Linda Hayes

• University of Nevada, Reno

The present article describes the career of Maria Malott. The various phases of Maria’s professional life are reviewed chronologically, including attending University and working in the public sector in Venezuela, graduate school, working in industry, and leading the Association for Behavior Analysis International. Maria’s many scholarly accomplish...

Access the article through B&P's page: https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/BP-V52-2-Fleming-Hayes.pdf || The absurdism of Albert Camus may not be a philosophy of science, but it has more similarities with contextual behavioral science than are immediately apparent. Both emphasize the importance of suicide, both emphasize individual-worl...

From an operant perspective, verbal behavior is multiply controlled by different sources of stimulation, including self-stimulation. Self-stimulation (i.e., responding with respect to one’s own response products) is thought to be especially important for verbal mediation that temporally extends discriminative stimulus control. While previous resear...

Sampaio and Haydu (2023) reconceptualize the cultural milieu based on a Skinnerian view of cultural phenomena. We contend, however, that important differences among the multiple meanings of the cultural milieu have been offered in the literature (Ardila-Sánchez et al., 2019; Houmanfar et al., 2010; Houmanfar & Rodrigues, 2006). The elements include...

Two groups of mice were exposed to stimulus discrimination training and testing under different motivational conditions to study interactions between motivating operations (MOs) during initial discrimination training and MOs when performance is tested following training. One group received all discrimination training sessions under 24-h food depriv...

Interoceptive stimuli (e.g., those associated with drugs and other motivational/emotional states) can acquire discriminative control over behavior when they are reliably correlated with particular Pavlovian or operant contingencies. This has been called state-dependent learning. Recent studies have shown that extinction learning can be specific to...

Behavior scientists working within the metacontingency enterprise have constructed a robust line of investigatory procedures, methods, and analyses primarily built on theoretical perspectives promoted by Sigrid Glenn and B. F. Skinner. The unit of analysis in metacontingency studies is the “culturant”, a term referring to interlocking behavioral co...

Kantor's (1982) analysis of cultural interbehavior focuses on shared stimulus-response functions that are conventional across individuals and established under the auspice of a group. Demonstrating shared stimulus-response functions requires observing both diffusion and culturalization at the cultural and psychological levels of analysis, respectiv...

Direct Instruction (DI) is a method of education that has historically been applied to improve academic behaviors. Though DI has a modest history of teaching musical literacy skills, its application in teaching music performance skills has been limited. This article presents two methods derived from DI principles to teach the advanced musical skill...

Motivating operations (MOs) are held to 1) alter the value/efficacy of consequential stimuli (value-altering function) and 2) alter behavior relevant to these stimuli (behavior-altering function). These two functions are considered critically against empirical evidence to evaluate the extent to which each corresponds to actual observations of behav...

The present article considers acceptance and commitment training (ACT) from the perspective of interbehavioral psychology. Specifically, J. R. Kantor’s (1957) explicit distinction between constructs and events is reviewed, with particular attention given to the use of ACT in the practice settings of applied behavior analysis. It is recommended that...

Despite extensive theoretical development, there is a lack of consensus in the metacontingency enterprise on the extent to which current metacontingency constructs describe experimental happenings. The purpose of this article is to provide an interbehavioral analysis of the metacontingency enterprise that examines relations between description and...

The experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) serves as a critical activity of ongoing scienti#c discovery and a means to train future behavior scientists. Despite the importance of EAB, basic research has been under threat for some time. "e factors contributing to this deterioration are complicated and related to issues of funding and relevance. "e...

Study question: Are there differences in operant learning and memory between mice born through ICSI and naturally conceived control (CTL) mice? Summary answer: ICSI females exhibited deficits in the acquisition reward learning relative to CTL females, and ICSI males exhibited deficiencies in discrimination learning and memory relative to CTL mal...

Basic concepts seem to be involved in everything in behavior analysis, from the simple to the complex. We begin our overview with brief comments on the historical context of behavior analysis, followed by a description of respondent and operant processes. The chapter also provides an overview of select advanced topics related to stimulus control an...

Study question Are there differences in operant learning and memory between mice born through intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and naturally-conceived control (CTL) mice? Summary answer ICSI females exhibited deficits in acquisition learning relative to CTL females, whereas ICSI males exhibited deficiency in discrimination learning and memo...

Renewal is a phenomenon in which a response that has been extinguished recovers when an organism is removed from the setting in which extinction occurred. In most renewal studies, context consists of exteroceptive stimuli (e.g., distinct visual, auditory, tactile, and/or olfactory stimuli). Nevertheless, a number of studies have shown that interoce...

