavior-analytic literature. Regarding
choice, there is an important distinction to be made between choice and choosing. Martin and colleagues defined choice as the presence of multiple, relatively salient
discriminative stimuli (SD), at least one of which is an SD,
and defined choosing as performing a discriminated operant when another is possible, following a choice. Few
would argue that, as it relates to quality of life, choices
and the opportunity to choose among them is irrelevant
for non-human animals. Control refers to the ability to
change one’s environment. Operant behavior itself is a
source of control, provided the consequences are sufficiently consistent. In the words of Ferster and Skinner,
“People act on the world, and change it, and are changed
in turned by the consequences of their actions.” This is
a dynamic system between actors and the environment.
Further, the idea that the use of non-technical language
to describe behavior principles is inherently problematic
has been a subject of much discussion among behavior
analysts for decades, about which qualified experts can
and do disagree. While there is a need for technical preOperants, Issue I, 2022
41
cision in scientific communication, evidence supports
what many practitioners of behavior analysis report from
experience: technical behavior-analytic jargon is off-putting to those who are not themselves behavior analysts.
Again, in Skinners words, “There are two languages in
every field of knowledge, and it would be foolish to insist that the technical version always be used. But it must
be used in science, and especially in a science of behavior.” Many behavior analysts, from Lindsley in 1991 to
Neuman in 2018, have suggested that there is a need to
translate technical behavior-analytic jargon for practical
application. Neuman, applying a verbal behavior analysis to this issue, noted that we can avoid the potential
problems associated with the use of colloquial language
by using words that, while nontechnical, accurately describe the principles we are disseminating. Listener effects are more important than precise adherence to the
vocabulary we would use in a laboratory report if we are
to succeed in our dissemination goals.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier showed this effect in infants as
young as eight weeks.
ronment to the opposite state of that currently presented
by the experimenter. If the mice encountered an unlocked
wheel-running apparatus with the motor turned on, they
would press a lever to lock it and turn the motor off. If
the apparatus was locked at the outset, the mice would
press a lever to unlock it and then run in the wheel. If the
experimenter presented an environment with the lights
off, the mice would press a lever to turn them on (and
vice versa). Many subsequent studies have shown that
control is a reinforcer of the behavior of both human and
nonhuman animals. The developmental psychologist
Choice and Control in Modern Animal Care
Animals have also consistently demonstrated a preference for arrangements allowing greater control over
their environments. For example, Catania and Sagvolden
showed in the 1980s that pigeons would choose a situation in which they could select from an array of response
devices over a situation with just one available response
device (with all devices requiring pecking), even when
the schedule of reinforcement for responding on the devices was the same in both situations. Further, decades of
evidence support the effect known as contrafreeloading,
in which animals consistently choose to work (perform
an operant response) to obtain reinforcers even when
they are freely available.
In addition to the ample evidence that animals prefer situations in which they have opportunities to control their
environment, research also supports the idea that these
opportunities have positive effects on animals’ quality
The Importance of Control to the Individual
of life. Negative outcomes measured in animal welfare
Behavior analysts widely view primary reinforcers as research include indicators of declining physical health,
consequent events important to the survival of the in- high frequency stereotypic behavior, and cortisol condividual. One such event would
centrations.
be the manipulation, or control,
When opporof one’s own environment. The
tunities to enidea that control is a primary
gage with the
reinforcer may be provocative
environment
for some, but it is not a new idea
to obtain rein behavior analysis. In his 1953
inforcers are
book Science and Human Behavior,
restricted,
Skinner said, “We are automatianimals are
cally reinforced, apart from any
more
likely
particular deprivation, when we
to show these
successfully control the physiphysical signs
cal world.” Indeed, Skinner disand behaviorcussed control as a generalized
al responses.
reinforcer when he said, “That
In
contrast,
‘having one’s own way’ is reinenriched enforcing is shown by the behavior
vironments
of those who control for the sake
with
ample
of control”.
o
p
p
o
r
t
uniElephant accepting human touch. Photo by: Steve Martin
ties
for
conIn the ensuing years, Skinner’s
trol,
often
arranged
via
choice
scenarios,
are
correlated
philosophical analyses have been borne out by experimental data in the laboratory. As early as the 1960s, the with better physical health and performance on learning
zoologist J. Lee Kavanau showed that deer mice would tasks, more frequent and variable activity, and fewer steconsistently press a lever to change features in their envi- reotypic behaviors.
