Giving the history of psychology away in behavior analysis.

Based on a symposium at the 2018 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI; E. K. Morris, 2018), the December 2022 issue of Perspectives on Behavior Science (PoBS)-ABAI's house journal-published a special section on teaching the history of behavior analysis. It was inspired by George Miller's (1969) urging that psychologists promote human welfare by discovering how "to give psychology away" (p. 1074). The special section of PoBS urged readers to promote the history of behavior analysis by giving it away. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Teaching a Course on the History of Behavior Analysis.

Teaching the history of behavior analysis can be approached in many ways. One is to embed history in courses on the field's discipline and subdisciplines (e.g., its basic and applied sciences and their conceptual foundations) and practice. Another is to teach courses on the histories of the discipline and subdisciplines and practice. Still another is to teach a stand-alone course that includes these approaches and more (e.g., their integration, relations with other sciences, the influence of U.S. history and culture). The purpose of this article is to foster teaching the stand-alone course. It has four sections. The first addresses structural considerations: course titles, catalog descriptions, curricula, certification, and accreditation. The second addresses contextual considerations: purposes of teaching history; distinctions between history and historiography; and starting points in selecting textbooks. The third addresses functional considerations: course content organized by topics and their required and recommended readings. The fourth discusses how the course might be revised by eliminating topics (e.g., the Middle Ages), expanding topics and subtopics (e.g., the behaviorisms, philosophy of science) and adding topics and subtopics (e.g., institutional history; diversity, inclusion, and equity). Given the field's continuing development as a science, system, and practice and the rapid growth in its number and variety of its members, its history is becoming its common core-and a means of teaching it. The course elucidates the field's integrity; incorporates the entirety of its community of students, scientists, scholars, and practitioners; and advance its coherence as a cultural practice.

Introduction to Teaching the History of Behavior Analysis: Past, Purpose, and Prologue.

This article introduces a special section of Perspectives on Behavior Science on teaching the history of behavior analysis. Although behavior is distinctive, behavior analysis is diverse, and the history of behavior analysis is deep, teaching the field's history often is not. The special section offers means for remedying this. The introduction has three sections. First, it relates the genesis of the special section: the 2018 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International and, before that, the 2015 meeting of Cheiron: The International Society for the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Second, it addresses the purposes-reasons and rationales-for teaching history, especially the history of behavior analysis. And third, it offers a prologue for teaching the field's history based on a review of what is taught or not in recent textbooks and handbooks on the field's basic and applied research and their conceptual foundations. In its conclusion, the article previews the section's other articles: (1) three exemplars on how history can be embedded in courses on the field's foregoing three subdisciplines; (2) an exemplar of teaching history in a stand-alone course on the field's history overall; (3) a discussion that addresses how to improve instruction in these courses through narrative methods; and (4) a conclusion about the present and future of teaching the field's history (e.g., giving the history of behavior analysis away).

A note on a precursor of behavioral momentum.

This is a historical note on a precursor of the concept of behavioral momentum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in particular, Charles B. description of it in terms of behavioral durability. The note is based largely on two email exchanges we had with John A. (Tony) Nevin, who offered insights on behavioral momentum as a term and a concept that are fit to be public on the occasion of this issue of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior in his honor. Nevin addressed graduate work at Columbia University, the Newtonian analogy, the term behavioral momentum, and precursors of his work that are now lost in history. Ferster's description, though, was more compellingly modern than the others and the one first based in research on human operant behavior.

Stop Preaching to the Choir, Publish Outside the Box: A Discussion.

In this article, I comment on Normand's, Vyse's, Friman's, Schlinger's, and Reed's articles on publishing books, journal articles, letters to the editor, and columns outside of behavior analysis, that is, "outside the box," as well as communicating with editors, authors, and journalists. Among the topics I address are the prerequisite repertoires and these authors' guidance (e.g., task analyses), as well as technical terms and language and the many opportunities available to us, yet also caveats about how, whether, and when we should publish outside the box. In the process, I include lessons I have learned from submitting my own manuscripts outside the box and suggestions I have gleaned from my failures and successes. In conclusion, if the field values publishing outside the box, then, it should analyze the necessary repertoires and provide systematic instruction in them.

A study in the founding of applied behavior analysis through its publications.

