Current Directions in Behavioral Science: Resolutions, Exercise Trackers & Operant Conditioning

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Resolutions, Exercise Trackers & Operant Conditioning

“… To get in shape” is one of the most common New Year’s resolutions, and arguably the one most often broken. For some, the solution may lie in the new wave of exercise trackers. Wristbands and other gadgets rely on operant conditioning — the potential for feedback from the environment to affect desired (or undesired) behavior. Depending on the gadget, trackers provide can provide personalized information about information including: the number of steps taken per day (which is then converted into miles traversed or calories burned); total calories consumed; and the length and depth of nightly sleep. Some of these trackers also will provide daily, weekly, or monthly trends. more

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Upcoming Events

(May 24-28, 2013)

Association for Behavior Analysis, International

Minneapolis, MN

(Sep 11-14, 2013)

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Fortaleza, Ceará

(Sep 25-28, 2013)

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Daytona Beach, FL

(Oct 6-8, 2013)

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(Oct 24-27, 2013)

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Adelaide, South Australia

(Nov 6-8, 2013)

New York State Association for Behavior Analysis

Saratoga Springs, NY

(Nov 8-10, 2013)

ABAI Education Conference

Chicago, IL

Historical Notes

On May 20th, 1930, Richard J. Herrnstein was born. He was a student of B. F. Skinner's at Harvard, where he spent his career and ran the famed Harvard Pigeon Lab after Skinner's retirement. Herrnstein's primary work was in the experimental analysis of behavior, with a focus on the effect of reinforcement history on choice behavior (the Matching Law) and concept formation. His books IQ and the Meritocracy (1973) and The Bell Curve (1994, with Charles Murray) presented a controversial view of the relation between hereditary intelligence and social success. more »

On May 9th, 1967, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier's article "Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock" was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The article described the "learned helplessness" paradigm.

On May 9th, 1940, Robert A. Rescorla was born. With Allen Wagner, Rescorla developed the Rescorla-Wagner theory of classical conditioning. Over his career, he has emphasized the importance of probabilistic information in the learning history of the organism. He won the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1986.

On May 6th, 1907, Kenneth Spence was born. Spence's exhaustive work defined the parameters of many factors influencing classically conditioned responses. He won the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1956, the first year it was awarded. more »

On May 1, 1978, The Behavior Analyst, the journal of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, was founded. Scott W. Wood was the journal's editor.

On May 1, 1974, the Midwestern Association for Behavior Analysis (MABA) was founded. Israel Goldiamond was the first president of the organization. MABA later became theAssociation for Behavior Analysis, International.

On April 28th, 1903, Ivan Pavlov presented "Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals" to the International Congress of Medicine at Madrid. This was the first public exposition of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes. Pavlov was the second of four speakers at a general assembly held at 3:00 p.m. at the Grand Amphitheatre of the Faculty of Medicine.

On April 24th, 1976, B. F. Skinner entered into his notebook: "We know about our behavior but not about its causes. Hence we believe that we cause it. But we do not always seem to be causing it and hence the belief in the unconscious: We behave because of causes which we do not know about."

On April 20th, 1965, Leonard P. Ullmann and Leonard Krasner's book Case Studies in Behavior Modification was published. This was the first use of the term behavior modification in the title of a book. By 1980, Ullman and Krasner's book had been cited in over 480 other publications and it was selected as a "citation classic" by the journalCurrent Contents. more »

On April 18th, 1917, Edward L. Thorndike became the fifth psychologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

On April 17th, 1958 — Joseph Wolpe's book Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition was published, describing the method of systematic desensitization. In 1980, this book was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents.

On April 12th, 1968, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was first published. The journal was founded and published by the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Montrose Wolf was the editor of the journal.

On April 12th, 1968, Donald Baer, Montrose Wolf, and Todd Risley's article "Some Current Dimensions of Applied Behavior Analysis" was published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. By 1982, this article had been cited in over 535 other publications and was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents.

