This study was designed to answer two major questions: (1) whether or not operant conditioning procedures supplemented by treatments drawn from other areas of experimental psychology could produce changes in counselor interviewing behavior, and (2) how much change resulted from response specific reinforcement and how much from other factors. Three…

Using an interview format, an expert in behavior research discusses behavior problems in the classroom and methods by which the teacher can change the undesired behavior patterns. (CB)

To replicate a study purporting to show positive effects of facilitative interpersonal functioning in a conditioning paradigm, 32 subjects were verbally conditioned within an experiment designed to vary preexperiment interview, facilitative level of the experimenter, and contingency of reinforcement. The present study failed to substantiate the…

This study undertook to reconcile the views of cognitive and behavioral learning theorists on the issue whether learning without awareness (LWA) is possible, and if so, the circumstances under which it occurs. In Study One, two reinforcement procedures were compared in a structured verbal conditioning task. Study Two was a replication of Study…

This study examined racial experimenter effects in counseling-like interviews employing the verbal operant-conditioning paradigm. The absence of significant differences in the experimenter-subject racial interaction suggests that race, per se, may not be the most important variable in the experimenter-subject (or counselor-client) relationship.…

Presents an interview with Peter Harzem, the Hudson Professor of Psychology at Auburn University (Alabama). Addresses such issues as teaching students about behavior analysis, the differences between classical and operant conditioning, reinforcement and behaviorism, and how one can become a better teacher. (CMK)