Center for the History of Behavior Analysis

The Center for the History of Behavior Analysis was founded in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas in 2016. Its vision is to advance the field of behavior analysis, nationally and internationally, through its history and historiography. Its mission is to promote the field’s history and historiography through education and training. Its goals are to cultivate and nurture the education and training, enrich and improve them, and communicate and disseminate them to behavior analysts, other scientists and scholars, and the public at large.

The Center is located in Room 4046 in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science in the Dole Human Development Center. It is furnished with book cases, filing cabinets, desks, and chairs. It information technology includes desktop computers, a monitor, a printer, and a PDF maker. The room has Internet access. The bookcases house the Center’s library, which includes approximately 175 texts on the historical and conceptual foundations of science; 200 texts on the historical and conceptual foundations of psychology; 100 texts on the historical and conceptual foundations of behavior analysis; 25 history of psychology textbooks; storage for compact disks, videos, and films on the foregoing topics; and 20 years’ of current and back issues of ISIS, published by the History of Science Society; History of Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association’s Division 26 Society for the History of Psychology; and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences, published by the International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences. These and other journals are also available online through the Center. The file cabinets house the Center’s collection of articles, chapters, presentations, and unpublished manuscripts on the historical and conceptual foundations of science, psychology, and behavior analysis, as well as articles, chapters, presentations, and unpublished manuscripts by and about John B. Watson, J. R. Kantor, and B. F. Skinner, among others (e.g., Bijou, Baer).

The Center advances its vision, mission, and goals in two ways. First, it hosts visiting scholars. Among them have been Professors Gabriel Candido (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil), Bryan D. Midgley (McPherson College, KS), Caroline Pavan- Candido (University of São Paulo, Brazil), and Bruno A. Strapasson (Federal University of Paraná, Brazil). Publications and manuscripts based on their visits are listed in the reference section below. The second way the Center advances its vision, mission, and goals has been through a grant from the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior titled, “Digital Scholarship: Skinner and Watson.” The product will be a searchable web-based PDF collection of all of B. F. Skinner’s publications other than his books. This will promote research and scholarship on his contributions, especially in areas that are only accessible now through line-by-line readings of individual publications (e.g., J. B. Watson’s and Bertrand’s Russell’s influences on Skinner). The funds generated by the online search engine will be used to build other search engines (e.g., J. R. Kantor, J. B. Watson).

With permission for the Center’s director, faculty members and students at the University of Kansas are welcome to visit and use the Center, as are scholars from other colleges and universities. For this, please contact Edward K. Morris at ekm@ku.edu.

References

Cândido, G. V. (2017a). Charles B. Ferster (1922-1981): Transição do laboratório animal para a clínica. In D. Zilio e K. Carrara. (Eds.). Behaviorismos: Reflexões históricas e conceituais (Vol. 2, pp. 283-302). São Paulo: Paradigma.

Cândido, G. V. (2017b). Introdução da análise do comportamento no Brasil: a Cadeira de Psicologia de Rio Claro (1962-1963). Revista Perspectivas Em Análise Do Comportamento, 8.

Cândido, G. V. (2020). Obra comentada de Carolina Martuscelli Bori. ISBN: 978-65-902347-0-4.

Cândido, G. V., Pavan-Cândido, C. C. (2019). Terapia analítico-comportamental: Reflexões a partir da obra de Rachel Kerbauy. Paper presented at the meeting of the Brazilian Association of Psychology and Behavioural Medicine.

de Andrade Torres, J., Cândido, G. V., & Miranda, R. L. (2020). Associação de Modificação do Comportamento: Contingências para a institucionalização da Análise do Comportamento no Brasil. Perspectivas em Análise do Comportamento, 11, 1-16.

Midgley, B. D., & Morris, E. K. (accepted). What’s so interbehavioral about organismic biology? Manuscript submitted for presentation at the 2020 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Washington, DC. [Withdrawn due to global pandemic.]

Pavan-Cândido, C. C. (2020). Terapias comportamentais e terapias cognitivas: Aproximações e divergências. Paper presented at the meeting of the Brazilian Association of Psychology and Behavioural Medicine.

Pavan-Cândido, C. C., & Neufeld, C.B. (2018). As terapias comportamentais e cognitive comportamentais: Uma análise a partir da história. Jornada de Terapias Cognitivo Comportamentais do Laboratório de Pesquisa e Intervenção Cognitivo-Comportamental.

Pavan-Cândido, C. C., Cândido, G. V. (2019). Terapia Comportamental: O Projecto de Lindsley, Skinner, e Solomon no Metropolitan State Hospital. Paper presented at the meeting of the Brazilian Association of Psychology and Behavioural Medicine.

Delprato, D. J., & Midgley, B. D. (2020). Similarities between Kantor’s S<->R interaction and Dewey’s sensorimotor circuit. The Psychological Record, 70, 529-539.

Strapasson, B. A. (2020). An updated bibliography of John B. Watson. Perspectives on Behavioral Science, 43, 431-444.

Strapasson, B. A., & Morris, E. K. (in preparation-a). Contextualizing Skinner’s talk on “What John B. Watson meant to me.” Perspectives on Behavioral Science.

Strapasson, B. A., Morris, E. K. (in preparation-b). The controversy around John B. Watson’s award at the 1958 meeting of the American Psychological Association Convention. History of Psychology.