42 Operants
With the positive effects of more complex environmental
arrangements well established, animal care professionals are turning their attention to questions about choice
and control in the context of training. Much of the animal
training conducted in zoos and aquariums, for instance,
is for the purpose of providing routine care such as tooth
brushing, hoof trimming, and medical examinations
without the need for restraints or general anesthesia. It
is becoming more common to give animals participating
in these discrete trial training sessions the opportunity
to choose between multiple behaviors, including the behavior targeted by the trainer but also including walking
away from the trainer. Of course, this theme of providing
opportunities for choosing is relevant to companion animals as well. In a context where multiple behaviors are
possible, including aggressive and stereotypic behavior,
any instance of behavior can be said to be chosen (i.e., a
discriminated operant when another is possible). This account furthers trainers’ ethical responsibility to provide
ample opportunities for animals to engage meaningfully
in complex environments, i.e., to emit diverse behaviors
that result in a variety of reinforcers.
When a behavior produces reliable changes in the environment, engaging in that behavior can be defined as
control. When animal professionals account for choice
and control in training, this can simply mean providing
an environment rich with reinforcing behavioral opportunities. If, in that context, an animal chooses to engage
in a behavior other than the one requested by a trainer,
the trainer bears the responsibility for changing the environment such that the requested behavior is sufficiently
reinforcing to be chosen over other opportunities, consistent with our philosophy that “the rat is never wrong.”
This contrasts with training environments in which the
only way to access a valuable reinforcer is to comply
with a trainer’s request, a practice that might be considered coercive. Goldiamond made this distinction between choice and genuine choice.
Modern trainers are exploring the possibility that providing more explicit opportunities for choice during
training sessions might result in better outcomes. This
is consistent with Catania and Sagvolden’s findings, as
well as recent work with children by Hanley, Rajaraman,
and others showing that the provision of opportunities
to choose different ways to access reinforcers during
teaching sessions resulted in greater participation in
learning activities and fewer serious problem behaviors.
This arrangement, known as an enhanced choice model,
includes the opportunity to freely access the reinforcers
offered for participating in learning activities, as well as
the opportunity to leave the teaching environment. This
is a promising area of research with quality of life implications for both humans and animals.
Ethical Considerations
Closely related to issues of animal welfare are discussions
about the ethics of applying behavior change procedures.
Various animal training professional organizations and
certifying bodies have adopted ethical guidelines specifying that professionals implement the least intrusive
effective behavior change procedure for each individual
and situation. Behavior change procedures are placed in
a hierarchy of intrusiveness, with positive punishment
being the most intrusive procedure and positive reinforcement being the least intrusive.
The organizations adopting these ethical guidelines have
been occasionally criticized for oversimplifying behav-
ior science, and for requiring members and certificants
to commit to following the principle of least intrusiveness in their animal training practice. For instance, some
authors have noted that positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment, as naturally occurring phenomena, are neither inherently good
nor bad. While the forces themselves are facts of nature,
these forces also have consistent effects that may be of
differing value to us, as strongly argued by Sidman. Understanding these effects can help us determine which
procedures are best suited to our goals, which include
humane treatment and high quality of life for all individuals. Skinner acknowledged this repeatedly in Science
and Human Behavior:
“In the long run, punishment, unlike reinforcement, works to the disadvantage of both the
punished organism and the punishing agency.”
“As a consistent picture of the extremely complex consequences of punishment emerges from
analytical research, we may gain the confidence
and skill needed to design alternative procedures in the clinic, in education, in industry, in
politics, and in other practical fields.”
Indeed, behavior analysts have long recognized the need
to develop alternative procedures in this vein. In 2010,
the Association for Behavior Analysis International adopted a position statement on the use of restraint and
seclusion, including the policy that treatment selection
should be guided by the principle of least restrictiveness.
