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Abstract Trial‐based functional analyses are valid assessments for identifying functions of problem behavior; however, there is little guidance in the literature on interpreting the resultant data from such assessments. The current study sought to extend Standish, Bailey, et al. (2021) by incorporating their trial‐based ongoing visual‐inspection criteria into a formative assessment process during a telehealth‐based consultation for parents seeking treatment for their child's problem behavior. The results showed that parent‐implemented trial‐based functional analyses guided by the trial‐based ongoing visual‐inspection criteria resulted in an efficient assessment‐to‐intervention progression and that the treatments were both effective and socially valid.

We examined how temporal expectations influence preference reversals in a delay of gratification task for rats based on a hypothesis of Rachlin (2000), who suggested that preference for a larger‐later reward may shift in favor of a smaller‐immediate reward as a result of changes in when that larger reward is expected. To explore Rachlin's hypothesis, we preexposed two groups of rats to the delays associated with a larger‐later reinforcer from a delay of gratification task. One group experienced the delays as a function of their choices in an intertemporal choice task and the other group experienced delays yoked from the first group (independent of their behavior) in an exposure training procedure. In addition, we included a third group of rats that were not exposed to delays during preexposure training as a comparison to the other two groups. Overall, the two groups of rats that experienced delays during preexposure training tended to make fewer defection responses than the comparison group during the delay of gratification task. Consistent with Rachlin's hypothesis, our results suggest that temporal learning may influence preference reversals in a delay of gratification task, providing a number of future directions for research in this area.

Abstract The Performance Diagnostic Checklist—Human Services (PDC‐HS) is an assessment used to identify variables contributing to staff performance concerns in human‐service settings. In the current study, we introduce and assess the test validity, interrater reliability, and test–retest reliability of the PDC‐HS (1.1), a revised version of the assessment that included revised instructions, questions, and intervention planning references. We measured the psychometric properties of the revised assessment by analyzing answers obtained from watching video vignettes of simulated interviews between consultants and a supervisor. Twenty‐one participants watched the vignettes and completed the PDC‐HS (1.1) based on the answers provided during the interview. We also included an item analysis to identify questions on which participants made errors and an intervention selection task to assess whether participants selected an appropriate intervention to target the indicated domain. The results support the use of the PDC‐HS (1.1) in human services settings.

Through his broad perspectives and curiosity, Howard Rachlin took behaviorism, added critical perspectives and behavioral economics, and contributed substantially to developing behaviorism as an approach to addressing complex human actions and engagements. This essay describes the influence of Rachlin's work in three areas that reflect this broader growth of the field: 1) teleological behaviorism as a response to essentialist thinking about behavior, typified by Ryle's category mistake and including concepts in psychopathology; 2) self‐control as choices among rewards differing by amount and delay and the application of this model to clinical and preventive interventions; and 3) behavioral economic modeling of social support as a commodity substitutable for other commodities of interest such as nicotine. These and the body of Rachlin's work suggest a view not only of interdependencies among behaviors, patterns of behavior, and their consequences, but more broadly, of interdependencies among different settings and their effects on behavior, leading to a behaviorism of systems and contexts. Replacing essentialist discourse of individuals, individual behaviors, and discrete influences, a world view or Weltanschauung emerges of diffuse interdependencies across patterns, individuals, settings, systems, probabilities, and consequences.

Abstract A graphic organizer (GO) is a note‐taking device with concepts and fill‐in spaces that may enhance equivalence yields under suboptimal training and testing parameters (e.g., linear training, simultaneous testing, five‐member all‐abstract classes). We used a nonconcurrent multiple‐probe design across eight adult participants to evaluate the effects of a treatment package consisting of abstract matching‐to‐sample baseline relations training (MTS‐BRT) and GO‐construction training. GOs were faded until participants drew or wrote the trained relations from a blank page, which was available in the pre‐ and posttests. There was a 75% yield (six of eight participants) on the first posttest and a 100% yield following remedial training with Set 1. With Set 2, MTS‐BRT alone resulted in voluntary GO construction and a 75% yield (three of four participants) on the first posttest and a 100% yield following remedial training. These results suggest that teaching participants to draw relations among stimuli may strengthen the effects of MTS‐BRT training on equivalence yields.

