ABSTRACT
The influence and development of behaviour analysis in French-speaking Europe has been different in the different countries, as can be seen when comparing developments in France and in the French-speaking parts of Belgium and Switzerland. Fortunately, applications of Experimental Analysis of Behaviour (EAB) in education, psychological treatment, and health psychology developed better than fundamental research, although they were slow in gaining audience. This chapter provides a reasonably accurate picture of the EAB movement in the territories bounded by their common language, but distinct in their receptiveness—or lack of receptiveness—to the last important phase of American behaviourism. EAB implies such theoretical elaborations, basically a monist conception of (human) behaviour, the rejection of mentalism as explanatory fiction, a selectionist view of the shaping and emergence of new behaviour. Operant conditioning techniques were put to work independently of adherence of the user to Skinner's theory of behaviour, just because they were most efficient in a variety of contexts.
