The Spring 2023 issue—Volume 26, Number 1—of Journal of Behaviorology is now available online. This issue of TIBI’s fully peer–reviewed journal features two short articles, plus the usual information resources.

The first paper in this Spring 2023 issue reports an experiment evaluating the safety of sound levels in aircribs (a late 1940s invention of B. F. Skinner). The second paper in this Spring 2023 issue shows how even a brief natural–science analysis of complex phenomena can expose millennia–old notions about these phenomena as dangerous superstitions. Previous articles and books have described the dangers of superstitions in terms of their interfering with dissemination of the behaviorological science and interventions that humanity requires now to help solve the many human–behavior–caused global problems that threaten the survival of humans and the rest of the biosphere.

The “JOURNAL–Published Issues” page contains this new issue. Click HERE for the Spring 2023 issue, Volume 26, Number 1, of Journal of Behaviorology.

The International Behaviorology Institute (TIBI) has released another bookmark. This new bookmark celebrates the availability of another book of “contingency—not agency—autobiographies ” by five natural scientists of behavior.

The new bookmark celebrates the availability of the 2022 book, Less–Traveled Roads—Circumstances that Produced Natural Scientists of Behavior (edited by Stephen Ledoux). This book provides chapter–length autobiographies that focus on the contingencies that affected the directions, drama, and products of each author’s life. The five authors in this volume are Stephen Ledoux, Michael Shuler, Lawrence Fraley, Zuilma Gabriela Sigurðardóttir, and Michael Clayton.

Another volume of such autobiographies is possible. Are you a natural scientist of behavior (e.g., behavior analyst, behaviorologist, BCBA)? Are you interested in contributing? Contact these books’ editor, Stephen Ledoux, for details by writing him at 26 Timber Ridge Road, Los Alamos NM 87544.)

This bookmark joins the other bookmarks that TIBI has released. TIBI makes these bookmarks available to any member or contributor (details are available on the Bookmarks page).

For details on this book, see the BOOKS page, and check out the BOOKMARKS page for this book’s bookmark.

Five natural scientists of behavior have contributed “short” (i.e., up to 40 page long) chapters to a book of autobiographies. This new book’s title is Less–Traveled Roads—Circumstances that Produced Natural Scientists of Behavior. Professor Thomas Critchfield, of Illinois State University in Normal, contributed the Foreword.

This book reports the circumstances that contributed to the repertoires, products, and outcomes of each author’s life. Such circumstances are really the contingencies (i.e., the functional relations between the mostly environmental independent–variable “causes” and the behavior dependent–variable “effects”) that led to the conditioning of the authors’ repertoires, and the products resulting from the repertoires, across each author’s lifespan. Thus these autobiographies stress the contingency—not agency—accounts for each author’s contributions in teaching, research, and service across their career. The five authors featured here are Stephen Ledoux, Michael Shuler, Lawrence Fraley, Zuilma Gabriela Sigurðardóttir, and Michael Clayton.

The value and drama of science also come across through these life stories, including the possibility of a new grammar, one that by design provides more support for science, especially natural behavior science. This support occurs by reducing reliance on the personal pronouns, especially “I.” In our culture such pronouns too easily imply inner agents purportedly responsible for behavior. These pronouns are best treated (i.e., reacted to) as verbal shortcuts for longer, inconvenient, but more accurate phrases like “DNA–based carbon–unit locus of contingency effects.” (Aren’t verbal shortcuts nice?)

Another volume of such autobiographies is possible. Are you a natural scientist of behavior (e.g., behavior analyst, behaviorologist, BCBA)? Are you interested in contributing? Contact these books’ editor, Stephen Ledoux, for details by writing him at 26 Timber Ridge Road, Los Alamos NM 87544.)

This 196–page, 2022 book (published by ABCs of Los Alamos, NM) is available, with a list price of $19, through “Print–On–Demand” at www.lulu.com (find it by entering the editor’s name).

The BOOKS page at www.behaviorology.org (the TIBI Website) features a detailed description of the book along with the book’s covers, Table of Contents, and Introduction (i.e., Chapter 1).

Whether interested in the science, its practitioners, its history, or all of these, check the book out. See the BOOKS page for details.

The new BehaviorInfo.com website is now public, with plenty of freely accessible scientific information on behavior, especially human behavior, with mostly normal human–behavior examples. And, like www.behaviorology.org, anyone anywhere may access it ad free.

BehaviorInfo.com begins by adding a couple short articles each week to the growing number of articles that the site features. Originally carried by his local newspaper, the Los Alamos Daily Post, until the 2020 pandemic interrupted their publication, these newspaper columns—by behaviorologist Stephen Ledoux (Professor Emeritus of Behaviorology, SUNY–Canton)—provide a fairly complete overview of the natural science of behavior.

Why make these columns available? Because human behavior causes global problems and humanity needs changes in human behavior to solve these problems. As more people in general come to understand more of the natural science of behavior, the more help it can contribute to its share of the natural–science team efforts to solve individual, local, and global problems.