This principle is aligned with the least intrusive principle in prioritizing the most favorable risk to benefit ratio
when selecting procedures. Similarly, the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) states in its Ethical Code
for Behavior Analysts that one of the core foundational
principles for behavior analysts is that we work to maximize benefits and do no harm. The code includes three
separate guidelines focusing on maximizing benefit and
minimizing risk when selecting and implementing assessments and interventions. Most notably,
“Behavior analysts select, design, and implement
behavior-change interventions (including the selection
and use of consequences) with a focus on minimizing
risk of harm to the client and stakeholders. They
recommend and implement restrictive or punishmentbased procedures only after demonstrating that
desired results have not been obtained using less
intrusive means, or when it is determined by an
existing intervention team that the risk of harm
to the client outweighs the risk associated with the
behavior-change intervention. When recommending
and implementing restrictive or punishment-based
procedures, behavior analysts comply with any
required review processes (e.g., a human rights review
committee). Behavior analysts must continually
evaluate and document the effectiveness of restrictive
or punishment-based procedures and modify or
Operants 43
discontinue the behavior-change intervention in a
timely manner if it is ineffective.”
us how to change behavior, can it tell us what
changes to make? This is a question about the
behavior of those who do in fact propose and
make changes. People act to improve the world and
to progress toward a better way of life for good reasons, and among the reasons are certain consequences
of their behavior, and among these consequences are
the things people value and call good.”
Beyond behavior analysis and animal training, the principle of least intrusiveness/least restrictiveness has been
adopted by other professional organizations in education, medicine, law enforcement, and more. Scientific
and professional organizations have ethical standards
because the consequences of our actions are very real
Tactics of Dissemination
and important in the lives of the individuals we influence and serve. If effectiveness is our only criterion, op- With climate change, pandemics, racism, and other urportunities for abuse abound. In their article on the his- gent problems threatening our very existence, we must
tory of credentialing
embrace the perin applied behavior
spective that indianalysis,
Johnston
viduals are operand colleagues note
ators, not merely
that abusive prachapless victims of
tices implemented
circumstance. This is
by under-qualified
essentially what we
clinicians were the
do when we create
impetus for the incontingencies, when
statement of the
we
acknowledge
certifying body that
learning history and
became the BACB. It
the co-influences of
has been suggested
genes, brains and
that those entering
bodies. We can do
helping professions
this without fear of
typically have little
uprooting our most
contact with EAB
deeply held philosliterature and limophy that behavior
ited
opportunities
is a physical science.
to build skills in the
We should also careA sign for visitors. Photo by: Wouter Stellaard
experimental analysis
fully consider our disof behavior. If we accept this premise, why then, should semination goals for the many user groups to whom we
we not provide guidelines for ethical decision making, offer problem solutions. The elephant in the room, as it
just as many professional organizations have done in be- were, relates to the widespread relevance of our science
havior analysis and beyond? Of course we should have a to the many professionals whose main expertise is with
philosophy about how we train animals, just as we have a different level of analysis. What level of behavior anala philosophy about how we educate children.
ysis expertise should be required of an animal trainer,
In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner rejected the idea zookeeper, or veterinarian? The answer to this question
that scientists should remain neutral regarding the appli- will be different for each group, individual and situation.
cation of scientific principles and technologies (empha- However, it does raise the question, does everyone need
to be a behavior analyst to benefit from the behavioral
ses ours):
level of analysis? Under what circumstances is calling in
“Physics may tell us how to build a nuclear bomb a consulting behavior analyst the best course of action?
but not whether it should be built. Biology may tell In our work, we address these questions daily as we navus how to control birth and postpone death but not igate the balance between our dissemination goals and
whether we ought to do so. Decisions about the uses
animal welfare. Behavior analysis is not a monolith. It
of science seem to demand a kind of wisdom which, for
is a discipline with richly diverse interpretations about
some curious reason, scientists are denied. If they are
to make value judgments at all, it is only with the wis- how behavior works. We acknowledge that there will
dom they share with people in general. It would be always be differing opinions about defining and disa mistake for the behavioral scientist to agree. seminating behavior analysis in the animal care world.
How people feel about facts, or what it means to feel As Goldiamond said, “There is no single way of looking
anything, is a question for which a science of behavior at behavior, nor one approach into which all behavior
should have an answer. A fact is no doubt different must parsimoniously fit. There are useful and useless
from what a person feels about it, but the latter is a functional relations that can be established by a variety
fact also. What causes trouble, here as elsewhere, is of procedures.” We celebrate the work of animal profesthe appeal to what people feel. A more useful form of sionals applying the philosophy and science of behavior
the question is this: If a scientific analysis can tell analysis to improve the lives of animals.
44 Operants
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Dr. Christy Alligood is a sought-after teacher, speaker, and
thought leader whose experience spans the science and practice of behavior analysis. Dr. Alligood received an MA (2003)
from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and
a Ph.D. (2007) from West Virginia University. She is also a
doctoral-level Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D).