On April 12th, 1968, Fred Keller's article "Goodbye, Teacher . . . " was published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. The article described the application of behavioral principles to instruction.

On April 12th, 1957, the Journal for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior was founded at a meeting in the Statler Hotel in New York City. The journal was founded as a forum for studies of operant conditioning. A formal proposal for the journal was later written by Charles Ferster, William N. Schoenfeld, Murray Sidman, and Peter B. Dews. Ferster served as the first editor of the journal and sent out the first call for papers on August 8, 1957. more»

On April 10th, 1958, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior was first published by the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Charles B. Ferster was the journal's editor.

On April 5th, 1979 — The John B. Watson Symposium was held in Greenville, North Carolina, in commemoration of Watson's birth in 1878. Conference participants included B. F. Skinner, Fred Keller, and James V. McConnell. more »

On March 28th, 1922, Joseph V. Brady was born. Brady's work in behavioral biology includes well-known studies of ulcers in "executive monkeys" and the selective effects of reserpine on anxiety responses. He later applied experimental methods to problems of space flight and the prevention of drug abuse. He won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology in 1991. more»

On March 20th, 1904, B. F. Skinner was born. Skinner's radical behaviorism provided a systematic analysis of the effects of consequences on behavior. His principles of instrumental conditioning affected nearly every field of psychology. He won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1958; the National Medal of Science in 1968; and the APA Citation for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology in 1990. more»

On March 15th, 1921, the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency publicly announced hiring behaviorist John B. Watson. Watson's first job was to survey the market for rubber boots along the Mississippi River. His first account was Yuban coffee. Others included Odorono deodorant, Johnson and Johnson baby powder, Pond's cold cream, Camel cigarettes, Maxwell House coffee, and Scott toilet paper. more »

On March 10th, 1937, B. F. Skinner became a member of Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology, at the University of Minnesota. The chapter sent a letter to the national office, listing the new members. A special note was written to the side of Skinner's name, with a line drawn from his name to the note. It read, "A true friend of Psi Chi."more »

On March 3rd, 1908, John B. Watson accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University. His starting salary was $3,000 per year.

On March 1st, 1960, the Gerbrands cumulative recorder mechanism was patented. Ralph Gerbrands invented a clutch and reset mechanism that gave his recorder a competitive advantage over similar equipment and contributed to the success of the Gerbrands Corporation. The Gerbrands Corporation went out of business on September 30, 1994.more »

On February 29th, 1936, two days after the death of Ivan Pavlov, the Soviet government preserved his memory by ordering a monument to be erected in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), renaming the First Leningrad Medical Institute "The Pavlov Institute," maintaining his laboratory as a museum, preserving his brain, granting a pension to his widow, and publishing his collected works in four languages.more »

On February 28th, 1955, the Time magazine issue for this day featured the work of Keller and Marian Breland in an article titled "I. Q. Zoo." The Brelands were both students of B. F. Skinner. In 1946, they established Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), a for-profit animal training business. ABE, informally called the I. Q. Zoo, used operant methods to train animals for a wide variety of entertainment, advertising, and military applications. Their article, "The Misbehavior of Organisms," reflected on the roles of innate and learned components of behavior. more»

On February 24th, 1913, John B. Watson gave his noteworthy lecture titled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" to the meeting of the New York Branch of the APA at Columbia University. The lecture was also published in Psychological Review (1913).

On February 21st, 1961, George S. Reynolds's article "Behavioral Contrast" was published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

On February 15th, 1910, Ralph F. Hefferline was born. Hefferline was a behavior analyst whose work on operant conditioning of thumb movements demonstrated conditioning of behaviors without the participant's awareness. Hefferline also had an interest in Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy. Popular psychologist Joyce Brothers completed her doctoral dissertation under Hefferline's supervision. more »

On February 10th, 1965, the first classroom trials of Fred Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) began at Arizona State University. more »

On February 6th, 1951, B. F. Skinner's Science and Human Behavior was first published by Skinner himself in a mimeographed version. The Macmillan Company's publication of the book appeared on January 20, 1953.

