Covert sensitization is the first of a family of behavior therapy procedures called covert conditioning initially developed by Joseph Cautela in the 1960s and 1970s. The covert conditioning procedures involve the use of visualized imagery and are designed to work according to operant conditioning principles. When working with cooperative clients…

Research supported by Research Grant MH-12854-02.

The basic principles of operant and classical conditioning are presented, and their applications for the in-service training of teachers are discussed. Certain classroom behaviors are analyzed and applied to the classic stimulus-response paradigm. Activities are generically classified as positive or negative reinforcers and these reinforcers, in…

Study was designed to investigate the effects of signalled non-contingent reward on the operant behaviour of human subjects. (Authors)

Thirty five volunteer college women were divided into three groups to determine if heart rate could be conditioned instrumentally and lowered during exercise stress on the treadmill. The three groups were a) experimental group I, 15 subjects who received instrumental conditioning with visual feedback; b) instrumental group II, 9 subjects who…

Eight- and 9-year-olds (N=56) were studied to determine the degree to which counterconditioning could alter the positive or negative value acquired by a neutral stimulus in a conditioning situation. Dependent measures used to assess the effects of conditioning were found to have no independent effect on subsequent evaluations of the once-neutral…

The origins of many of the basic concepts used in the experimental analysis of behavior can be traced to Pavlov's (1927/1960) discussion of unconditional and conditional reflexes in the dog, but often with substantial changes in meaning (e.g., stimulus, response, and reinforcement). Other terms were added by Skinner (1938/1991) to describe his…

Study supported by grant HD-00879 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and presented in part at the Society for Research and Child Development meeting, 1966.

Explores role of ambiguity in producing verbal conditioning by using two E types and two S types. Six college students were assigned to "crafty Es. Results revealed that certain types of ambiguity increase verbal compliance. (Author)

Research supported by United States Public Health Service Grant MH-12908. Portions of the study were presented to the Society for Psychophysiological Research, San Diego, 1967.

The discrimination of the onset of joint control is an important interpretive tool in explaining matching behavior and other complex phenomena, but the difficulty of getting experimental control of all relevant variables stands in the way of a definitive experiment. The studies in the present issue of "The Analysis of Verbal Behavior" illustrate…

To vicariously condition either fear or a positive emotional response, films in which a 5-year-old male model manifested one or the other response were shown to nursery school children. The measure of vicarious conditioning was the children's rate of response to the conditioned stimulus and a controlled stimulus in several operant situations after…

The first of these two articles presents the methods, results, and discussions of six experiments which employed an avoidance of time-out from positive reinforcement schedule with human subjects to investigate: (1) whether time-outs may be considered aversive events; and (2) if so, whether the aversiveness was sufficient to produce aggressive…