Attempts have been made to characterize the psychological philosophy of Functional Contextualism by contrasting it with Descriptive Contextualism, the latter having been clarified by the example of Interbehaviorism. The argument is made that this strategy has not served the purpose of clarifying Functional Contextualism because Interbehaviorism is...

Aggressive behavior is a source of many significant human problems, most notably the catastrophic loss of life and resources that can result from violent conflicts between groups. Aggressive behavior is particularly likely to arise from aversive conditions that function as motivating operations (MOs) that establish the stimulation produced by aggre...

Two experiments examined interactions between the effects of food and water motivating operations (MOs) on the food‐ and water‐reinforced operant behavior of mice. In Experiment 1, mice responded for sucrose pellets and then water reinforcement under four different MOs: food deprivation, water deprivation, concurrent food and water deprivation, and...

The present commentary considers a paper by Silva, Silva, and Machado (2019) published in this special issue, which describes some relations between Behavior Systems Theory and Interbehavioral Psychology. In particular, the systems aspects, field orientation, and role of experimentation in both Behavior Systems Theory and Interbehavioral Psychology...

This paper presents an interbehavioral conceptualization of interpersonal relationships, emphasizing both interpersonal closeness and conflict. In doing so, processes of association and subsequent substitution of stimulus function are described, setting the foundation for an analysis of how relationships are formed from an interbehavioral perspecti...

El presente comentario celebra el centésimo aniversario de la disertación de J. R. Kantor al describir la potencial relevancia de las ideas de Kantor en la ciencia del análisis de la conducta. En particular, se consideran: la filosofía de la ciencia de Kantor, descrito en su obra Logic of Modern Science (Kantor, 1953) y el sistema de la psicología...

J. R. Kantor had an exceptional career with great implications for the philosophy of science and science of psychology. The present commentary provides an overview of Kantor’s construction of psychological events as integrated fields. In doing so, specific attention is given to constructs and events in general, and in the domain of psychology speci...

Instances of conflict can be of the most distressful experiences within a relationship or in interacting with others. There are a number of behaviors that occur to compose a conflict, however there are two behaviors that serve to restore a relationship following conflict, those of apologizing and forgiving. While plenty of attention has been provid...

Kantor (1888-1984) dedicated his career to the development of a psychological system which he termed Interbehavioral Psychology. Interbehavioral Psychology is a comprehensive scientific system consisting of various coordinated subsystems including the investigative, interpretive, and applied domains. However, one of the often-mentioned critiques of...

The mdx mouse is an important nonhuman model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) research. Characterizing the behavioral traits of the strain relative to congenic wild-type (WT) mice may enhance our understanding of the cognitive deficits observed in some humans with DMD and contribute to treatment development and evaluation. In this paper we rep...

The study of music in behavior analytic accounts constitutes a poorly addressed area of application due to conceptual incongruities in the field and a general lack of common ground between the disciplines of music and behavior analysis. This paper will examine the suitability of Skinner’s (1957) analysis of verbal behavior in describing various mus...

The disequilibrium approach to reinforcement and punishment, derived from the probability-differential hypothesis and response deprivation hypothesis, provides a number of potentially useful mathematical models for practitioners. The disequilibrium approach and its accompanying models have proven effective in the prediction and control of behavior,...

Based upon B. F. Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism, feelings are most often considered to be private events by behavior analysts, constituting biological happenings. This paper describes conceptual issues with the Skinner’s public–private dichotomy, considering the organismic participant, the relational property of psychological events, the concept of...

This study captured substitution of non-linguistic perceptual functions without awareness. Eighty participants were divided into four groups. All groups were exposed to a respondent-type training procedure in which nine letters were paired with words; four of those words were homophones to numbers for the experimental groups and not for the control...

The origins of the Behavior Analysis program at the University of Nevada, Reno by way of a self-capitalized model through its transition to a more typical graduate program is described. Details of the original proposal to establish the program and the funding model are described. Some of the unusual features of the program executed in this way are...

There are bodily processes and events to which the behaving organism is sensitive. A self-descriptive response, taken as indicating such sensitivity, is not specific to a localized source of stimulation posturing as a private stimulus, but is specific to the coordinative efforts of the body as an integrative whole. The skin does not bound private s...

University students partitioned in four groups were treated to a four-phase resurgence preparation in which three response sequences were sequentially acquired in the first three phases and tested for serial positioning effects and response variability in terminal resurgence phase. For the three test groups, three colored backgrounds served as the...

