The last decade has yielded an unprecedented amount of new science relating to the unique strengths and weaknesses of the adolescent and young adult brain. It is now crystal clear that when it comes to the brain, adolescents are not simply adults with fewer miles on them. In fact, the brain is the last organ in the body to mature, and is finally…

Research on joint control has focused on mediational responses, in which simultaneous stimulus control from two sources leads to the emission of a single response, such as choosing a comparison stimulus in delayed matching-to-sample. Most recent studies of joint control examined the role of verbal mediators (i.e., rehearsal) in evoking accurate…

Student learning assessments--from the institutional level to "Academically Adrift"--routinely overlook the ways that plagiarism and cheating may contribute to poor outcome performance. The blind spot is a curious one. Faculty have long warned students that they must complete work honestly if they are to learn. Cognitive research offers…

Although several studies have examined the subcortical circuitry underlying Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), the role of medial prefrontal cortex in this behavior is largely unknown. Elucidating the cortical contributions to PIT will be key for understanding how reward-paired cues control behavior in both adaptive and maladaptive context…

Preferences are influenced by the presence or absence of salient choice options, known as reference points. This behavioral tendency is traditionally attributed to the loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity assumptions of prospect theory. In contrast, some psychological research suggests that reference dependence is caused by attentional biases…

"In the late 1950's, Jack Michael, a bright but irritating young psychology instructor, moved from the Universities of Kansas to Houston to Arizona State. Along the way he befriended two nontraditional students, protected them through their Ph.D. programs, and turned them loose on the world: Teodoro Ayllon…and Montrose Wolf…" (Risley,…

Students with or at risk of emotional and behavioral disorders can benefit from a variety of self-regulation strategies. One such strategy is goal setting, which can be used to improve both academic and behavioral outcomes in the classroom. In this article, we discuss the importance of goal setting and current research in this area. In addition,…

To provide multi-dimensional support for undergraduates from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds who aspire to careers in research, the BUILD EXITO project, part of a major NIH-funded diversity initiative, matches each scholar with three mentors: peer mentor (advanced student), career mentor (faculty adviser), and research mentor (research…

Science is being criticized within scientific domains and society. To address this, we suggest that researchers in special education, broadly, and those working in the behavioral disorders field, specifically, consider three critical facets of research: (a) importance of rigor, (b) value of replication, and (c) transparency of reproducibility in…

Methods for meta-analyzing single-case designs (SCDs) are needed to inform evidence-based practice in clinical and school settings and to draw broader and more defensible generalizations in areas where SCDs comprise a large part of the research base. The most widely used outcomes in single-case research are measures of behavior collected using…

It has often been suggested that nonexperts find the communication of behavior analysts to be viscerally off-putting. We argue that this concern should be the focus of systematic research rather than mere discussion, and describe five studies that illustrate how publicly available lists of word-emotion ratings can be used to estimate the responses…

Introduction: The purpose of the paper is to explore the ways in which visual methods can increase the quality of qualitative information behaviour research. Methods: The paper examines Tracy's framework of eight criteria for research quality: worthy topic, rich rigour, sincerity, credibility, resonance, significant contribution, ethical issues…

As the first major effort to use a behavioral economics lens to examine human services programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States, the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project demonstrated the value of applying behavioral insights to improve the efficacy of human services programs. The BIAS…

A gap exists in the information needed to make intervention decisions with preschool children who are unresponsive to instructional intervention. "Multi-Tiered System of Supports/Response to Intervention" (MTSS/RTI) progress monitoring is helpful in indicating when an intervention change is needed but provides little information on what…

Learning Skinner's (1957) verbal behavior taxonomy requires extensive study and practice. Thus, novel classroom exercises might serve this goal. The present manuscript describes a classroom exercise in which two students analyzed Lady Gaga's song "Applause" in terms of its metaphorical arrangements. Through the exercise, students…