Scholarly publications

Includes peer reviewed journals within and adjacent to behavior analysis

(Starred journals available to BCBAs through the BACB portal)

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis *
3/9 Zhao, X., Cengher, M., Li, T., Cortez, M. D., & Miguel, C. F. (2026). Evaluating tact instruction in two languages for bilingual children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 59(2), e70058. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.70058
Teaching tacts in two languages simultaneously or sequentially was effective. In study 2, they taught in 1 or 2 languages, and teaching in 1 language was more efficient

Journal of Organizational Behavior Management *
3/9 Howell, S. E., & Miltenberger, R. G. (2026). Addressing the effects of reactivity in staff management. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2026.2643302
When a supervisor is absent, performance sometimes declines. Two different interventions include self-management and "inconspicuous" observation with feedback. The former has mixed results, while the latter tends to work

3/12 Nastasi, J. A., Gravina, N., & McCafferty, K. (2026). Evaluating staff safety in human services: An organizational injury assessment. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2026.2643306
The authors examined injury documentation for an organization that provides educational services to people with special needs. They found injuries increasing over time. The most common injury was bites, with the more serious injuries involving the head or neck

3/13 Pugliese, S. N., Liesfeld, J. E., Roberts, K. B., & Newcomb, E. T. (2026). Evaluating the use of teach-back and behavioral skills training to improve employee performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/01608061.2026.2644517
Teach-back (an intervention from healthcare where you teach someone a skill and immediately have them "teach back" to you) was used in study 1 and was effective. In study 2, Teach-back and BST were compared, and both were effective

Behavioral Interventions *
3/8 Sheppard, Christina, David A.Wilder, JonathanFernand, and OliviaLayman. 2026. “The Effect of the High-Probability Instructional Sequence Across Foods With Varying Levels of Participant Interaction,” Behavioral Interventions: e70085. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.70085
A high-P sequence with food, wherein previously identified highly preferred foods are given and then followed by a low-P food, was effective for 1/3 participants

3/9 Sarokoff, Randi A., Megan A.Mahoney, DaphnaEl-Roy, and Jilian P.DeTiberiis. 2026. “Effects of a High-Probability Request Sequence on Visual Orienting and Instructional Accuracy in a Young Child With Autism,” Behavioral Interventions: e70086. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.70086
(Open access) The authors compared a high-P instructional sequence with a low-P version and found that orienting toward the instructor and accuracy of responding was higher (on average) in the high-P sequence

3/10 Crysdale, Carolyn, MarthaPelaez, LoriMastrogiacomo, JillHarper, and Mary J.Weiss. 2026. “Contingent Vocal Imitation Increases Vocalizations of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder,” Behavioral Interventions: e70083. https://doi.org/10.1002/bin.70083
Contingent Vocal Initiation (e.g., repeating a child's vocalizations) is best practice for conventionally developing toddlers. The authors implemented CVI with 4 autistic children; all increased vocalizations and 2/4 increased their echoic responses

Perspectives on Behavior Science
3/12 Glenn, S.S., Malott, M.E. Behavior and Cumulative Cultural Evolution. Perspect Behav Sci (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-026-00496-2
The authors attempt a behavioral explanation of the emergence and evolution of human culture

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior *
3/8 Wan, H., Tan, L., & Hackenberg, T. D. (2026). Behavioral economic analysis of pigeons' token accumulation and reinforcer demand in a laboratory-based token economy. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 125(2), e70095. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.70095
Pigeons pecked a key to get a token, and then another key became available which could be pecked in order to exchange the tokens for food. After this, different parameters were manipulated, such as pecks per token, availability of the exchange key, etc. Pigeons saved or spent tokens differently depending on various factors, which has application to real world economics 

Walker, E. J., Howell, S., Reyes, C., Miltenberger, R. G., Deshmukh, S., Rapp, J. T., Pinkston, J. W., & Sheridan, D. J. (2026). Evaluating effects of synchronous music reinforcement on increasing treadmill walking speed in a stepwise fashion. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 125(2), e70096. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.70096
Synchronous reinforcement was used during treadmill walking (e.g., walking too slowly stops the music). 23/30 participants walked fast enough to play the music 

Pantano, N. A., Rodriguez, N. M., Sidener, T. M., Vladescu, J. C., & Kisamore, A. N. (2026). Further evaluation of component skills that facilitate the emergence of intraverbal tacts. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 125(2), e70093. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.70093
5 kids with ASD were taught tacts and intraverbal categorizations, and all 5 showed emergence of intraverbal tacts without further training, suggesting that these are the component skills to develop intraverbal tacting

3/9 Pérez-González, L. A., & Smeets, P. (2026). Establishing emergent analogical spatiotemporal relations. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 125(2), e70089. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.70089
(Open access) The authors taught relations between arbitrary stimuli, and emergence between stimuli generally occurred. The authors posit that this is a similar process to learning analogies and might underlie that learning process

