• Applying Behavior Analysis Across the Autism Spectrum:
  A Field Guide for Practitioners
• At My Own Pace: The Autobiography of Fred S. Keller
• Conceptual Foundations of Radical Behaviorism
  
• Learning, Interim (4th) Edition
• Time, Space, and Number in Physics & Psychology
  

Beth Sulzer-Azaroff, Ph.D. and Associates

Read a review by Jeff Kupfer, Ph.D., BCBA

Several major scientific studies have demonstrated the power of applied behavior analysis as a teaching methodology for people on the autism spectrum, resulting in a rapid rate of growth for the field. There are now numerous undergraduate, graduate and in-service training programs all over the world designed to prepare personnel in this area. Many of these programs are designed to conform to the BACB's Guidelines in terms of course coverage and the required hours of field experience for graduate and under-graduate certification.

Although many books exist as resources for teaching future personnel the essential concepts of behavior analysis theory and practice, the discipline lacks a set of well-structured materials to guide and support students during their initial introduction to practice in the field. Such material would ensure that first-time practitioners gain the experience of effectively applying their previously acquired conceptual material, thereby increasing their competence.

As curriculum designers and trainers of ABA personnel, Beth Sulzer-Azaroff and her Associates decided to address that need by preparing, assembling, and field-testing a series of assignments and accompanying forms, organizing them into a manual entitled Applying Behavior Analysis Across the Autism Spectrum: A Field Guide for Practitioners.

Opening with a brief allegorical story line planned to capture students' interest, the manual leads them through a weekly series of mastery-based activities. These are designed to permit them to apply a broad sample of skills they would be expected to perform in their more advanced training and practice on the job. Throughout, the authors provide instructional and mastery requirement guidelines for on-site and/or distance instructors and/or supervisors. Of special value for individual trainers and supervisors are suggestions and provisions for adjusting the content, timing, and sequencing of the activities. An accompanying CD also enables those wishing to retain the text material intact to have access to worksheet forms for their personal use.

In field trials, the main users of these materials have been people working toward the Associate and full BACB credential and college & graduate students. It also has been tested and found to function successfully with parents (some reporting stunning results) and in-service staff trainees. An independent evaluation of the materials found that the materials were highly useful, thorough, interesting, and clear.

Read a review by Jeff Kupfer, Ph.D., BCBA

Edited by Jon S. Bailey, Mary R. Burch, A. Charles Catania, and Jack Michael

At My Own Pace, the compelling, delightful, but also educational autobiography of Fred S. Keller, is a vital book for anyone interested in behavioral science. Keller’s versatile body of work included devising methods for Morse Code operators during World War II, teaching the first undergraduate course in psychology using Skinner’s experimental methods, developing the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), delivering behavior analysis to Brazil and other countries, and writing several important psychology texts. He describes the evolution of these contributions and illuminates the roles of B.F. Skinner, Nat Schoenfeld, and many others with whom he interacted. At My Own Pace is a must-have book for every behavior analyst.

Jay Moore

This book is about the conceptual foundations of radical behaviorism. Radical behaviorism is the underlying philosophical perspective of behavior analysis, an approach to the science of behavior and its application associated with the thought and work of B. F. Skinner.

Each chapter in the book presents what radical behaviorism says about an important topic in a science of behavior, and then contrasts the radical behaviorist perspective with that of other forms of behaviorism, as well as other forms of psychology. The book is intended for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students, in courses within behavior analytic curricula dealing with conceptual foundations and radical behaviorism as a philosophy. Included for each chapter is a brief study guide to focus student attention on relevant issues. The book is not specifically concerned with the experimental analysis of behavior (e.g., research on schedules of reinforcement), applied behavior analysis (e.g., research on the best way to teach social skills and language to autistic children), or the delivery of behavior analytic professional services (e.g., descriptions of particular instances of application in education, developmental disabilities, or the world of business). After an introductory chapter, the chapters in the first part are concerned with the foundations of behavior analysis. Chapters in this part deal with the history of behaviorism and behavior analysis, behavior as a subject matter in its own right (and as distinct from the subject matter of such other disciplines as neuroscience), the categories and concepts that are deployed in behavior analysis, and an examination of selection by consequences as a causal mode across the three levels of phylogeny, ontogeny, and culture.

Chapters in the second part are concerned with the realization of the radical behaviorist program in areas traditionally regarded as important in psychology. Chapters in this part deal with verbal behavior, private behavioral events, methods in a science of behavior, and the nature/origin/validity of scientific language, such as found in theories and explanations.

Chapters in the third part compare and contrast radical behaviorism with alternative viewpoints. Chapters in this part deal with mentalism, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and selected traditional issues in philosophy, including a position known generically as "methodological behaviorism," which by some accounts is the orthodox position in contemporary psychology.

The concluding chapter is concerned with radical behaviorism as epistemology. This chapter reviews how the perspective of radical behaviorism allows one to profitably engage the question of knowledge in light of the concept of operant behavior and within human operant behavior, verbal behavior.

A. Charles Catania

Emphasizing research findings and basic concepts, the Interim (4th) Edition surveys the major areas in the psychology of learning from a consistent behavioral point of view. As in previous editions, Learning explores the continuities between human learning and the learning of other animals. The book organizes the phenomena of learning in a systematic way, moving from Behavior Without Learning (evolution) to Learning Without Words (basics in nonhuman behavior and learning) to Learning With Words (human learning and memory).

For anyone familiar with the Fourth Edition, published in 1998 by Prentice Hall, this Interim (4th) Edition presents 40 pages of new material, inserted as addenda to chapters throughout the book. The table of contents clearly marks this new material, which should make it easier for instructors to update their teaching notes.

William R. Uttal

The goal of this book is to explore the question — how can physics draw presumably valid and consistent inferences from data obtained from inaccessible entities but psychology cannot? The proposed answer to this question is that physics enjoys a system of laws that work everywhere and at any time but these very same laws are regularly violated in psychological phenomena. This book explores the properties of physical and psychological time, space, and number and raises questions about the extent to which the criteria for measurement and deductive analysis are satisfied in the psychological domain. The implications for these explorations on some of the major questions of scientific psychology are considered in the conclusion.

This book deals with one of the most important topics in scientific psychology — the fragmentation of its empirical foundation and provides some understanding of why scientific psychology is in the state it is in. It is an advanced monograph directed at graduate students and serious students of the field.