While the consideration of private events is central to Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism, Skinner’s perspective on the topic of private events is not universally accepted within the behavioral community. At least 3 alternatives to Skinner’s position have been purported, among them Baum’s molar perspective, Rachlin’s teleological perspective, and Hayes...

This commentary addresses the two basic premises of the argument made by Dixon et al (2015) concerning quality metrics for behavior analytic graduate training programs. Taken together, these premises assert that the practice of behavior analysis will be more effective if practitioners are research savvy and that becoming research savvy is more like...

Like all natural sciences, behavior science has much to offer toward an understanding of the world. The extent to which the promise of behavior science is realized, though, depends upon the extent to which we keep what we know before us. This paper considers fundamental concepts in behavior science, including the concepts of behavior, stimulation,...

A number of recent studies have demonstrated that organisms prefer stimuli correlated with food under high deprivation conditions over stimuli correlated with food under low deprivation conditions. The purpose of the present study was to extend the literature on this phenomenon by testing for preference under extinction conditions, testing for pref...

The study of motivation within behavior analysis has historically pertained to the investigation of organism-environment interactions that alter the efficacy of events as reinforcers or aversive stimuli. A number of authors have noted similarities between the motivational properties of events that are classified as motivating operations (MOs) and t...

Based on the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, behavior analysts largely assume a dichotomy between public and private behavior. Thoughts, for example, are assumed to be something that occurs within the skin of the individual. This paper presents an interbehavioral alternative to this dichotomy. We conclude that thoughts are not private, but, i...

Based on the assumption that substitution of functions or function transfer is a fundamental principle underlying all conditioning processes, we attempt to produce an account wherein both operant and respondent events are understood in terms of substitution. We contend that, if event interactions are described in a way that accounts for all the sti...

In this article we consider the concept of motivation in behavior analysis from a unique, radical monistic perspective derived from interbehaviorism and interbehavioral psychology. In considering this concept, a number of logical and conceptual issues with the behavior-analytic treatment of motivation are discovered. We describe an alternative mean...

In recent years, behavior analysts have given an increasing amount of attention to the topic of perspective taking. However, the construct of perspective taking refers to a number of behaviors that vary along a continuum of complexity. Moreover, it is possible that verbal behavior plays a special participatory role in perspective taking. The curren...

This study evaluated the influence of several factors on the development and evolution of remembering interactions from a thoroughly naturalistic, interbehavioral perspective. Specifically, the influence of non-compound and compound substitute stimuli, setting factors, interbehavioral history, and evolution of stimulus function were evaluated. Larg...

The main purpose of this paper is to show that all types of psychological interactions may be understood as matters of substitution of functions or function transfer. On the basis of this analysis, we argue that the distinction between Pavlovian and operant conditioning, as different types of learning processes, may be unnecessary. To do so we crit...

Perception is still a controversial topic in psychology and in the history of science. Historically, it has been studied using non-existent entities that are responsible for the way organisms interact with the world perceived. A naturalistic approach developed by Kantor (1924, 1926, 1977; Kantor & Smith, 1975) is presented as to alternative of trad...

Behavior analysts have said relatively little about the topic of self-knowledge. In this paper we describe an interbehavioral conceptualization of knowledge, including self-knowledge. In providing our analysis we first describe foundational aspects of the interbehavioral position which are pertinent to our approach. We then describe knowing as a ps...

Behavior analysts have said relatively little about the topic of self-knowledge. In this paper we describe an interbehavioral conceptualization of knowledge, including self-knowledge. In providing our analysis we first describe foundational aspects of the interbehavioral position which are pertinent to our approach. We then describe knowing as a ps...

Kantor was interested in a wholly naturalistic approach to scientific activity in general, and the science of psychology in particular. As a philosophy of science, interbehaviorism characterizes all scientific activities from a naturalistic foundation (Kantor, 1953; Kantor & Smith, 1975). As a scientific system interbehavioral psychology is an orga...

While the CyberRat simulation described by Ray (2011/2012) has considerable value as an educational tool, its value also lies in the validation of the descriptive interbehavioral systems analysis (IBSA) approach upon which it was developed. The descriptive IBSA approach differs in important ways from the predominantly functional approach typically...

A great deal of biomedical research has provided experimental evidence of the function of specific neuropeptides in the development of autistic symptomatology. Interdisciplinary research in this area would provide a more comprehensive understanding of autism by integrating the findings and contributions from both behavior analysis and biology. In t...

Observational learning is an important area in the field of psychology and behavior science more generally. Given this, it is essential that behavior analysts articulate a sound theory of how behavior change occurs through observation. This paper begins with an overview of seminal research in the area of observational learning, followed by a consid...