On February 5th, 1924, John B. Watson and William McDougall's "Battle of Behaviorism" debate, sponsored by the Psychological Club of Washington, DC, was held in the D.A.R. Memorial Constitutional Hall. McDougall was declared the winner of this debate that pitted his hereditarian position against Watson's environmental behaviorism. more »

On February 2nd, 1899, the executive committee of Teachers College, Columbia University, authorized 15 new faculty positions. On February 25, 1899, one of these positions was offered to Edward L. Thorndike, then at Western Reserve University. Thorndike accepted and assumed the title of Instructor in Genetic Psychology for a starting salary of $1800.

On February 2nd, 1931, Edward L. Thorndike's book Human Learning was published.

On February 1st, 1928, B. F. Skinner published his first book. It was a digest of anthracite coal mine arbitration in Pennsylvania.

On February 1st, 1967, Robert Rescorla's article "Pavlovian Conditioning and its Proper Control Procedures" was published in Psychological Review. By 1983, this article had been cited over 405 times and was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents. more »

On January 31st, 1961, a chimpanzee named HAM performed a series of operant avoidance tasks during a space flight that was part of Project Mercury, the first American manned space flight program. HAM, trained by Richard Belleville, contended with two schedules of bar-pressing for shock avoidance. In an 18-minute suborbital flight, HAM made only two errors. more »

On January 31st, 1969, Neal E. Miller's article "Learning of Visceral and Glandular Responses," describing instrumental conditioning of autonomic responses, was published inScience. more»

On January 28th, 1966, Richard F. Thompson and William A. Spencer's article "Habituation: A Model Phenomenon for the Study of Neuronal Substrates of Behavior" was published inPsychological Review. In 1979, this article was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents. more »

On January 26th, 1968, Paul Brown and Herbert Jenkins's article "Auto-Shaping of the Pigeon's Key-Peck" was published in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

On January 24th, 1930, Charles R. Schuster was born. Schuster's studies of behavioral pharmacology have changed the view of drug abuse from a disorder of the will to that of a behavior maintained and altered by basic mechanisms of operant and classical conditioning. He was the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse from 1986-1992 and won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for the Application of Psychology in 1992.more »

On January 24th, 1898, Edward L. Thorndike delivered the first report of his experiments with escape learning in cats to the New York Academy of Sciences Section on Psychology and Anthropology. The title of his paper was "Experiments in Comparative Psychology." Thorndike's studies became classics in the study of learning.

On January 23rd, 1962, Keller Breland and Marian Breland's article "The Misbehavior of Organisms" was published in theAmerican Psychologist.

On January 22nd, 1969, B. F. Skinner wrote in his notebook, "Utopias are easy to enjoy but not to produce...One can picture a good life by analyzing one's feelings, but one can achieve it only by arranging environmental contingencies."

On January 17th, 1969, the National Medal of Science was presented to B. F. Skinner by President Lyndon Johnson. The date of the announcement of the award was January 2, 1969.more »

On January 13th, 1965, unable to sleep in the early morning, Fred Keller planned the teaching technique later called thePersonalized System of Instruction (PSI). The first classroom trials began on February 10, 1965.

On January 9th, 1878, John Broadus Watson was born. Watson's behaviorism defined psychology as an objective, experimental branch of natural science, shunning mentalism. He was President of the American Psychological Association in 1915. more »

On January 2nd, 1899, Fred S. Keller was born. Keller, an early radical behaviorist, is best known for the development of the personalized system of instruction (PSI), a self-paced method of instruction that is based on behavioral principles. He won the first American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1970. He also won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology in 1976. more »

On January 1st, 1925, John B. Watson was named vice president at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.more »

On December 31st, 1965, Israel Goldiamond's article "Self Control Procedures in Personal Behavior Problems" was published in Psychological Reports. The article reported the successful use of behavior modification techniques in the treatment of troublesome personal behavior.

