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Abstract This note discusses the apparently unpublished correspondence between B. F. Skinner and the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte, preceding Skinner's visit to the Thirteenth International Congress of Psychology in Stockholm in 1951. Skinner's letters, written in French, were intended to arrange a visit to Michotte's laboratory in Leuven (then called Louvain) in Belgium, which in the end never took place, although it seems highly likely that they met in Stockholm. There is no record of the topic of the conversations they may have had, although one possible speculation concerns discussions of causality, as both Skinner and Michotte had published work relating to this topic in the 1940s, Michotte's La Perception de la Causalité and Skinner's Superstition in the pigeon . The note also discusses the way in which Skinner's visit to the Thirteenth Congress influenced the development of the experimental analysis of behavior in both Europe and Japan.

Abstract The current experiment assessed whether relating abstract stimuli with familiar pictures by exclusion would produce the formation of a meaningful equivalence class. Ten participants learned conditional discrimination relations with abstract stimuli and established equivalence classes (ABC classes). They then learned DA (D1A1, D2A2, and D3A3) conditional discriminations with written words as D stimuli; two words (D1 and D2) were meaningful stimuli in the participants verbal community (“Dentist” and “Baker”), whereas the third (D3) was a pseudoword (“Tabilu”). In testing trials, participants evidenced derived relations between pictures related preexperimentally to D1 and D2 with the experimental equivalence classes related to D1 and D2. For some participants, the decontextualized stimuli were a set of boat pictures (Condition 1), whereas for others they were a set of miscellaneous pictures (Condition 2). Participants in both conditions successfully matched decontextualized pictures (unrelated to dentist and baker contexts) to all abstract stimuli in the class related to D3 (exclusion responding). In Condition 1 the meaning reported to the word Tabilu was similar across participants, but in Condition 2 participants showed more variations to answer to the meaning of Tabilu. These results suggest that exclusion learning can occur under different stimulus control topographies.

Abstract We present a new methodology to partition different sources of behavior change within a selectionist framework based on the Price equation—the multilevel model of behavioral selection. The multilevel model of behavioral selection provides a theoretical background to describe behavior change in terms of operant selection. Operant selection is formally captured by the covariance‐based law of effect and accounts for all changes in individual behavior that involve a covariance between behavior and predictors of evolutionary fitness (e.g., food). In this article, we show how the covariance‐based law of effect may be applied to different components of operant behavior (e.g., allocation, speed, and accuracy of responding), thereby providing quantitative estimates for various selection effects affecting behavior change using data from a published learning experiment with pigeons.

Abstract This study evaluated the extent to which a conjugate reinforcement schedule (CONJ) involving a contingency between pedaling a stationary bike and viewing a preferred movie could serve as a translational preparation for the analysis of automatically reinforced behavior. In part, researchers examined whether providing participants with either an accurate or an inaccurate rule about the extinction (EXT) component of a multiple schedule (MULT) contributed to the development of control by the MULT (CONJ EXT) schedule. Results show schedule control emerged for four of five participants who received the accurate rule and none of the five participants who received the inaccurate rule. In addition, participants who received accurate rules typically increased pedaling during CONJ components that followed two consecutive EXT components, suggesting that they experienced deprivation for audio and visual stimulation generated by pedaling. These preliminary findings suggest that researchers could use this translational preparation to identify matched interventions for some automatically reinforced behavior.

Abstract This concise review summarizes the literature on noncontingent reinforcement in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorder from 2018 to 2022. We reviewed 15 published behavior‐analytic feeding studies to identify how often the term noncontingent reinforcement is used, what form of noncontingent reinforcement is delivered, and what the effects of noncontingent reinforcement are on behavior when it is included in treatment. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract Inappropriate mealtime behavior (IMB) is a type of feeding challenge within the broader class of food refusal. The purpose of this study was to critically analyze the efficacy of interventions for the treatment of IMB through a meta‐analysis of research using single‐case experimental designs. We examined the extent to which different interventions resulted in decreases in IMB while also producing increases in food acceptance. This meta‐analysis was also used to examine the efficiency of different interventions in achieving clinical significance. We identified 38 studies involving 266 cases in which IMB was treated with a behavioral intervention. The results indicated interventions that combined escape extinction and non‐escape extinction had greater effect sizes for both reducing IMB and increasing food acceptance than either escape extinction alone or non‐escape extinction alone. However, interventions that included escape extinction were slightly less efficient at decreasing IMB than were interventions that did not include escape extinction. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.