As the subject matter of the science of interbehavior, the behavior segment is analyzed in terms of its functional composition. It is suggested that the psy- chological event differs from other types of events, in that it includes both a physical/biological and a historical dimension. In discussing the co-actualiza- tion of stimulus and response co...

A functional class refers to a circumstance in which responding is controlled by features of stimuli that are common to all the class members. It is argued that an analysis of substitution of stimulus functions is needed to account for the acquisition of functional classes of different varieties. We examined the acquisition of classes of comparison...

The role of religious practices in cultural evolution and theinterrelations of religious and other cultural practices are the topics ofthis paper. This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the social andhistorical conditions of which religious practices have been generated.Additionally, the relation of religious practices to the outcome ofcultu...

The concept of function is central to the discipline of behavior analysis; it serves to characterize the subject matter of the science and is also used to distinguish behavior analysis from other approaches in psychology. In this commentary we assess the concept of function as it is used within behavior analysis. This is done through the perspectiv...

The current study examined the effect of backward conditioning with three different time intervals between exposures to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) as the unconditioned stimulus (US) and saccharin taste in water as the potential conditioned stimulus (CS). Forty-eight naïve female BALB/c mice at three months of age served as subjects, divided into six...

Individual sciences develop through a constant process of self-evaluation (Kantor, 1958, p. 3). Kantor suggested that sciences continuously evolve in two general ways: a) discovering previously unknown events, and b) reinterpreting already known events (1958, p. 3). In the discipline of psychology, where it is less common to discover previously unk...

The stimulus equivalence paradigm was used to discover whether or not preexperimental histories with respect to affective stimuli could be brought to bear in an experimental setting. In two experiments, undergraduate students were trained in A-B, A-C, and D-C conditional relations using a match-to-sample procedure. The A and B stimuli were arbitrar...

Cultural events are of interest to scientists working in many scientific domains. Given this, an interdisciplinary science of culture may provide a more thorough understanding of cultural phenomena. However, interdisciplinary sciences depend upon the validity and vitality of the participating disciplines. This article reviews the nature of scientif...

Although many observational technologies have been developed for the study of behavior, most of these technologies have suffered from the inability to engender highly reproducible behaviors that can be observed and modified. We have developed ACROBAT (Automated Control in Real-Time of Operant Behavior and Training), a video imaging system and assoc...

Behavioral systems analyses typically address organizational problems in business and industry. However, to the extent that a behavioral system is an entity comprised of interdependent elements formed by individuals interacting toward a common goal, a scientific enterprise constitutes a behavioral system to which a behavioral systems analysis may a...

As the disciplinary sciences develop there is a growing interest in interdisciplinary science. This is particularly so in certain areas of the sciences where the objects of investigation are of interest to workers in multiple scientific domains. This commentary considers the nature of science from an interbehavioral perspective. In doing so, the na...

Radical behaviorism is distinguished from other varieties of behaviorism in part by its willingness to include private events among its subjects of analysis. This paper reviews the public-private dichotomy as described by Skinner, and concludes that this dichotomy is based upon faulty assumptions. An alternative conceptualization of events of the p...

The distinction between constructs and events is often overlooked in the sciences, as evidenced by a number of long-standing confusions of the former with the latter. The authors propose that the distinction between constructs and events is particularly important in the science of psychology, as psychological events have a number of unique characte...

We outline our context learning framework that harnesses information from a user's environment to learn user pref- erences for application actions. Within this framework, we employ XCS in a real world application for personalizing user-interface actions to individual users. Sycophant, our context aware calendaring application and research test-bed,...

Conventional behavior, of which linguistic behavior is the principal variety, is identified as responses having formal properties that are not determined by the natural properties of stimulus objects, but instead by properties attributed to those objects under the auspices of particular groups. Given the ubiquity of this type of behavior in the rep...

We present results from an empirical user-study with ten users which investigates if information from a user's environment helps a user interface to personalize itself to individual users to better meet usability goals and improve user-experience. In our research we use a microphone and a web-camera to collect this information (user-context) from t...

Ethical situations are complex circumstances in which actors take one or another course of action upon having engaged in evaluative responses with respect to the anticipated consequences of those actions (Hayes, Adams, & Rydeen, 1994). So analyzed, ethical conduct comprised two phases, a first phase in which the anticipated consequences of alternat...

A functional class refers to a circumstance in which responding is controlled by features of stimuli that are common to all the class members. We argue that behavior with respect to conceptual stimuli entails more than discrimination among classes and generalization within classes. We suggest that an analysis of substitution of stimulus functions m...