On December 28th, 1909, Ivan Pavlov delivered his "Tower of Silence" lecture to the 12th Congress of Naturalists and Physicians in Moscow. The lecture emphasized the importance of experimental control and resulted some years later in a tower laboratory building actually erected in St. Petersburg to provide Pavlov the experimental isolation he required.

On December 22nd, 1981, the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies was incorporated. The first director was Robert Epstein. The mission of the center is to advance the scientific study of behavior and its humane application to the solution of practical problems, including the prevention and relief of human suffering.

On December 16th, 1905, in a letter to William James, Edward L. Thorndike offered to assist in writing a revised version of James's Psychology: Briefer Course. Thorndike's suggestion was politely declined by James in a letter written the next day. more »

On December 12th, 1904, Ivan P. Pavlov received the Nobel prize. The prize honored Pavlov's work in the physiology of digestion, but Pavlov mentioned his work with conditioned reflexes in his acceptance speech.

On December 1st, 1947, B. F. Skinner was elected professor of psychology at Harvard University. The appointment became effective July 1, 1948. more »

On November 26th, 1930, Nathan Azrin was born. Azrin was one of the founders of applied behavior analysis. An early study used behavioral methods to eliminate towel hoarding in a psychotic woman. Later work applied behavioral principles to stuttering, toileting, enuresis, alcoholism, self-injurious behavior, and marital conflict. Azrin won the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contribution for Applications in Psychology Award in 1975.

On November 26th, 1900, Edward L. Thorndike and Robert S. Woodworth reported the results of their studies of transfer of training to the New York Academy of Sciences. The studies showed that training in one skill had no effect on the performance of other skills, thus refuting the theory of formal discipline, which held that education strengthens one's general mental powers.

On November 22nd, 1919, John B. Watson's book Psychology, From the Standpoint of a Behaviorist was published.

On November 19th, 1901, John B. Watson began his first psychology experiment as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. He studied maze learning in rats. more »

On November 17th, 1932, as a 28-year-old graduate student, B. F. Skinner wrote his plan of career goals for ages 30-60: (a) Publish experimental descriptions of behavior, (b) promote behaviorism and operational definitions of psychological constructs, (c) develop a scientific theory of knowledge, and (d) develop a nonscientific theory of knowledge. more »

On November 5th, 1965, the film Behavior Theory in Practice, by Ellen Reese, was copyrighted.

On November 1st, 1922, Charles B. Ferster was born. Ferster's work with B. F. Skinner in the Harvard Pigeon lab led to the book Schedules of Reinforcement (1957). His interests in learning expanded to applied work with autistic children, institutional populations, and depressed and self-injurious individuals. He helped found the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1958).

On October 29th, 1957, the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (SEAB) was incorporated in Washington, DC. The SEAB was founded to publish the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1958) and later published the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (1968). The incorporation papers were signed by Joseph V. Brady, Richard J. Herrnstein, and Donald S. Blough. Murray Sidman was president pro tem of the SEAB board of directors when it first met on April 11, 1958.

On October 26th, 1925, David Premack was born. Premack is known for his work in learning and motivation. He has argued that reinforcement consists of the opportunity to engage in a behavior. The "Premack principle" states that a low-probability behavior will be performed if access to a high-probability behavior is contingent upon it. He has also taught symbolic language to chimpanzees.