Abstract Little research has examined specific instructional variables that influence the development and effectiveness of task‐analysis instruction. We conducted two experiments using text‐based task analyses to teach college students to create single‐subject reversal design graphs. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of presenting antecedent and outcome stimuli on graphing performance (accuracy, yield, time to completion). Different groups of participants experienced graphing tutorials with descriptions and pictures of (a) responses; (b) antecedent stimuli and responses; (c) responses and outcomes of correct responses; and (d) antecedent stimuli, responses, and outcomes. In Experiment 2, we compared tutorials with and without pictures. Collectively, the results suggest that graphing accuracy was positively affected by task analyses that included pictures and descriptions of antecedent stimuli and that adding outcome stimuli further benefited graphing accuracy. These results suggest critical instructional elements that should be included in future task analyses of graphing or other complex behavior chains.

Abstract Physical inactivity has been associated with several health problems, including diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Although many of these health problems are preventable through regular exercise, a small percentage of the adult population engages in the recommended levels. Reinforcement‐based interventions have been implemented successfully to promote physical activity, but studies targeting moderate or vigorous physical exercise using behavior‐analytic interventions are scarce. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the feasibility of a multicomponent intervention that provided monetary incentives for increasing running, jogging, or brisk walking distance for five adults. The intervention lasted 6 weeks and comprised weekly goal setting, feedback, public posting, and group contingencies. The results of the study suggest that the intervention may be feasible and effective at increasing moderate physical activity to levels recommended by the federal guidelines, but further research is warranted.

Abstract Habit and motivation are thought to be separate processes, with motivated behavior often considered to be goal directed, whereas habits are defined by the absence of goal‐directed control over behavior. However, there has been increasing interrogation of the binary nature of habitual versus goal‐directed behavior. Furthermore, although drug and alcohol exposure can promote the formation of habits, drug seeking itself can also be highly flexible, pointing toward the need for complex consideration of the parallel processes that drive behavior. The goal of the current study was to determine whether there was a relation between motivation—as measured by progressive ratio—and habit—as measured by contingency degradation—and whether this relation was affected by ethanol exposure history and sex. The results showed that these measures were positively correlated such that greater contingency insensitivity was associated with achieving higher break points on the progressive‐ratio task. However, this relation depended on reinforcement schedule history, ethanol exposure history, and sex. These point to potential relations between measures of habit and motivation and stress the importance of carefully parsing behavioral findings and assays. These findings are also expected to inform future substance use research, as drug history may affect these relations.

Abstract Problematic mobile phone use is characterized by its “impulsive” nature; users engage in it despite their negative attitude toward it. From a behavioral‐economic perspective, this attitude–behavior discrepancy is generated by competing contingencies that involve smaller‐sooner social reinforcers associated with mobile phone use and larger‐later prosocial reinforcers potentially compromised by phone use. Based on this conceptualization, the reinforcer‐pathology model of problematic mobile phone use is proposed, which posits that such phone use stems from excessive delay discounting of the social and prosocial reinforcers and/or excessive demand for the social reinforcers. A secondary data analysis of previously published studies was conducted, with the novel addition of principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis of these data. The results generated evidence that supports the reinforcer‐pathology model proposed in this article. Based on the theoretical analyses and accumulated empirical evidence, theory‐driven prevention and intervention strategies for problematic mobile phone use are proposed. Overall, the reinforcer‐pathology model of problematic mobile phone use provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and addressing this growing issue.