Among many of Jack Michael's contributions to the field of behavior analysis is his behavioral account of motivation. This paper focuses on the concept of "motivating operation" (MO) by outlining its development from Skinner's (1938) notion of "drive." Conceptually, Michael's term helped us change our focus on…

Behavioral flexibility allows individuals to adapt to situations in which rewards and goals change. Potentially addictive drugs may impair flexible decision-making by altering brain mechanisms that compute reward expectancies, thereby facilitating maladaptive drug use. To investigate this hypothesis, we tested the effects of oxycodone exposure on…

We have previously shown that intracerebellar infusion of the neuropeptide secretin enhances the acquisition phase of eyeblink conditioning (EBC). Here, we sought to test whether endogenous secretin also regulates EBC and to test whether the effect of exogenous and endogenous secretin is specific to acquisition. In Experiment 1, rats received…

This study examines the role of stimulus duration in learning and memory formation of honeybees ("Apis mellifera"). In classical appetitive conditioning honeybees learn the association between an initially neutral, conditioned stimulus (CS) and the occurrence of a meaningful stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus (US). Thereby the CS…

The current study meta-analyzed 47 single-subject studies of behavioral self-management interventions that were published between 1971 and 2011. In addition to obtaining an overall measure of effect across all self-management studies (f = 0.93), analyses were conducted to assess whether treatment effectiveness was moderated by factors such as…

Improving academic, behavioural, and social outcomes of students through empirical research has been a firm commitment among researchers, policy-makers, and other professionals in education across Europe and the United States (U.S.). To assist in building scientific evidences, executive bodies such as the European Commission and the Institute for…

Consumer behavior analysis can be applied over a wide range of economic topics in which the main focus is the contingencies that influence the behavior of the economic agent. This paper provides an overview on the work that has been done on the impact from motivating operations at the point of online purchase situation. Motivating operations, a…

Achievement goal theory is one of the most popular theories of achievement motivation. Techniques researchers have used to assess goals include standardized questionnaires and interviews. One curious finding is that participants whose self-report questionnaire responses strongly indicate they operate with a performance goal do not make performance…

Publication bias arises when studies with favorable results are more likely to be reported than are studies with null findings. If this bias occurs in studies with single-subject experimental designs (SSEDs) on applied behavior-analytic (ABA) interventions, it could lead to exaggerated estimates of intervention effects. Therefore, we conducted an…

The review will focus on the effectiveness of school-based "self-management" (SM) interventions--a widely-used cognitive behavioral intervention to address disruptive and challenging behaviors in school settings. Though SM interventions are referred by many names (e.g., self-control, effortful control, self-regulation), SM is defined as…

Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior has been the subject of much controversy in recent years. While criticism has historically come from outside the field of behavior analysis, there are now well-articulated arguments against Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior from within the field as well. Recently, advocates of…

Robert Bostrom's seminal contributions to listening theory and research represent an impressive legacy and provide listening scholars with important perspectives on the complexities of listening cognition and behavior. Bostrom's work provides a solid foundation on which to build models that more realistically explain how listeners function…

"The Belmont Report" was written in 1979 to address the abuse of human participants in biomedical research. In the report, three ethical principles were described: (1) "beneficence," which describes an act of charity or kindness that maximizes possible benefits while minimizing possible harms; (2) "justice," described…

Communicators of climate science seek ways to better educate and motivate individuals to personally commit to sustainable, energy-saving activities. However, critical psychological and social barriers to conservation make this task challenging. Behavioural scientists are well aware of the difficulties that individuals and groups have in responding…

Background: Cigarette and alcohol use are common among youth. We examined sources of cigarettes and alcohol among youth who were current cigarette and alcohol users. Methods: We analyzed nationally representative data from the 2009 and 2011 national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys--biennial, school-based surveys of high school students in the United…