On October 25th, 1931, Donald M. Baer was born in St. Louis, MO. He later became Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Life at the University of Kansas. He was a cofounder of the field of applied behavior analysis with Montrose Wolf and Todd Risley (1968) and viewed as the intellectual leader of the field by many. He trained 100 doctoral students over his career, many of whom went on to become leaders in their own right. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack April 28, 2002. (Post courtesy of Travis Thompson.) more »

On October 22nd, 1957, Charles B. Ferster and B. F. Skinner's Schedules of Reinforcement was published. By 1979, this book had been cited in over 1,180 other publications and was chosen as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents.more »

On October 17th, 1920, Norman Guttman was born. Guttman's work bridged Skinnerian behaviorism and physiological psychology. He studied stimulus control of operant behavior, stimulus generalization, perceptual processes in stimulus-response relations, and shapes of generalization gradients. more »

On October 5th, 1992, the first International Congress on Behaviorism and the Sciences of Behavior convened in Guadalajara. Fred S. Keller and William N. Schoenfeld were honorary presidents of the meeting.

On October 2nd, 1918, Richard L. Solomon was born. Solomon's research in how the nervous system relates the organism to its environment included fundamental studies of discrimination and conditioning. His work included the well known escape-avoidance learning research with dogs. He won the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1966 and the American Psychological Foundation Distinguished Teaching in Experimental Psychology Award in 1988.

On October 1st, 1906, Ivan Pavlov delivered an early, but thorough, description of the phenomena of classical condition in his Huxley Lecture at Charing Cross Hospital in London. His presentation covered the basic conditioning paradigm, extinction, generalization, discrimination, and recovery. He observed that his department of physiology had used ideas "borrowed from psychology, but now there is possibility of its being liberated from such evil influences." more »

On September 29th, 1958, Joseph V. Brady's article "Ulcers in Executive Monkeys" was published in Scientific American.

On September 29th, 1911, Karl Lashley applied for admission to the graduate program in zoology at Johns Hopkins University. Lashley came in contact with zoologist Herbert S. Jennings and psychologist John B. Watson at Johns Hopkins, giving impetus to his interest in comparative psychology.

On September 28th, 1945, the Ladies Home Journalpublished an article about the baby-tender built by B. F. Skinner to serve as an environmentally controlled crib for his daughter Debbie. The article, titled "Baby in a Box," created widespread misunderstanding, occasional angry reactions, and persistent false rumors of child abuse and maladjustment. more »

On September 28th, 1966, B. F. Skinner's notebook reads: "The economic forces behind the designers of cars are fantastically powerful. When will the design of a better way of life be as strongly supported?"

On September 26th, 1849, Ivan P. Pavlov was born. Pavlov brought one of the fundamental processes that alter behavior, the conditioned reflex, to the attention of the scientific community. He identified its functional elements and extensively studied its characteristics. Pavlov won the Nobel prize in 1904 for his work in digestion.

On September 26th, 1969, the Soviet Union issued a postage stamp honoring Ivan Pavlov.

On September 24th, 1914, John B. Watson's Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology was published.

On September 20th, 1971, B. F. Skinner appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

On September 20th, 1917, behaviorist John B. Watson was ordered from his professorship at Johns Hopkins University into active military service. Watson went to England to test aviators for the Signal Corps. He irreverently assessed American officers as "nincompoops" and military service as "a nightmare." Despite a near court-martial, Watson was honorably discharged as a major on November 30, 1919.

On September 14th, 1873, Edwin B. Twitmyer was born. Twitmyer used methods of classical conditioning to condition the knee-jerk reflex to the sound of a tone. His work preceded Pavlov's but was indifferently received by the American psychological community. His career was in speech therapy. He was the first director of the first special speech clinic in the United States, at the University of Pennsylvania. more »

On September 12th, 1934, Ivan Pavlov attacked Robert Yerkes and Wolfgang Köhler for their insight doctrines. The topic was the subject of three of Pavlov's "Wednesday meetings." Pavlov ridiculed Köhler for asserting that apes were intelligent on the basis of evidence that they sit for a period of time without doing anything before successfully performing difficult tasks. more »

On September 11th, 1944, Edward L. Thorndike and Irving Lorge's Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words was published. The monumental word-counting project was funded by the Roosevelt administration's Works Progress Administration as a productive way of employing academics during the Depression.