Dr. Alligood is an Assistant Professor of Behavior Analysis at
the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Prior to this
appointment, she taught behavior analysis at the University
of Florida, where she was a nominee for the 2021 UF College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year Award, and
at the Florida Institute of Technology.
For almost 15 years, Dr. Alligood has been a behavior scientist at Disney’s Animals, Science, and Environment. In that
capacity, she uses her expertise in the application of behavior
analysis to enhance the welfare of nonhuman animals through
cooperative training, environmental enrichment, behavioral
problem solving, and behavior change strategies supporting the conservation of wildlife and wild places. She is the
instructor of Behavior Works’ How Research Works course for
animal professionals.
Susan G. Friedman, Ph.D. is a professor emeritus in the
Department of Psychology at Utah State University. Susan
has co-authored chapters on behavior change in five veterinary texts, and her popular articles have been translated into
17 languages. She teaches seminars and courses on animal
learning online (How Behavior Works: Living & Learning
With Animals), with students from 60 countries so far. Susan
also consults with zoos and animal organizations around the
world. She was appointed to the F&WS California Condor
Recovery Team from 2002 – 2010, after which time the team
was retired due to the success of the birds in the wild. She
is the Chairperson of the Scientific Advisory Committee of
American Humane Association (AHA) Film and TV Unit,
and a member in good standing of ABAI, ABMA, IAATE
and IAABC. See behaviorworks.org and facebook.com/behaviorworks.
Dr. Alligood has served in many leadership roles in the Association for Behavior Analysis International, including president
of the Applied Animal Behavior Special Interest Group, Coordinator of the Special Interest Groups Board, and At-large
Representative to the Executive Council. She is also a past
president of the Southeastern Association for Behavior Analysis. She is an instructor for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Environmental Enrichment in Zoo & Aquariums course
and general member of the AZA Behavior Advisory Group
serving on the Culture Change working group. She frequently
serves as a reviewer for a wide range of peer-reviewed journals,
and sits on the editorial boards of Zoo Biology and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
Operants 45
addiction
VIEWING ALCOHOL ADDICTION AS THE RESULT OF
BIOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, AND CULTURE
Marilin Colón, PhD
After overindulging this past holiday season, maybe you are one of
the 13% of U.S. adults (according to a Morning Consult poll) estimated
to have just finished participating in “Dry January.” And, although it
was only 31 days, you might have found it harder than you realized
to abstain from drinking alcohol. Or maybe you are one of the 20%
of Americans who reported an increase in drinking alcohol during the
pandemic and are finding it hard to return to pre-pandemic drinking
levels. These situations may have nudged you and many others to conduct internet searches asking, “Am I an alcoholic?”
Marilin Colón obtained her PhD at Florida State
University. During her time as a behavior analyst, she has worked as a consultant for a variety of populations with developmental disabilities. She has consulted and provided behavior
analytic services for children and adults in special education classes, intermediate care facilities,
and group homes. She has also supervised programs for early intervention services. Throughout this time, Marilin also taught Psychology
undergraduate classes as an adjunct instructor.
In 2015, she started to teach full-time for the
School of Behavior Analysis at Florida Institute
of Technology (FIT). In March 2020, she pivoted from teaching graduate students to start an
affiliate of Fit Learning in Dallas, where she utilizes behavioral science to transform the learning
abilities of the children with whom she works. In
addition, since July 2020, Marlin has also become
a certified senior coach for The Path program by
This Naked Mind, helping people to change their
relationship with alcohol.
46
Operants, Issue I, 2022
It should be no surprise to the behavioral community that labeling an
individual “an alcoholic” is outdated and marginalizing. By utilizing
that label, we tact the person as if he or she has an internal trait, which
is at odds with our behavioristic view. Addiction specialists prefer to
say that someone has “alcohol use disorder” (or AUD), since a person’s
behavior is not his or her entire identity. However, even the term “disorder” is misleading. Just as with many other “disorders,” AUD is a set
of behaviors that occur under a certain set of conditions. According to
the Mayo Clinic, this behavioral pattern of use involves the inability to
control drinking, being preoccupied with alcohol even when it causes
problems, having to drink more to get the same effect (i.e., tolerance), or
having withdrawal symptoms when decreasing or stopping drinking.
