Andy Lattal, Ph.D.
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Technology and Behavior Around the Office Coffee Machine
An office familiar to me has for many years generously provided coffee packets to its employees as a benefit. One selects their particular type from a large assortment, inserts it into the machine…
Reinforcement Schedules and Everyday Life
A reinforcement schedule is a prescription for arranging reinforcers in time and in relation to behavior. “So what,” you may ask? “Why should I care about something so esoteric and seemingly removed…
Reinforcement is a Reciprocal Relation
Reinforcement in most human situations commonly is arranged and administered by another person. Teachers reinforce appropriate behavior of their students and parents praise good acts of their…
Is Behavior Ever Beyond Change?
We behavior analysts consider ourselves pretty skilled at changing behavior. But are there circumstances where behavior can’t, or won’t, change? Probably, but let’s consider the circumstances where…
Barking Dogs and Delayed Reinforcement
Not too many years ago we had a wonderful Golden Retriever named Molly, whose greatest pleasure in life was human contact. Sure, she would step outside in the morning for a quick relief, but within…
What Does It Mean to Emit a Response
In behavioral circles it is common to hear expressions like “the child emitted the response” or “the rat emitted a bar press.” Use of the verb “emit” comes from an old distinction in psychology.…
Some Other Things You Need to Know About Performance Baselines
A performance baseline provides the standard against which we measure the effectiveness of our intervention. A change following an intervention relative to the baseline level of the behavior signals…
Backyard Behaviorism: Creating Science Fair Projects in Natural Settings
In a previous commentary I described an experiment in which response keys and a food delivery device was set in a window such that any free-ranging pigeon who happened by could peck the keys and gain…
Things You Need to Know About Performance Baselines: Trend and Bounce
Whether you are teacher evaluating students’ learning of a new academic skill, a manager evaluating the efficiency with which employees perform a task, or a basic researcher investigating the effect…
Turkey in the Oven or in the Skinner Box?
Think about it. You can put a turkey in the oven only once. The pleasure for the turkey is over immediately (well, realistically some days before), and for you not long after the Thanksgiving feast.…
Be Careful What You Read, Even if it’s from the NYT
Can it be that only some people like positive reinforcement? The older I get, the more half-truths and unsupported declarations bug me. Nowhere is this more evident to me than the way writers,…
Reinforcers, Rewards, and Incentives: Are There Differences?
These three terms often appear in reports related to behavior change. A dictionary definition of an incentive is “a thing that motivates or encourages one to do something.” The word “reward” is used…
Three Different Ways that Reinforcers Affect Behavior
When presenting some event or activity dependent on a response makes that response more likely in the future, we say that reinforcement of the response has occurred. This sometimes is…
Private Events and the Mind-Body Problem
Anyone who has taken a history of psychology course will no doubt remember an early lecture by their professor on the mind-body problem. If you were a behaviorist back then, you were probably asking…
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Bite
Here’s a question for all you readers who are parents, walkers, bicyclists, or runners. Have you ever been engaged in any of these activities when a strange, leashless, dog bounds up to you or yours…
Wait, Then Go: The Strange Case of So-Called DRL Schedules
Ever see one of those u-tube videos where the dog has to sit there with a biscuit on its nose while some snarky owner says with pointed finger “Noooooo waaaaaaait” as the dog drools all over the…
Some Ins and Outs of Private Events
No one can deny as an individual having experiences, most commonly described as thoughts and feelings, which are not shared with others. Nor can we unequivocally show that others have such…
Cooperation is Behavior
Individual learning provides much of the scientific foundation of behavioral psychology. A person’s actions are assessed in relation to the physiology, personal history, and current forces…