This article reports a study of the founding of applied behavior analysis through its publications. Our methods included hand searches of sources (e.g., journals, reference lists), search terms (i.e., early, applied, behavioral, research, literature), inclusion criteria (e.g., the field's applied dimension), and (d) challenges to their face and content validity. Our results were 36 articles published between 1959 and 1967 that we organized into 4 groups: 12 in 3 programs of research and 24 others. Our discussion addresses (a) limitations in our method (e.g., the completeness of our search), (b) challenges to the validity of our methods and results (e.g., convergent validity), and (c) priority claims about the field's founding. We conclude that the claims are irresolvable because identification of the founding publications depends significantly on methods and because the field's founding was an evolutionary process. We close with suggestions for future research.

A Quantitative Analysis and Natural History of B. F. Skinner's Coauthoring Practices.

This paper describes and analyzes B. F. Skinner's coauthoring practices. After identifying his 35 coauthored publications and 27 coauthors, we analyze his coauthored works by their form (e.g., journal articles) and kind (e.g., empirical); identify the journals in which he published and their type (e.g., data-type); describe his overall and local rates of publishing with his coauthors (e.g., noting breaks in the latter); and compare his coauthoring practices with his single-authoring practices (e.g., form, kind, journal type) and with those in the scientometric literature (e.g., majority of coauthored publications are empirical). We address these findings in the context of describing the natural history of Skinner's coauthoring practices. Finally, we describe some limitations in our methods and offer suggestions for future research.

Use of sounding out to improve spelling in young children.

We examined the effects of teaching 5 typically developing elementary students to sound out their spelling words while writing them using the cover-copy-compare (CCC) method to practice spelling. Each student's posttest performance following practice with sounding out was compared to that student's posttest performance following practice with no sounding out. For every student, posttest accuracy was higher following practice with sounding out, indicating that it is an effective and easily implemented strategy to improve spelling instruction.

Behavior analysis and ecological psychology: past, present, and future. a review of Harry Heft's Ecological Psychology in context.

Relations between behavior analysis and ecological psychology have been strained for years, notwithstanding the occasional comment on their affinities. Harry Heft's (2001)Ecological Psychology in Context provides an occasion for reviewing anew those relations and affinities. It describes the genesis of ecological psychology in James's radical empiricism; addresses Holt's neorealism and Gestalt psychology; and synthesizes Gibson's ecological psychology and Barker's ecobehavioral science as a means for understanding everyday human behavior. Although behavior analysis is excluded from this account, Heft's book warrants a review nonetheless: It describes ecological psychology in ways that are congruent and complementary with behavior analysis (e.g., nonmediational theorizing; the provinces of natural history and natural science). After introducing modern ecological psychology, I comment on (a) Heft's admirable, albeit selective, historiography; (b) his ecological psychology-past and present-as it relates to Skinner's science and system (e.g., affordances, molar behavior); (c) his misunderstandings of Skinner's behaviorism (e.g., reductionistic, mechanistic, molecular); and (d) the theoretical status of Heft's cognitive terms and talk (i.e., in ontology, epistemology, syntax). I conclude by considering the alliance and integration of ecological psychology and behavior analysis, and their implications for unifying and transforming psychology as a life science, albeit more for the future than at present.

A case study in the misrepresentation of applied behavior analysis in autism: the gernsbacher lectures.

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their life. (Tolstoy, 1894)This article presents a case study in the misrepresentation of applied behavior analysis for autism based on Morton Ann Gernsbacher's presentation of a lecture titled "The Science of Autism: Beyond the Myths and Misconceptions." Her misrepresentations involve the characterization of applied behavior analysis, descriptions of practice guidelines, reviews of the treatment literature, presentations of the clinical trials research, and conclusions about those trials (e.g., children's improvements are due to development, not applied behavior analysis). The article also reviews applied behavior analysis' professional endorsements and research support, and addresses issues in professional conduct. It ends by noting the deleterious effects that misrepresenting any research on autism (e.g., biological, developmental, behavioral) have on our understanding and treating it in a transdisciplinary context.

B. F. Skinner's Utopian Vision: Behind and Beyond Walden Two.

This paper addresses B. F. Skinner's utopian vision for enhancing social justice and human well-being in his 1948 novel, Walden Two. In the first part, we situate the book in its historical, intellectual, and social context of the utopian genre, address critiques of the book's premises and practices, and discuss the fate of intentional communities patterned on the book. The central point here is that Skinner's utopian vision was not any of Walden Two's practices, except one: the use of empirical methods to search for and discover practices that worked. In the second part, we describe practices in Skinner's book that advance social justice and human well-being under the themes of health, wealth, and wisdom, and then show how the subsequent literature in applied behavior analysis supports Skinner's prescience. Applied behavior analysis is a measure of the success of Skinner's utopian vision: to experiment.

Sidney w. Bijou: the illinois years, 1965-1975.