As with most disorders, there is a range of behaviors resulting from
these patterns of drinking categorized from mild to severe.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,
in 2019 nearly 15 million people over the age of 12 met the criteria to be
diagnosed with AUD. During the first year of the pandemic, that number reportedly increased by three million people. While these are sobering (pun intended) statistics, the good news is that according to the
National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions
(NESARC) most people (an estimated 70-90%) will return to lower levels of drinking behavior without formal treatment.
This contradicts the common belief that the pleasurable effects of alcohol (and other drugs) are the primary drivers of addiction. Research on
rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s seemed to corroborate this view.
When given a choice between drinking water or drug-laced water, rats
would eventually choose only the drug-laced water and continue to
imbibe until they overdosed. However, psychologist Bruce Alexander
noticed the impoverished environment of the small, solitary metal rat
cages, and in 1981, he published a study in which he replaced the austere environment, where the rats were isolated with no external form of
stimulation, with a “rat park.” The “rat park” consisted of a bigger cage
200 times the floor area of the standard laboratory cage with materials
with which the rats could engage, food the rats could eat, and other
rats for social interaction. In this enriched environment, the rats drank
less of the drug-laced water, and instead spent more time
engaging in communal activities. Alexander concluded
that rats avoided the drug-laced water because it interfered with complex species-specific social behavior.
If the pattern generalizes to humans, we might expect the
same results once some of the restrictions of the pandemic are removed. The underlying hypothesis is that once
the establishing operations (EOs), described as “stress”,
“anxiety,” and “loneliness,” are decreased, drinking behavior will return to individual baseline levels as alcohol’s reinforcing effect decreases.
But what about the other 10-30% who may have a harder time decreasing their drinking behavior because
they have contacted the reinforcing effects of alcohol?
In the current paradigm, looking at addiction as a disease strengthens the view for many people that medical
science is the best framework to understand addiction,
reducing the problem to a biological or chemical level.
As we behavior analysts know, behavior results not only
from biological factors but also from the interaction of
the organism with his or her internal and external environments. Although most people underestimate the
power of the environment to affect behavior, the conceptual view of addiction is evolving to include the external
environment’s role in treatment, specifically focusing on
the social environment. Viewing alcohol addiction as an
interaction between the individual’s biology, behavior,
and culture is leading the way to new and possibly more
effective treatments than those that are currently provided.
A current typical protocol begins with a program of medical management of detoxification (if necessary) and individual or group psychological counseling, usually in a
treatment center. For some individuals, this may be combined with medication, which either produces aversive
unconditioned responses (such as vomiting) or blocks
the reinforcing effects of alcohol. And, although there is
social support, it is mostly limited to meetings that follow the 12-step model, which has an overarching spiritual or religious component and asks people to identify
as having a permanent, chronic disease that cannot be
cured, only controlled in remission by abstinence.
Although behavioral research has shown the effectiveness of providing an enriched environment in increasing
abstaining behaviors, non-behavioral researchers are just
beginning to evaluate the efficacy of programs utilizing
that research.
In 2000, a kind of natural AB-design experiment was conducted in Portugal. Due to the high rate of drug addiction, the government instructed a group of scientists led
by Dr. João Goulão to look at the existing evidence for
the treatment of addiction and implement a nation-wide
program. The intervention package included traditional methods of recovery, such as rehabilitation centers
and psychological therapy, and, unlike most cultures,
decriminalization of all drugs. But the most interesting
component involved the policies of prevention and treat-
ment, which included social reinsertion of those who
were before labeled as helpless, useless, and criminal
drug addicts. These “drug addicts” were provided economic opportunities, and their employers were incentivized for providing those opportunities. The drug users
were taught new skills that functioned as replacement
behaviors. As a result of this intervention program, there
was a reduction in all forms of addiction, and the government touted it as a success. Of course, more research
with strong experimental designs and replications are
necessary before definitive evidence-based conclusions
can be made.
Since then, some newer programs are surfacing in different parts of the world that are replicating some of
the intervention components that were implemented in
Portugal. Many of these programs have as one of their
main components a social community. One such program launched in 2020 is called The Path, which was
developed from the methodology detailed in the books
This Naked Mind and The Alcohol Experiment, both written by Annie Grace. This is a paid membership site in
which members are provided four key pillars to change
their drinking behavior: content, community, coaching,
and connection. In this community, members are encouraged to view their behavior as the dependent variable
in an experiment and to evaluate the effects of altering
environmental variables. The program focuses on identifying the functions of the drinking behavior, as well as
EOs, SDs, and S-deltas. The members are taught functionally equivalent alternative and/or incompatible behaviors that are more acceptable to the individual and
the community. For example, if a person drinks to escape a stressful environment, he or she is provided with
healthier replacement coping skills, such as exercise or
meditation. People are taught how their learning history
and previous consequences have shaped their drinking
behavior. But most importantly, the members learn that
they do not have “a chronic, relapsing brain disease that
is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences” (National Institute on Drug
Abuse) and that they can learn to engage in other behaviors by monitoring and evaluating their environments.
