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This article reviews the negative behavior-analytic commentary on Drash and Tudor's behavior-analytic analysis of the etiology of autistic repertoires and values. This article also asks that, in our effort to scrub it clean, we not drown Drash and Tudor's beautiful, but fragile, new-born, behavior-analytic baby in hyper-methodological, hyper-scholarly bathwater.

Concept learning can involve either contingency shaping of stimulus-class discriminations or the application of definitions of the concepts. Experimental behavior analysts have studied contingency shaping, whereas educational psychologists have studied definitional concept training. In this paper, we analyze definition-based concept learning in terms of stimulus-response chains. Then we apply this chaining analysis to principles of instruction proposed by educational psychologists. These principles include (a) stating the definition in terms of critical and variable attributes, (b) using examples and nonexamples, (c) using a rational set of examples and nonexamples, (d) presenting coordinate concepts simultaneously, and (e) presenting the next instance based on the learner's previous error.

This is an informal dialog between Jack Michael and Dick Malott inspired by Malott's commentary (In press) on Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, Roche; 2001). Topics range from psychologist Skinner to linguist Hockett and from the Skinner box to verbal behavior (AKA language).

The greatest intellectual challenge to the field of behavior analysis may be understanding linguistic productivity (e.g., being able to correctly say and understand novel sentences). One of the main issues concerning linguistic productivity is whether behavioral productivity is, itself, a fundamental behavioral process, as claimed by the proponents of relational frame theory, or whether we can understand linguistic productivity in terms of more fundamental behavioral principles.

This article addresses the meaning of autism, the etiology of autistic behavior and values, the nature-nurture debate, contingencies vs. genes, and resistance to a behavioral analysis of autism.

This study examined the control exerted by different types of rules on the behavior of preschool children. Four similar rules were presented to eight, four-year-old children, using a multielement design. The contingencies the rules described varied in the specification of deadlines and in the delays in the delivery of the reinforcers. The results showed (a) rules specifying only response requirements did not reliably control behavior, (b) rules specifying an immediate deadline with the immediate delivery of a reinforcer exerted reliable control, (c) rules specifying an immediate deadline with a one-week delay in the delivery of the reinforcer also exerted reliable control, and (d) rules specifying no deadline with a one-week delay in the delivery of the reinforcer exerted little control. These results suggest that a rule's specification of a deadline is crucial in its control of behavior, but the delay of the reinforcer is of little importance. This latter conclusion further suggests that problems in self-control do not result from delayed outcomes or the inablity to delay gratification, contrary to conventional wisdom.

Erratum to: The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 30, 170–177 DOI:10.1007/s40616-014-0016-9 Kohler, K. T., & Malott, R. W. (2014). Matrix training and verbal generativity in children with autism. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 30, 170–177. This article was inadvertently published without an abstract. The abstract and key words appear below. Abstract Children with autism are often taught tacts in the form of single-word nouns and verbs, and they may emit specific combinations of nouns and verbs to form simple sentences. But they are rarely explicitly taught to emit new sentences composed of previously trained nouns and verbs. In this study, we used three-dimensional matrix training to teach two preschool-aged children with autism to tact actions depicted in a video using the subject-verb-object (S-V-O) sentence. We trained the three sentences along the diagonal of one matrix. Then we tested for transfer to 24 untrained sentences, trained those sentences that had not transferred, and repeated the entire procedure with additional S-V-O matrices. After 24 to 37 training sessions, both children demonstrated generativity by emitting sentences composed of novel combinations of words within both trained and untrained matrices. Keywords autism generative language linguistic productivity matrix training verbal behavior