The relative effectiveness of different levels of rule completeness was evaluated in establishing rule control over self-control responding in a choice paradigm, sustaining this control in the face of competing contingencies introduced without the subjects' awareness, and in the reinstatement of rule governance following contact with competing cont...

It is argued that the more removed the things investigated are from those about which knowledge is sought, the more susceptible to misinterpretation is the knowledge achieved. By this logic, scientific propositions pertaining to human psychiatric disorders derived from investigative contacts with mutant mice under contrived conditions deserve speci...

The purpose of this study was to design a model for "first language" dominance over "second language" performance and the interference of one language over the other. Two sets of equivalence relations showing a common element (i.e., the reference) were established under different contextual conditions. One set ("first language") was over trained re...

A need exists for a controlled examination of the variables that may affect the results of a behavior-based safety program. These include the rate of risky behaviors and how they relate to a contingent bonus payout (Experiment 1), and the relative amounts of honesty in injury reporting and rule following (Experiment 2). A simple task consisting of...

J. R. Kantor (1888-1984) developed and promoted an often underappreciated psychological system he called interbehaviorism that attempted to organize scientific values into a coherent system of psychology. Kantor insisted that in all scientific behavior the scientist needed to differentiate between constructs and events. If we were to develop constr...

Behavioral contrast can be defined as an inverse relationship between the conditions of reinforcement in one setting and the rate of responding in another setting. Behavioral contrast is a phenomenon that is reliably demonstrated in pigeons and rats and in the context of multiple experimental preparations with these animals. However, little researc...

Throughout the 25-year history of research on stimulus equivalence, one feature of the training procedure has remained constant, namely, the requirement of operant responding during the training procedures. The present investigation compared the traditional match-to-sample (MTS) training with a more recent respondent-type (ReT) procedure. Another c...

This paper reviews and discusses many differing forms of incentive compensation systems that are being used in today's organizations. The review traces the roots of bonus compensation from individual piece-work plans through the adoption of organization-wide gainsharing plans to the growing recognition of open-book management. Reasons for the shift...

The argument is made that because the work and products of science are necessarily impacted by the assumptions upon which scientists operate, it is incumbent upon scientists to systemize these foundations of their enterprises. The values of system building, identified as protection against semantic confusion, prevention of internal inconsistency, a...

One of the most frequent staff interventions is performance feedback. Programmatic simplicity, low cost, flexibility, and relative consistency have contributed to its popularity. The present study provided performance feedback to six social workers working in an intermediate care facility for the mentally retarded in an attempt to increase staff pr...

Complexity theory is a set of mathematical theories and philosophical assumptions that helps to understand the behavior of complex systems. Foundations from complexity theory are presented, especially concepts belonging to the dynamical system theory, chaos theory and complex adaptive systems. These concepts and principles will be presented in the...

The purpose of the present study was to examine the participation of a variety of variables in gambling behavior. Forty-five subjects were exposed to an experimental roulette game played for course extra-credit points. In Phase 1, subjects played a fair game (i.e., completely random outcomes) without any instructions regarding the programmed contin...

This experiment examined the retention of generalized equivalence classes. Seventeen subjects completed matching-to-sample training, in which two-element stimulus compounds were presented as sample stimuli, and an equivalence test, in which those compounds were separated and each element was tested separately for its entry into equivalence relation...

Consumer behavior is a pervasive feature of the human circumstance, and its study has long been pursued by behaviorally oriented psychologists, among whom may be counted John B. Watson. Relatively few behaviorists have addressed these issues, however, with the result that the field of consumer behavior is crippled by dualistic propositions and weak...

This chapter discusses interbehaviorism and interbehavioral psychology. Interbehaviorism is one of the most overlooked systems in psychology's history. Jacob Robert Kantor (1888–1984) was a prolific contributor to the psychological and philosophical literature for over six decades. Speculation as to the reasons for this obscurity has focused on a n...

This chapter explains the academic entrepreneurship. It is possible to develop a successful graduate training program on the model of self-capitalization. The model requires an ability on the part of the academic discipline involved to provide a needed service for a fee, a means of leveraging the fees earned, and a flexible academic institution in...

The present paper describes a computerized slot machine simulation designed to examine many of the potential variables involved in gambling behavior. This program was created in Visual Basic Version 6.0 and is designed to run on any Windows 95 or higher equipped computer. The program allows for experimenter manipulation of probabilities of payoffs,...

The emergence of structure from undifferentiated beginnings has long been a fundamental problem in science. In biology, the issue was one of form versus function, and in psychology psychologists struggled with how infants make sense of, and consolidate, the flood of sensory input they are faced with. Although the concept of discriminative respondin...