Across two sets of 72 columns each, all of Ledoux’s 144 columns will gradually take their upload turns. Both sets will accumulate on the site at the same time, because the first set of columns covers basic topics (principles, concepts, practices) while the second set covers advanced topics (methods, assumptions, extensions, implications, applications, interpretations). Based on the foundations of the first set, this second set includes some initial scientific answers to some of humanity’s ancient but as yet inadequately answered questions about concerns such as values, rights, ethics, morals, language, consciousness, personhood, life, death, and reality (plus newer questions about robotics and evolutions).

After those 144 columns are in place, other natural scientists of behavior, some behaviorologists and some behavior analysts, may provide additional articles that further inform interested readers while keeping the upload schedule filled. Will you provide a column or two? (Contact Ledoux to make arrangements.)

While not as extensively as the behaviorology.org website, BehaviorInfo.com also provides some information on a range of related peer–reviewed articles and books from the historical and current disciplinary literature of behaviorology, the label that many use to denote “the natural science of behavior,” which is quite a mouthful. This label is appropriate, because this science and its applications (e.g., Applied Behavior Analysis—ABA) are neither a part of nor any kind of psychology.

While this website does not sell books, its information includes sources for the books that it mentions.

A link to the new BehaviorInfo.com website has been added to the RECOMMENDED LINKS page.

The Fall 2022 issue—Volume 25, Number 2—of Journal of Behaviorology is now available online. Along with the usual information resources, this issue of TIBI’s fully peer–reviewed journal features the start of an ongoing Special Section on “Twenty–first century natural–science views on sustainable community possibilities inspired by Walden Two.” As Bruce Hamm’s Editorial points out, the Special Section’s status as “ongoing” stems from the value to society of continuing this science and engineering topic, because the global problems that prompted it are also ongoing. The journal would welcome your contribution to the discussion through your own manuscript (see the Submission Guidelines on page 8 of the issue).

The Special Section begins with a reprint of Stephen Ledoux’s 1985 paper, “Designing a new Walden Two–inspired community.” The work sets the stage by providing an example of a published twentieth–century perspective on sustainable communities inspired by Walden Two.

Ledoux’s 1985 advice basically says “build it not only so they can come and see, but so that they will want to stay.” In the next article, however, Tom Critchfield and Ronnie Detrich think that communities such as those discussed by Ledoux did not and—for reasons beyond their control—could not have expected to expand or thrive. They conclude that even today natural behavior sciences remain ill–equipped to build successful Walden Two–inspired communities. Do they have the whole story? Are other parts of the story still missing? The pertinence of others answering such questions justifies the continuing open status of the Special Section.

In his editor–invited response to the opening of the Special Section in this issue, Ledoux agrees with Critchfield and Detrich’s general view. As the Editorial by Bruce Hamm states, our “science is not where it needs to be if we are to meet the ecological and cultural challenges the world presently faces. Ledoux additionally agrees that the natural science of behavior alone will not be able to solve the complex challenges we face; rather, it will need to join forces with other natural sciences. Such a joining should be relatively easier and apt to bear fruit more readily, however, for those behavioral disciplines that have consistently operated within a natural–science framework than for those that have not.”

The JOURNAL–Published Issues page contains this new issue. Click HERE for the Fall 2022 issue, Volume 25, Number 2, of Journal of Behaviorology.

The publisher, ABCs, of Los Alamos, NM, has allowed the early release, for 2023, of an art book by a scientist. The book’s full title is Curious Visual Fun—Photo Arts from a Scientist. This 126–page book displays and discusses a substantive range of the composed photographic arts that accumulated across the lifespan of the author and photographer, Stephen Ledoux. Most of the included compositions, however, happened between the years 1975 and 2000, after which science writing took increasingly more of the author’s time and energy than did photography.

An early chapter, the introduction, summarizes the photography–related descriptions of life events and circumstances as originally presented in more detail in the author’s autobiography (Work Takes a Holiday—Confessions of a Natural Scientist of Behavior, which the publisher, ABCs, released in 2022 on www.lulu.com). Other “introduction” topics range from early photography developments, through balancing science and art, to various photo categories including many mentioned in the Table of Contents (e.g., window–frost photos, balloons, rare people portraits, plants, seasons, sunsets, structures, and even Amish quilts).

Importantly, the book early on includes a discussion of the definition of “art.” In this case the definition is enhanced by the author’s career as a Professor of Behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, the discipline that studies why behaviors—like science and art—happen, a discipline that is not a part of, nor any kind of, psychology.

One such definition of art states that, scientifically, art is the novel products of, and the conditioned production of, responding induced by a wide range of environment–behavior contingencies (i.e., connections between “causal” environmental and genetic independent variables and the dependent variables of “effects” on behaviors) in an equally wide range of media, that may or may not produce reinforcing effects from its uses (i.e., its functions) but that indeed produce emotionally reinforcing effects, for others as well as the artist, that typically evoke the human verbal response of “beautiful.” The term “reinforcing effects,” in this context refers to effects that make the art–production responses and art–appreciation responses occur again later under similar evocative conditions.

Like the photos themselves, that definition is worth pondering.

