Author Description

"This second edition, retitled Talking About Behavior, continues the first edition's focus on presenting students and practitioners in the field of applied behavior analysis with an engaging introduction to radical behaviorism, the philosophy underlying the field of behavior analysis. Early chapters consider some basic assumptions about the nature of behavior and clarify how we learn to talk about our own behavior and everyone else's. This foundation leads to chapters that discuss a wide range of conceptual issues in a way that shows how they are important to practitioners in their everyday work. Each chapter begins with a vignette that highlights the ways that ABA practitioners experience the misunderstandings about behavior encouraged by everyday dialect. Discussion then focuses on helping readers learn a way of talking about behavior that avoids these conceptual confusions and the problems they can cause for delivery of behavioral services. The book approaches these topics in an informal and readable style. Pedagogical features include boxes that address special topics that supplement chapter narratives, as well as definitions of key terms and tables summarizing important points. Each chapter ends with a summary of main points, study guides for text and box content, discussion topics and exercises, suggested readings, and supplementary website readings, which are available on this website. The book concludes with a glossary, bibliography, and indexes. Although the new edition involves the same general organization as the first edition, it includes many significant edits and improvements throughout. One of these is a list of supplementary website readings at the end of each chapter. These readings are newly edited versions of more than 50 blog posts originally published by the author, and the talkingaboutbehavior.com website has been revised to serve as an accompaniment to the text. These readings offer instructors and students opportunities to pursue aspects of e