ABSTRACT
79Over the past fifty years, a scientific, experimental analysis of behavior has contributed extensively to psychology and the study of behavior. The methodology and conceptual framework developed have extended our ability to predict and control both non-human and human behavior. Analysis with nonhuman subjects has involved a standard experimental environment, fairly rigorous control of the animal’s environment between experimental sessions, an objective measure of behavior that is more or less independent of topography, a treatment of behavior in terms of rate of response, and the fine-grained longitudinal study of the behavior of a few animals. The methodology has permitted the analysis of behavior, roughly in terms of operants and respondents. In the former case, responses are shaped and maintained by the stimuli that follow them, with the preceding stimulus serving a discriminative function. In the latter case, preceding events elicit physiologically predetermined responses.