On September 10th, 1932, B. F. Skinner made his first paper presentation to an American Psychological Association convention. The paper was titled "The Rate of Establishment of a Discrimination" and was read in Room C of Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University shortly after 3:00 p.m. This room was also Edward B. Titchener's lecture room during his many years at Cornell. more »

On September 8th, 1964, the American Psychological Association Council of Representatives admitted Division 25 (Experimental Analysis of Behavior). Joseph V. Brady was the first president of the division. more »

On September 5th, 1970, the first American Psychological Foundation Distinguished Contributions to Education in Psychology Award was presented to Fred S. Keller at the APA convention in Miami Beach. more »

On September 5th, 1965, Fred Keller first presented his personalized system of instruction to a professional audience. His address was delivered to the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association.

On September 4th, 1956, behaviorist B. F. Skinner and humanist Carl Rogers debated the topic of control of human behavior at the 1956 American Psychological Association meeting. more »

On September 3rd, 1967, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was founded at a Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior Board of Directors meeting at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. A. Charles Catania was chairman of the board at the meeting and Montrose M. Wolf was chosen as editor of the new journal.

On September 2nd, 1929, Ivan P. Pavlov addressed the Ninth International Congress of Psychology, meeting in the United States (at Yale University) for the first time. His talk was delivered in Russian but with such enthusiasm that the audience applauded portions before the translation was given. On one occasion, the applause turned out to be for a description of laboratory apparatus.

On September 2nd, 1938, B. F. Skinner's book The Behavior of Organisms was published. more »

On September 2nd, 1957, Behaviorist John B. Watson, near the end of his life, was honored at the annual meeting of the APA. At the last moment, overcome with emotion at the prospect of appearing before an organization he had been separated from for 40 years, Watson sent his son to the ceremony in his place. more »

On September 2nd, 1967, The first official annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy (AABT) was held in Washington, DC, during the APA convention. Cyril M. Franks was the first president of the AABT. The AABT was founded in 1966 at the home of Andrew Salter.

On September 1st, 1896, Mary Cover Jones was born. Jones was best known for her early studies of the elimination of fear responses through counterconditioning and for studies of differences between early and late-maturing girls. Jones also became a specialist in gerontology through her longitudinal studies at the Institute of Child Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. more »

On August 31st, 1874, Edward Lee Thorndike was born. Thorndike's research in learning and educational psychology resulted in the laws of effect and exercise. His studies of cats learning to escape from "puzzle boxes" are especially well-known. With Irving Lorge, he compiled the Thorndike-Lorge lists of word frequency. He was APA President in 1912. more »

On August 26th, 1926, Ellen Hayward Pulford Reese was born. Ellen Reese was a comparative psychologist with a strongly behavioral orientation. Her books, Experiments in Operant Behavior and The Analysis of Human Operant Behavior, and a four-part film series, "Behavior Theory in Practice," introduced thousands of students to the principles of behavior. She received the American Psychological Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education in Psychology in 1986.

On August 23rd, 1920, the Library of Congress received its copy of the issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychologythat reported John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner's "Little Albert" study.

On August 18th, 1990, B. F. Skinner died from complications arising from leukemia. He was 86. more »

On August 14th, 1969, Joseph Wolpe's book Practice of Behavior Therapy was published.

On August 12th, 1942, Martin E. P. Seligman was born. Seligman is well-known for his studies of learned helplessness and the relation between helplessness and depressive mood disorder. Seligman won the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in 1976; was named the American Psychological Society William James Fellow in 1991; and was APA President in 1998.

