The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior at fifty.

The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior was founded in 1958 by a group of male psychologists, mainly from the northeastern USA and connected with either Harvard or Columbia. Fifty years later about 20% of both editors and authors reside outside this country and almost the same proportion is made up of women. Other changes in the journal include having its own website for more than a decade and now publishing online as well as on paper.

Behavior analysis and the growth of behavioral pharmacology.

Psychologists, particularly those influenced by the work of B. F. Skinner, played a major part in the development of behavioral pharmacology in the 1950s and 1960s.

60 Hz electric fields and incandescent light as aversive stimuli controlling the behavior of rats responding under concurrent schedules of reinforcement.

Several reports have shown that animals will sometimes engage in behaviors that reduce their exposure to a 60 Hz electric field (E-field). The field, therefore, can function as an aversive stimulus. In other studies, the E-field at equivalent strengths failed to function as an aversive stimulus.

JEAB and JABA on the World Wide Web: a report to readers.

The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) have both established home pages on the World Wide Web. Their addresses are: http://www.envmed.

Exposure to combined static and 60 Hz magnetic fields: failure to replicate a reported behavioral effect.

Two experiments failed to confirm the Thomas, Schrot, and Liboff report that low-intensity magnetic fields disrupted the operant behavior of rats. In their experiment, food-deprived rats were trained to press a lever to obtain food pellets under a multiple fixed-ratio (FR) 30, differential reinforcement of low rate 18-24 s (DRL 18-24) schedule. After baseline training, the rats were exposed to a 30 min treatment in a different chamber prior to behavioral testing.

Taking stock: The first 25 years of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.

Some aspects of the performance of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) are described on the occasion of the journal's 25th anniversary. Comparative circulation data are presented. JABA's influence on the scientific community is measured by examining the citation history of articles that it has published, with attention to both frequency and source of the citations.

Evidence of tolerance following repeated exposure to toluene in the rat.

Toluene shares pharmacological properties with other abused central nervous system depressants such as ethanol and the barbiturates. Although tolerance has been clearly demonstrated for these classic CNS depressants, evidence of tolerance following repeated toluene exposure is equivocal. The present work examined if tolerance would develop to the effects of repeated toluene exposure on learned behavior and examined the possibility that external discriminative stimuli could influence these effects.

Comparison of 60-Hz electric fields and incandescent light as aversive stimuli controlling the behavior of rats.

Rats were exposed to two procedures which enabled them to press a lever to turn off a 90 or 100 kV/m 60-Hz electric field or, later in the study, illumination from an incandescent lamp. Under one procedure, a response turned off the stimulus for a fixed duration, after which the stimulus was turned on again. A response during the off-period restarted the fixed duration.

Control of animal pain and distress in behavioral studies that use food deprivation or aversive stimulation.

Imposing moderate amounts of food deprivation on an animal allows the use of reward techniques in studying behavior and poses fewer ethical problems than does the use of aversive procedures. Possible discomfort caused by experiments using aversive stimulation frequently can be reduced. Habituating animals to experimental procedures is almost always a good idea.

Stimulus control and the development of behavioral tolerance to daily injections of d-amphetamine in the rat.

We examined whether daily d-amphetamine administration affected behavior under the control of external stimuli differently than behavior not under such control. Two variants of a fixed-consecutive-number reinforcement schedule were combined in a multiple schedule. An external discriminative stimulus indicated when the schedule requirement for reinforcement had been satisfied in one component, no such stimulus was used in the other component.

The roles of stimulus control and reinforcement frequency in modulating the behavioral effects of d-amphetamine in the rat.

The behavioral effects of d-amphetamine have been shown to be modulated by stimulus control, with less impairment of performance occurring when control is great. When the fixed-consecutive-number schedule is used (on which at least a specified consecutive number of responses must be made on one operandum before a single response on another will produce a reinforcer), response rate tends to be invariant but reinforcement frequency is not. This study asks whether the differences in reinforcement frequency that usually accompany changes in stimulus control could themselves be responsible for the performance differences.

60-Hz electric fields: detection by female rats.

Female rats were trained to detect a vertical, 60-Hz electric field using the same apparatus and procedure we used previously to study behavioral detection of the field by male rats. Each rat was trained individually to press a lever in the presence of the field and not to press in its absence. Correct detections occasionally produced a food pellet.

Behavioral effects of toluene are modulated by stimulus control.

Behavior that is strongly controlled by environmental stimuli is less susceptible to disruption by certain chemicals than is such behavior not under strong external control. To determine whether toluene's effects can also be minimized by environmental stimuli, two varieties of a fixed consecutive number schedule were studied. With one, a lever press response was reinforced with milk only if preceded by a minimum of eight consecutive responses on a second lever, no cues indicating that the minimum number had been reached.

The microanalysis of fixed-interval responding.

The fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement is one of the more widely studied schedules in the experimental analysis of behavior and is also a common baseline for behavior pharmacology. Despite many intensive studies, the controlling variables and the pattern of behavior engendered are not well understood. The present study examined the microstructure and superstructure of the behavior engendered by a fixed-interval 5- and a fixed-interval 15-minute schedule of food reinforcement in the pigeon.

Behavioral detection of 60-Hz electric fields by rats.

Rats partially deprived of food were trained individually to press a lever in the presence of a vertical, 60-Hz electric field and not to press in its absence. Correct detections that occurred during brief, 3- or 4-s trials occasionally produced a food pellet. The probability of detecting the field was found to increase as field strength increased.

Neurotoxicity of methylmercury in the pigeon.

Pigeons repeatedly exposed to sublethal doses of methylmercury (5-10 mg Hg/kg/wk, po, for 34-77 days) exhibited marked behavioral changes that were accompanied by only minor evidence of neuropathologic changes at the light microscopic level. Accuracy and rate of pecking for grain declined while food intake remained unchanged. Methylmercury produced permanent changes in posture and in motor coordination.

The amphetamine margin in sports.

The amphetamines can enhance athletic performance. That much seems clear from the literature, some of which is reviewed here. Increases in endurance have been demonstrated in both humans and rats.

Stimulus control and the effects of d-amphetamine in the rat.

External discriminative stimuli can modify the behavioral effects of d-amphetamine. Previous work with the pigeon has demonstrated that some aspects of performance on the fixed consecutive number schedule are changed less if a discriminative stimulus indicates when reinforcement is available. This effect has now been replicated with the rat using both simple and multiple schedules.

Methylmercury-induced changes in operant discrimination by the pigeon.

Pigeons were trained on a fixed consecutive number schedule of reinforcement, pecking eight or nine times on one key (a run) before making the single response on a second key that was reinforced if the number requirement had been met. A run of fewer than eight or more than nine responses reset the response requirement. They then were given methylmercury chronically until behavioral signs of poisoning occurred.