By changing the pattern of behaviors, people can change
their relationship with alcohol. This program rejects
the use of socially mediated punishment contingencies,
which often produce private physiological effects that
we tact as “shame.” Instead, the community provides
socially mediated positive reinforcement contingent on
participation and engagement in the program and not
for abstaining behavior.
Imagine that: Building an environment that removes
punishment contingencies; that provides contingent
positive reinforcement for behaviors that you value;
that modifies the environment to increase those valued
behaviors; and that teaches appropriate replacement behaviors according to the individual and the community.
Such a system would help people change their drinking
behavior with behavior analysis.
Operants 47
notebooks
SELF-UNDERSTANDING
Marilin Colón, PhD
Every quarter, Operants magazine features commentary on selected notes written by Skinner.
In this issue Marilin Colón, PhD, provides her take on the note from 1964.
Self- Understanding
Freud was unable to stop smoking cigars, up to 25 a day, though smoking must have been obviously
related to the heavy “catarrh” he suffered from most of his life, as well as to the protracted cancer of
the jaw in his last years. (Did he stop toward the end?) An astonishing lack of self-understanding or
self-control. Was he not bothered by it, or did much of his theory spring from the need to acknowledge
that the habit was “bigger than he was”—that contingency-shaped behavior (the “unconscious”) prevailed against rule-governed (“the rational conscious mind”)?
Page 341
8/19/1964
I think, just like Freud, much of the population lacks the self-understanding or self-control to prevent or decrease
the compulsive overconsumption of substances or behaviors that lead to large immediate releases of the reinforcing
neurotransmitter dopamine. That is because most people rely on personal agency but do not accept its limitations. In
self-control situations, they are unaware of the interplay of contingencies of immediate and delayed reinforcement
and how our preferences change over time. As stated in the Ainslie-Rachlin principle, the reinforcement value decreases as the delay between making a choice and obtaining the reinforcer increases. In other words, we may start
the day with the full intention to not smoke, not drink, not scroll social medical that evening but when the evening
arrives (the choice point), we usually behave impulsively by selecting the immediate, short-term payoff of that reinforcer. Foiled again by contingency-shaped behavior!
However, at some time before making that choice that evening, there is a point where preference reversal could occur
because the value of the immediate reinforcer is less than the value of the delayed reward. At this point, such as earlier in the day, we commit to forgo the immediate reward and bind ourselves into the delayed payoff by eliminating
or reducing the probability of impulsive behavior.
This self-binding strategy of intentionally and willingly creating barriers between ourselves and impulsive behavior
is literally represented in Homer’s story of Odysseus and the “Sirens.” The sirens look like beautiful women but are
really two monsters that lure sailors with their beautiful melodies to their island, and then kill them. Forewarned by
the goddess Circe, Odysseus makes his men put beeswax in their ears so that they won’t hear the songs and makes
them tie him to the mast and instructs them to ignore all his pleas to be untied. As their boat sails past the monsters’
island, Odysseus is mesmerized by the songs. However, due to being tied to the mast, he is unable to sail or swim to
them, and can experience their songs while also surviving this part of the journey.
I don’t know whether Freud ever tried to curb or stop his cigar smoking. But, if you feel that you are over-consuming a certain substance or over-engaging in a certain behavior, self-binding strategies could be helpful. Two types
of self-binding strategies involve space and time. Space involves physical barriers as exemplified by Odysseus in
the above story. Time strategies include setting time limits, milestones, or deadlines. And, of course, these strategies
can be combined. In my own life, for example, I remove some social media applications from my phone during the
weekdays and allow them on my phone for a limited amount of time on the weekend.
Although self-binding strategies can be effective, it always best to combine changing the environmental context with
analysis of the function of the behavior and contingency management for unwanted behaviors and commitment
responses. If you are bothered by any of your habitual behaviors, it is encouraging to know that with some experimentation, rule-governed behavior can prevail.
b. f. skinner foundaTion