On August 10th, 1990, B. F. Skinner made his last public appearance. He was presented with the first APA Citation for Lifetime Contributions to Psychology and delivered a spirited address to the audience at the APA convention. Skinner died of leukemia 8 days later. more»

On August 8th, 1969, Albert Bandura's book Principles of Behavior Modification was published. By 1979, this book had been cited in over 1,215 other works and was selected as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents. more»

On August 8th, 1922, Ogden Lindsley was born. Lindsley was one of the founders of applied behavior analysis. With B. F. Skinner, he instituted a program at Boston State Hospital, where the behaviors of psychotic patients were modified through contingent reinforcement. Through the techniques of precision teaching, Lindsley later applied behavioral methods to special and regular education and industry.

On August 8th, 1888, Jacob Robert Kantor was born. Kantor was a prominent systematic psychologist who organized scientific values into a coherent system of psychology. For Kantor, both prescientific mentalistic issues and physiological events were alien to a science of behavior.

On August 3rd, 1909, Neal E. Miller was born. Miller has made lasting contributions in motivation, aggression, social learning, and instrumental autonomic conditioning. His many recognitions include: APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, 1959; APA President, 1961; National Medal of Science, 1964; APA Distinguished Professional Contributions Award, 1983; APA Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award, 1991. more »

On August 2nd, 1925, The New York Times published a review of John B. Watson's book Behaviorism, saying that Watson turned psychology "inside out," transforming it "from an inward mental groping to an exact science of objective measurement and record." Watson's book included the famous "Give me a dozen healthy infants..." quote.

On August 1st, 1829, Ivan M. Sechenov was born. Sechenov proposed that all mental processes and behavior operate as reflexes of the brain, arising through contiguous association. His reduction of cognitive processes to neural origins was farsighted but little known outside of his native Russia. Ivan Pavlov's thinking was influenced by Sechenov.

On July 22nd, 1936, B. F. Skinner met his future wife, Yvonne Blue.

On July 16th, 1986, Kelly D. Brownell, G. Alan Marlatt, Edward Lichtenstein, and G. Terence Wilson's article "Understanding and Preventing Relapse" was published in the journal American Psychologist. The article assembled findings from many studies of addictive behaviors.

On July 12th, 1974, the American Psychological Association Commission on Behavior Modification, chaired by Sidney Bijou, first met to examine the ethical use of behavior modification in prisons. It found that some unethical methods were wrongly labeled behavior modification, that some protests were raised because the procedure actually controlled behavior, and that following existing ethical standards would resolve most problems.

On July 12th, 1974, President Nixon signed Public Law 93-348, providing protection for human participants in biomedical and behavioral research. Senator Edward Kennedy was primary sponsor of the bill. Joseph Brady was one of two psychologists named to the first National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research.

On July 12th, 1926, Ivan P. Pavlov finished the foreword to Gleb V. Anrep's English translation of his Conditioned Reflexes. Anrep chose to use the word reinforce in his translation, the first appearance of the word in its psychological context. For Anrep and Pavlov, it referred to the presentation of an unconditioned stimulus after observing a conditioned response.

On July 9th, 1866, Ivan M. Sechenov was indicted by a Russian court for the materialistic explanations of psychic phenomena contained in his book Reflexes of the Brain (1863). Frogs were used in many of Sechenov's studies, and he proposed letting a frog testify in his defense. more »

On July 7th, 1955, Donald O. Hebb's article "Drives and the CNS (Conceptual Nervous System)" was published in Psychological Review. In 1979, this article was featured as a "citation classic" by the journal Current Contents.

On July 1st, 1858, Charles Darwin read Alfred Russel Wallace's paper on evolution to the Linnaean Society along with portions of Darwin's own long-withheld manuscript of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This was the first public announcement of Darwin's theory.

