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Abstract This article is a transcription of Murray Sidman's presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for the Quantitative Analysis of Behavior in May 1998. It describes the development (from 1965 to 1975) of behavior‐change programs implemented outside the animal laboratory to benefit humans before such application was established formally as an entity derived from the experimental analysis of behavior. The presentation illustrates the use of an inductive method in practice, where working with a fluid behavior stream entails making intervention decisions on the spot. Examples include fading and backward‐chaining procedures in the establishment and stimulus control of novel actions. Sidman also discusses the certification of practitioners and the interaction between client and therapist and between basic and applied endeavors. The latter define what is contemporaneously described as translational intervention. It is noteworthy that Sidman's presentation was at a meeting attended by both practitioners and scientists.

Abstract Operant behavior can reflect the influence of goal‐directed and habitual processes. These can be distinguished by changes to response rate following devaluation of the reinforcing outcome. Whether a response is goal directed or habitual depends on whether devaluation affects response rate. Response rate can be decomposed into frequencies of bouts and pauses by analyzing the distribution of interresponse times. This study sought to characterize goal‐directed and habitual behaviors in terms of bout‐initiation rate, within‐bout response rate, bout length, and bout duration. Data were taken from three published studies that compared sensitivity to devaluation following brief and extended training with variable‐interval schedules. Analyses focused on goal‐directed and habitual responding, a comparison of a habitual response to a similarly trained response that had been converted back to goal‐directed status after a surprising event, and a demonstration of contextual control of habit and goal direction in the same subjects. Across experiments and despite responses being clearly distinguished as goal directed and habitual by total response rate, analyses of bout‐initiation rate, within‐bout rate, bout length, and bout duration did not reveal a pattern that distinguished goal‐directed from habitual responding.

Abstract Arranging assent opportunities is an increasingly common strategy for involving clients in therapeutic decisions within behavior analysis. Recent behavior‐analytic articles have helped create a basic behavioral definition and conceptualization of assent, but much more guidance is needed for practitioners and researchers interested in embedding assent into their practices. The purpose of this article is to advance the conceptualization and understanding of assent and assent practices by refining previous definitions and conceptualizations of assent and providing six essential considerations for embedding assent into practice. The six considerations consist of determining the applicability and feasibility of assent, assessing assent‐related skills, arranging assent procedures and teaching assent‐related skills, arranging fair choices, selecting opportunities to assess assent, and informally assessing assent. Following the discussion of the considerations for assent practices, we issue a call for specific topics of research on assent.

Abstract Autoclitics are secondary verbal operants that are controlled by a feature of the conditions that occasion or evoke a primary verbal operant such as a tact or mand. Qualifying autoclitics extend, negate, or assert a speaker's primary verbal response and modify the intensity or direction of the listener's behavior. Howard and Rice (1988) established autoclitics that indicated weak stimulus control (e.g., “like a [primary tact]”) with four neurotypical preschool children. However, generalization to newly acquired tacts was limited. In Experiment 1, we addressed similar behavior as in Howard and Rice but with autistic children while using simultaneous teaching procedures, and we observed generalization across sets and with newly acquired tacts. In Experiment 2, we evaluated the effects of multiple‐exemplar training on generalization of autoclitics across sets of naturalistic stimuli. Across participants, gradual increases in the frequency of autoclitics occurred with untaught stimuli after teaching with one or more sets.

Abstract Behavioral skills training (BST) is an evidence‐based approach for training individuals to implement discrete‐trial teaching procedures. Despite the effectiveness of this approach, implementing BST can be time and resource intensive, which may interfere with a clinical organization's adoption of this training format. We conducted a scoping review of studies using BST components for training discrete‐trial teaching procedures in peer‐reviewed articles between 1977 and 2021. We identified 51 studies in 46 publications involving 354 participants. We coded descriptive data on (a) participant characteristics, (b) study characteristics, (c) training conditions (including instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback), and (d) training outcomes. The results indicated that studies have primarily attempted to improve the efficacy and efficiency of BST by modifying or omitting common training components. We provide best‐practice considerations for using BST to teach discrete‐trial teaching procedures and offer a research agenda to guide future investigation in this area.