The BOOKS page features a detailed description of the book along with the book’s covers, Table of Contents, and some introductory materials.

In 2022 the Canadian publisher, Tellwell Talent, released the 86–page book, Animal Rights, a book that provides a focused contribution to the serious literature relevant to comprehending and extending a scientific take on rights. Through the publisher, the author provided this background:

“A right is the protection of an interest, and a basic right is a foundational right shared by all members of the moral community protecting that universally shared interest that makes possible more particular rights. The basic right protects an interest in not being coercively exploited. What could possibly be a more relevant defining criterion for whose interest in experiencing pleasures and avoiding/escaping pain is protected under a basic right than to have that interest? Obviously, it makes no sense for insentient things like trees and rocks to have rights since those things have no interest in them. The alternative thus far has been to arbitrarily select humans to exhibit valid basic-rights claims and ignore all the other animals even though they have just as much interest in not being coercively exploited as humans. As we have seen and will see in even more depth in a coming chapter, species membership is arbitrary and speciesist. It is clearly an instance of unjust discrimination, just like sexism and racism. If the basic right to not be coercively exploited is to be applied justly, the criterion of sentience ensures all beings with that most basic interest have that basic interest protected. This is consistent with our view that certainly at least all humans have a valid basic-rights claim. The selection of this criterion involves no unjust discrimination because it covers all beings with the interest in question.”

This book is available worldwide in all major online book stores in softcover (ISBN 978-0-2288-7597-0) and hardcover (ISBN 978-0-2288-7596-3) and ebook (ISBN 978-0-2288-7595-6) formats.

Readers with any interest in the questions of rights in general, or animal rights in particular, should not miss this book.

The BOOKS page features a detailed description of the book along with the book’s covers and Table of Contents.

Several natural scientists of behavior are contributing to a book of “short” (i.e., 4 to 40 page) autobiographies. (Are you interested in contributing? Contact the book’s editor, Stephen Ledoux at ledoux@canton.edu for details.) At present, this book is just over half full, and will be released when it is full (at about 200 pages). If more manuscripts arrive, then another volume is possible.

After contributing a chapter to that book, its editor found that he still had many more memories and materials that remained relevant to his story, so he continued writing and wove all these into a fully analyzed and documented autobiography focused on the contingencies that affected the directions, drama, and products of his life.

This new book’s title is Work Takes a Holiday—Confessions of a Natural Scientist of Behavior.

His book, by example, also introduces the possibility of a new grammar, one that by design provides more support for science, especially natural behavior science, by reducing reliance on the personal pronouns, especially “I,” that in our culture too easily imply inner agents purportedly responsible for behavior. As the author says, these pronouns are best treated (i.e., reacted to) as verbal shortcuts for longer, inconvenient, but more accurate phrases like “DNA–based carbon–unit locus of contingency effects.” (Aren’t verbal shortcuts nice?)

This 384–page, 2022 book (published by ABCs of Los Alamos, NM) is available, with a list price of $32, through “Print–On–Demand” at www.lulu.com.

The BOOKS page at www.behaviorology.org (the TIBI Website) features a detailed description of the book along with the book’s covers, Table of Contents, Introduction (i.e., Chapter 1) and Chapter 2.

Whether interested in the science, its practitioners, its history, or all of these, check the book out. See the BOOKs page for details.

The International Behaviorology Institute (TIBI) has released another bookmark. This new bookmark celebrates the announcement of another new behaviorology book title.

The new bookmark celebrates the announced release of Stephen Ledoux’s 2022 book, Work Takes a Holiday—Confessions of a Natural Scientist of Behavior. This book provides a fully analyzed and documented autobiography focused on the contingencies that affected the directions, drama, and products of the author’s life. This book also introduces the possibility of a new grammar, one that provides more support for the natural science of behavior by reducing reliance on the personal pronouns that imply inner agents supposedly responsible for behavior. These pronouns should be taken as verbal shortcuts for longer, inconvenient, but more accurate phrases like “DNA–based carbon–unit locus of contingency effects.” That shows the value of verbal shortcuts!

This bookmark joins the other bookmarks that TIBI has released. TIBI makes these bookmarks available to any member or contributor (details are available on the Bookmarks page).

For details on this book, see the BOOKS page, and check out the BOOKMARKS page for this book’s bookmark.

The Spring 2022 issue—Volume 25, Number 1—of Journal of Behaviorology is now available online. This issue of TIBI’s fully peer–reviewed journal is its first “monograph–style” issue. As such it features just one long article plus the usual information resources.

The long paper in this Spring 2022 issue, by Lawrence Fraley, is “Cultural seduction considered via the natural science of behavior.” In this paper Fraley considers (a) cultural effects of the question of the philosophical compatibility of science and mysticism, (b) the behavior/body and life/death distinctions, (c) the motives and mechanisms of some cultural seductions, and (d) some common examples of cultural seductions (e.g., academic operations, religion, and symbolic patriotism).

The JOURNAL–Published Issues page contains this new issue. Click HERE for the Spring 2022 issue, Volume 25, Number 1, of Journal of Behaviorology.