Abstract Visual analysis is the primary method of analyzing single‐case research data, yet relatively little is known about the variables that influence raters' decisions and rater agreement. Previous research has suggested that trend, variability, and autocorrelation may negatively affect interrater agreement, but studies have been limited by small numbers of graphs and participants whose knowledge of single‐case research was not described. The purpose of this study was to examine the main and interaction effects of two values of each of six data characteristics (e.g., level, trend, and number of data points) on agreement among visual analysts. Using data from Lanovaz and Hranchuk (2021), we examined odds ratios to identify data characteristics that influence interrater agreement. Results suggest that trend and effect size, and to a lesser extent variability, have the largest effects on interrater agreement. We discuss the implications of our results for future research on improving interrater agreement among visual analysts.

Abstract Recent behavior analytic studies have examined behavioral skills training to teach adults to arrange safe infant sleeping environments. These studies were conducted in an analogue environment and with all training components delivered by an expert staff trainer. The purpose of the current study was to replicate and extend this literature by substituting video‐based training for behavioral skills training. We assessed whether expectant caregivers could arrange safe infant sleeping environments following video‐based training. The results suggested that video‐based training alone resulted in positive outcomes for a portion of participants, whereas a subset of participants required feedback to reach mastery criteria. The social validity data suggest that the participants found the training procedures favorable.

Abstract The progression of recreational drinking to alcohol use disorder is characterized by loss of control over seeking, which involves continued use of alcohol despite negative consequences. The present study proposes a novel maladaptive alcohol self‐administration task in which animals are trained to withhold alcohol drinking in the presence of an auditory cue signaling consequence (conflict phase) but to drink freely when there is no consequence (neutral phase). These phases are performed within trial; successful performance involves waiting for the conflict phase to end and drinking during the neutral phase. We discuss the background and implementation of the task, its relation to existing models, and its relevance to the field of translational alcohol research. Importantly, we also present evidence of its efficacy. Both male and female Long–Evans rats are capable of performing the maladaptive alcohol self‐administration task for both sweetened and unsweetened alcohol solutions. Finally, we show that acute injection of a pharmacological stressor (yohimbine) significantly disrupted performance of the task in both sexes and reinforcers. We suggest the maladaptive alcohol self‐administration task may prove particularly useful in models of alcohol use disorder or vulnerability to this disorder where its application may reveal maladaptive neural circuit adaptations responsible for motivational perturbations associated with loss of control over alcohol seeking.

Many philosophers, psychologists, and lay folk associate volition with autonomy (actions are independent of an individual's environment) and free will (individuals originate their actions). Most behaviorists hold these views to be incompatible with behavior analyses. The present paper describes volition as interpreted by B. F. Skinner, Howard Rachlin, and Allen Neuringer. Skinner relates volition to positively reinforced operant behavior. That works because, like operants, voluntary actions are free, in the sense of not physically constrained; they affect their environments, often resulting in positive outcomes, and are sometimes unpredictable. Rachlin, while incorporating Skinnerian methods, interprets volition within his own Teleological Behaviorism framework. For Rachlin, reinforcement of an individual response is often incompatible with voluntary control, thereby disagreeing with Skinner. Responses are voluntary only when they are members of extended response patterns. Neuringer also begins with Skinner's operants, but argues that, under the control of reinforcing consequences, both voluntary actions and operant responses are sometimes predictable and other times “truly” unpredictable. Neuringer does not assume that environments determine voluntary actions, thereby disagreeing with Skinner and Rachlin. Taken together, the agreements and disagreements among these three behaviorists may help to shed light on the relationship between operants and volition.

Abstract The three principles of reinforcement are (1) events such as incentives and reinforcers increase the activity of an organism; (2) that activity is bounded by competition from other responses; and (3) animals approach incentives and their signs, guided by their temporal and physical conditions, together called the “contingencies of reinforcement.” Mathematical models of each of these principles comprised mathematical principles of reinforcement (MPR; Killeen, 1994) . Over the ensuing decades, MPR was extended to new experimental contexts. This article reviews the basic theory and its extensions to satiation, warm‐up, extinction, sign tracking, pausing, and sequential control in progressive‐ratio and multiple schedules. In the latter cases, a single equation balancing target and competing responses governs behavioral contrast and behavioral momentum. Momentum is intrinsic in the fundamental equations, as behavior unspools more slowly from highly aroused responses conditioned by higher rates of incitement than it does from responses from leaner contexts. Habits are responses that have accrued substantial behavioral momentum. Operant responses, being predictors of reinforcement, are approached by making them: The sight and feel of a paw on a lever is approached by placing paw on lever, as attempted for any sign of reinforcement. Behavior in concurrent schedules is governed by approach to momentarily richer patches (melioration). Applications of MPR in behavioral pharmacology and delay discounting are noted.