Abstract A challenge in carrying out matching analyses is to deal with undefined log ratios. If any reinforcer or response rate equals zero, the logarithm of the ratio is undefined: data are unsuitable for analyses. There have been some tentative solutions, but they had not been thoroughly investigated. The purpose of this article is to assess the adequacy of five treatments: omit undefined ratios, use full information maximum likelihood, replace undefined ratios by the mean divided by 100, replace them by a constant 1/10, and add the constant .50 to ratios. Based on simulations, the treatments are compared on their estimations of variance accounted for, sensitivity, and bias. The results show that full information maximum likelihood and omiting undefined ratios had the best overall performance, with negligibly biased and more accurate estimates than mean divided by 100, constant 1/10, and constant .50. The study suggests that mean divided by 100, constant 1/10, and constant .50 should be avoided and recommends full information maximum likelihood to deal with undefined log ratios in matching analyses.

Abstract This study evaluated how speech disfluencies affect perceived speaker effectiveness. Speeches with filler sounds and filler words at different rates of disfluencies (i.e., 0, 2, 5, and 12 per minute) were created and evaluated by a crowdsourcing service for survey‐based research for the speaker's public speaking performance. Increased disfluencies, particularly filler sounds, significantly affected perceptions across most categories, notably at higher rates of filler sounds (i.e., 12 per minute). A low, but nonzero, rate of disfluencies (5 per minute) did not adversely affect perceived effectiveness. These findings suggest that although reducing filler sounds is crucial for optimizing perceived speaking effectiveness, a rate of five or fewer disfluencies per minute may be acceptable.

Abstract Resurgence is defined as an increase in a previously extinguished target response ( B 1 ) resulting from the worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative response ( B 2 ). Worsening includes extinction or reductions in rate, amount, and immediacy of delivery of food or some other phylogenetically important event (PIE). In the first part of the article, we apply the laws of allocation, induction, and covariance to understand not only resurgence of operant activity previously covarying with the PIE ( B 1 ) but also a constellation of ontogenetic and phylogenetic activities both related to the PIE ( B 0 ) and unrelated to the PIE ( B N ). In the second part, we discuss how induction might be incorporated into and provide alternative processes within an existing matching‐based framework, resurgence as choice (RaC). We begin to identify how this range of activities could depend on changes in the relative competitive weight ( V ) of all available activities ( B 1 , B 2 , B 0 , B N ) in addition to only those receiving explicit training ( B 1 , B 2 ). Future empirical and theoretical research is needed within this framework to provide a more complete understanding of resurgence and behavior more generally.

Abstract Preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prevents human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) but not other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Men who have sex with men (MSM) who take PrEP tend to report reduced condom use, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. For this study, MSM who take PrEP (i.e., PrEP experienced; n = 88) and MSM who do not (i.e., PrEP naïve; n = 113) completed an online study, including the condom purchase task (CoPT). The CoPT assesses decisions to purchase condoms across escalating prices (range: free–$55) for sex with different types of hypothetical partners: those least likely to have an STD (least STD) and those that participants most want to have sex with (most want sex with). When condoms were free, PrEP‐experienced MSM had a lower rate of condom purchasing than did PrEP‐naïve MSM. For both partner types, PrEP‐experienced MSM reached a price break point (i.e., would not buy condoms) at a lower price than did PrEP‐naïve pariticipants. For the most‐want‐sex‐with partner at the price at which participants elected not to buy condoms, only 23% of PrEP‐experienced MSM chose to abstain from sex when not purchasing condoms versus 53% among PrEP‐naïve MSM. Similar patterns were observed for the least‐STD partner. The results support the potential utility of the CoPT in identifying behavioral mechanisms related to condom use and PrEP.

Abstract Children should engage in at least 60 min of physical activity daily to develop or maintain healthy habits (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021a). Previous research suggests that contingent attention is a powerful tool for increasing moderate to vigorous physical activity. In this study, the researchers examined the effects of a group game on steps per minute at recess in an inclusive classroom with preschoolers. The researcher taught the game called the T‐Rex game in which the game rules (chasing students who were moving) involved contingencies for natural attention to follow moderate to vigorous physical activity. The results showed a functional relation between step count and the group game in which students engaged in higher step counts when the group game was in place than during baseline. These findings extend other work by demonstrating that contingent attention embedded in group games can increase step count.