On June 28th, 1936, Don Hake was born. Hake was a pioneer in the fields of experimental and applied behavior analysis. His studies of conditioned suppression, social facilitation, punishment, escape and avoidance conditioning, aggression, and cooperation found applications in clinical settings. more»

On June 26th, 1919, Kenneth MacCorquodale was born. As a graduate student, MacCorquodale was influenced by B. F. Skinner. MacCorquodale's research interests were in learning theory, especially the analysis of verbal behavior. He was executive editor of the respected Century Psychology Series. more»

On June 26th, 1935, Leo Kanner's book Child Psychiatry was published. This was the first English-language text on the topic. Kanner later identified the syndrome called infantile autism and gave it its name. more»

On June 21st, 1966, the chimpanzee named Washoe began her training in American Sign Language at the University of Nevada at Reno. Reno is the county seat of Washoe County. R. Allen Gardner and Beatrice Gardner conducted this research. more»

On June 18th, 1929, B. F. Skinner's first journal article was received for publication. The title was "The Progressive Increase in the Geotropic Response of the Ant Aphaenogaster," published in the Journal of General Psychology. Skinner was junior author to T. Cunliffe Barnes.

On June 17th, 1919, William K. Estes was born. Estes's early work with B. F. Skinner led to increasingly precise mathematical descriptions of learning. He received the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1962 and was the American Psychological Society William James Fellow in 1990.

On June 15th, 1873, Max F. Meyer was born. Meyer promoted a vision of psychology that resembled and preceded Watson's behaviorism but did not attract Watson's following. His experimental work was primarily in the area of acoustics. more»

On June 12th, 1917, John Garcia was born. Garcia is best known for his work on classical conditioning of taste aversions and studies of innate preparedness for learning. He won Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association in 1979.

June 11th, 1962 was the first of 2 days of debate between B. F. Skinner and Carl Rogers on the topic of "Education and the Control of Human Behavior" at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. more»

On June 8th, 1956, Joseph V. Brady's article "Assessment of Drug Effects on Emotional Behavior" was published in Science. The article reported the selective effects of reserpine on anxiety responses and was followed by the establishment of behavioral pharmacology laboratories at virtually every major U.S. pharmaceutical company.

On June 8th, 1948, B. F. Skinner's Walden Two was published. The publisher, Macmillan, agreed to publish the book only on the condition that Skinner also write an introductory text for them. more»

On June 7th, 1902, Edwin B. Twitmyer's dissertation was approved and he was recommended to the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania for the PhD degree. His dissertation reported classical conditioning of the knee-jerk reflex 3 years before Pavlov's studies of classical conditioning were published, but little note was taken of Twitmyer's work. His PhD was granted on June 18, 1902. more»

On June 6th, 1913, Edward L. Thorndike's Educational Psychology: Vol. 1. The Original Nature of Man was published. more»

On June 4th, 1897, Edward L. Thorndike met James McKeen Cattell for the first time. After two years at Harvard University, Thorndike finished his doctoral work at Columbia under Cattell's supervision. His doctoral thesis, Animal Intelligence, described his studies of escape learning in cats and became a classic of early research in learning. more»

On June 4th, 1901, Gregory Razran was born. Razran did extensive work in classical conditioning and served as an intermediary between American and Soviet psychologists.

On May 31st, 1937, in a picture story titled "Rat Works Slot Machine for a Living," LIFE magazine described the performance of a rat named Pliny the Elder. Using the method of shaping, B. F. Skinner had trained Pliny to pull a chain to release a marble, pick up the marble, and drop it in a box for a food reinforcement. more»

On May 23rd, 1883, Ivan Pavlov received the MD degree at Russia's Military-Medical Academy. His doctoral experiments were on the augmentor nerves of the heart.

On May 23rd, 1990, The Loebner Prize was established by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. The prize is given annually to the authors of the computer program that best emulates human behavior.

On May 23rd, 1905, Roelof (Ralph) Gerbrands was born. Gerbrands was employed by Edwin G. Boring in September 1929 to make experimental equipment in the Harvard University shop. Gerbrands later went into business for himself, founding a company that became a major supplier of experimental psychology equipment, best known for its operant conditioning equipment. more »

Historical notes courtesy of Today in the History of Psychology