The future is upon us.

Abstract

The current status and future of the experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) have come under recent scrutiny. From the perspective of an early career scientist in EAB, I find the present and future of EAB to be as promising as ever, but real growth of the field will mean looking to greatly expand our science. The time is ripe to do so. EAB researchers should expand in new directions and collaborations, especially within behavioral neuroscience; seek to convey and sell their science and research to a broader scientific and nonscientific audience; and embrace new and different research methodologies and analyses. The future of EAB is bright-let us not let it fade.

Behavioral Research with Planaria

“…Experimental analysis of behavior (EAB), applied behavior analysis (ABA), and clinical service delivery have been described as three interlocking domains (Moore & Cooper, 2003;Morris, 1992), and a threat to one affects the others in the long term. Although ABA and service delivery appear to be thriving (Deochand & Fuqua, 2016), EAB has been encountering new hurdles (Fox, 2018). Funding and jobs for basic research in psychology have dwindled, as have undergraduate opportunities to gain formative animal lab learning experiences (see Abramson, 2015).…”

“…Theorists using biobehavioral models have concluded that operant and respondent conditioning are one process with different procedures (e.g., Donahoe & Palmer, 2004). The procedural definitions have been based on structural ordering of events related to behavior, but these purely behavioral definitions can be (and have been) greatly improved with biological data (Fox, 2018). In a classic example, biobehavioral data have shown that respondent processes in food aversion are enduring and do not require immediate pairing (Garcia, Kimeldorf, & Koelling, 1955).…”

Single‐case experimental designs for behavioral neuroscience

“…Other authors have argued convincingly that behavior analysis, with its focus on observable, measurable behavior in individual organisms and rigorous methodology, is particularly compatible with behavioral neuroscience (Donahoe, 2017;Schlinger, 2015). Finally, other authors have raised concerns about the future of basic research in behavior analysis (e.g., Poling, 2010) and have argued that behavior analysis would benefit from collaborations with neuroscience researchers (e.g., Fox, 2018;Kangas, 2014;Marr & Zilio, 2013). Building on those arguments, the focus of this manuscript will be to argue for the benefits of SCEDs for behavioral neuroscience research and to suggest how such studies might be conducted using hypothetical data generated based on published behavioral neuroscience research.…”

JEAB: Past, present, and future

“…(2017, p. 315) Neuroscience needs the power of the sophisticated methodologies of the experimental analysis of behavior to better characterize brain-behavior relations (Krakauer, Ghazanfar, Gomez-Marin, MacIver, & Poeppel, 2017) and there are many potential benefits for behavior analysis if it can play a more prominent role in neuroscience (Fox, 2018;Marr & Zilio, 2013). (2017, p. 315) Neuroscience needs the power of the sophisticated methodologies of the experimental analysis of behavior to better characterize brain-behavior relations (Krakauer, Ghazanfar, Gomez-Marin, MacIver, & Poeppel, 2017) and there are many potential benefits for behavior analysis if it can play a more prominent role in neuroscience (Fox, 2018;Marr & Zilio, 2013).…”

“…A strong case can be made that the integration of behavior analysis and neuroscience portends a biobehavioral science whose implications for understanding complex behavior, including human behavior, are as profound as the earlier integration of the sciences of heredity and genetics for understanding complex structure. (2017, p. 315) Neuroscience needs the power of the sophisticated methodologies of the experimental analysis of behavior to better characterize brain-behavior relations (Krakauer, Ghazanfar, Gomez-Marin, MacIver, & Poeppel, 2017) and there are many potential benefits for behavior analysis if it can play a more prominent role in neuroscience (Fox, 2018;Marr & Zilio, 2013). I hope to identify new ways to feature the kind of integrative work described by Donahoe (2017) in JEAB and encourage your ideas and submissions.…”