Sidney W. Bijou is among the founders of behavior analysis, but the record of his contributions is incomplete. It has not systematically described his contributions beyond his tenure at the University of Washington (1948-1965). The purpose of this paper is to describe his contributions over the course of the next decade-his years at the University of Illinois (1965-1975). I begin by reviewing his education and training, contributions at Washington, and why he left and moved to Illinois. Then, I describe his Illinois years: his appointments, colleagues, and service; the Child Behavior Laboratory; grant funding and publications; further service, awards, and recognition; and influence on his colleagues, students, classroom teachers and research supervisors, and visiting scholars. Bijou is modest about his contributions at Illinois, but he advanced the field in many ways over the course of the decade, especially the careers of his colleagues and students.

Trends in Women's Participation at the Meetings of the Association for Behavior Analysis: 1975-2005.

We examined women's participation, relative to men's, at the annual meetings of the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) between 1975 and 2005. Among our findings are upward trends in female presenters across formats (e.g., posters), types of authorship (e.g., first authors), and specialty areas (e.g., autism). Where women have attained parity, however, they are still often underrepresented, given their percentage of membership. Women also participate less than men as sole and invited authors and discussants and in the domains of basic research and conceptual analysis, but participate more than men in the applied domain. Data from the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis show parallel but delayed trends toward parity in basic and applied research, whereas data from The Behavior Analyst show only modest gains in the conceptual domain. We discuss the gender disparities in ABA's more prestigious categories of participation (e.g., invited addresses) and across its content domains, as well as in science in general, and the role of social and cultural factors in producing the disparities and how behavior analysts might aid in correcting them.

B. F. Skinner's contributions to applied behavior analysis.

Our paper reviews and analyzes B. F. Skinner's contributions to applied behavior analysis in order to assess his role as the field's originator and founder. We found, first, that his contributions fall into five categorizes: the style and content of his science, his interpretations of typical and atypical human behavior, the implications he drew from his science for application, his descriptions of possible applications, and his own applications to nonhuman and human behavior. Second, we found that he explicitly or implicitly addressed all seven dimensions of applied behavior analysis. These contributions and the dimensions notwithstanding, he neither incorporated the field's scientific (e.g., analytic) and social dimensions (e.g., applied) into any program of published research such that he was its originator, nor did he systematically integrate, advance, and promote the dimensions so to have been its founder. As the founder of behavior analysis, however, he was the father of applied behavior analysis.

Whether, when, and why Skinner published on biological participation in behavior.

This paper brings some data to bear on the criticisms, claims, and arguments that Skinner (a) denied or dismissed biological participation in behavior, (b) addressed it only late in his career or more often later than earlier, or (c) addressed it only because of the overwhelming evidence for it or the criticisms that he had overlooked it. For this, we coded Skinner's every primary-source publication for three content categories (i.e., genetics, physiology, and evolution) and for the extent to which he addressed them (i.e., in publication titles, substantively, or in passing). Our findings are that Skinner addressed biological participation in over a third of his publications throughout his career, albeit more often later than earlier. The latter, however, is accounted for by an increase in his base rate of publication and in general conditions and specific events in his career, psychology, and science. The discussion addresses our research methods; the reasons for and refutations of the criticisms, claims, and arguments; and their sources.

On the origin and preservation of cumulative record in its struggle for life as a favored term.

This paper offers a case study of the origins, emergence, and evolution of the term cumulative record as the name for the means by which B. F. Skinner brought his behavior under the control of his subject matter. Our methods included on-line searches, reviews of Skinner's publications, and journal codings and counts. The results reveal that the term is not originally attributable to Skinner, but emerged earlier in ordinary language and in another discipline--education. It was not even original to Skinner in print in his own science. Still, the term was once original to him, which we address with additional analyses of his having originated and advanced it. We conclude with a discussion the constraints of our methods, suggestions for future research, and the variable appreciation of technology and terminology in science studies.

Bibliographic processes and products, and a bibliography of the published primary-source works of B. F. Skinner.

This paper introduces the nature and practice of bibliography (e.g., definition, history, and genres); it reviews the extant B. F. Skinner bibliographies (1958 to 2001); and it describes the methods used in constructing a new, comprehensive, and corrected bibliography of Skinner's primary-source published works. The bibliography includes 291 items from across 16 categories of publications (e.g., books, articles, chapters, monographs, book reviews, manuals, encyclopedia entries, letters to the editor) and lists them in chronological order (1930 to 1999). A discussion section addresses the bibliography's limitations, how it might be enlarged and expanded, its value for qualitative and quantitative historical inquiry, and the beginnings of a "Skinner industry."