Education and Treatment of Children
3/10 Lee, G.T., Hu, X. & Meng, Y. Let’s Play Charades: Using Video Modeling to Teach Children on the Autism Spectrum to Play with Imaginary Objects. Educ. Treat. Child. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43494-025-00174-z 4 autistic boys in China were taught pretend play in a group setting using video modeling. By the end of the study, they were able to play Charades, but unscripted pretend play did not increase during targeted play activities

The Psychological Record
3/8 Brunkow, F., Dittrich, A. Values in Radical Behaviorism and Functional Contextualism: Agreement, Divergence, Contradiction, or Complementarity?. Psychol Rec (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-026-00675-2
(Open access) The authors believe that the concept of "values" has been defined differently in radical behaviorism and functional contextualism, in such a way that the two concepts are "conceptually incompatible"

3/9 Muñoz-Blanco, M.I. Reviving Kantor’s Theory and Philosophy A Review of Interbehaviorism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Foundations of Kantor’s Theory and Its Applications for Modern Behavior Analysis by L. J. Hayes and M. J. Fryling. Psychol Rec (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-026-00676-1
The reviewer likes the book as an advanced text

3/10 Jacobs, K.W., Servideo, N.A. & King, J.E. The Effects of Verbal Stimuli on Behavioral Equilibrium: A Pilot Study. Psychol Rec (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-026-00677-0
Unconstrained organisms behave in such a way that they reach a state of equilibrium; when interrupted or constrained, they adjust behavior until they reach a state of equilibrium. In this study they used verbal stimuli (a written rule) to examine if it would effect human behavior. Even when there was not correspondence, humans behaved according to the rule, suggesting that rules can interrupt equilibrium

Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science
3/10 Beyond the Average: Idionomic Evidence of Individual-Specific Variability in the Psychological Flexibility-Mood Relationship
(In press) (Open access) The authors find individual variability in the relationship between psychological flexibility and mood, suggesting group measures are inappropriate

3/12 Contextual Behavioral Supervision: A Delphi Study
(In press) (Open access) In surveying 20 experts, the authors find common features of Contextual Behavioral supervision, including functional analysis and values-driven action. They also note a lack of literature on what, exactly, should comprise supervision 

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for distress in university students with chronic physical health conditions: a single-arm feasibility study of an app-based intervention
(In press) (Open access) 60 participants started the study, with approximately 17 completing it. While it was an effective treatment, the high drop-out rate implies that the method may not be useful in its current form

Book publications

Textbooks, handbooks, manuals, or mass-market

Upcoming:
Personal Narratives on the Behavior Analysis of Human Language and Cognition:

Stories from Around the World, Harte et al. (Eds.) (Jul 2026)
WAVE Prosocial Assessment and Curriculum, Rehfeldt & Dixon (Pre-order)
Digital Technologies in Behavior Science: Theoretical and Practical Applications, Crone-Todd, Hantula, Layng (Eds.) (Pre-order Feb 25, 2026)
AIM Navigators, Dixon (Pre-order)
Promoting Language for Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Verbal Behavior Guide for Practitioners, Vladescu & Kissamore (Eds.)
Navigating Ethics in Behavior Analysis: Dealing with Gray Areas, Carr

Recent:
2025
2024
2023

Podcasts

ABA Inside Track
ABA and Down Syndrome w. Dr. Kathleen Feeley

Behavioral Observations
The 2025 Verbal Behavior Conference Panel Discussion: Session 326

Blogs

Generally these are produced by professionals

ABAI
How to Steer People Away From Pseudoscientific Treatments — Without Scaring Them Away From Us
A guest post about dissemination and correction

Licensing & professional organizations

CASP
CASP Responds to Wall Street Journal Articles
Two recent WSJ articles highlight fraud in ABA. The authors of this post argue that while fraud is a problem that should be managed, it is also a relatively small subset of providers and does not reflect on the effectiveness of ABA

Business world

Autism services, behavioral health, etc.

FDA backs away from RFK Jr.’s claims about drug’s promise for autism patients
RFK (who, in this picture, is not Kid Rock) claimed in September 2025 that a drug called leucovorin could be a “promising treatment” for autism. In fact, it was only ever officially announced as a treatment for cerebral folate deficiency which “affects fewer than 1 in a million people.” But in case you had tried to invest in GlaxoSmith Kline while leucovorin was under review by the FDA, we are sorry to inform you that leucovorin is officially not covered for any other condition.

Accidentally behavior analysis

A mainstream news article that relates to behavior analysis

Raccoons will solve puzzles just for fun, Scientific American

Raccoons were trained by the Brelands to insert coins into a machine, only to find that they rubbed the coins (as they do with their food) and failed to get their reinforcers. They also have cool lil opposable thumbs and will solve puzzles “for fun”!
Well, from a behavior analytic perspective, maybe not for fun. When presented with a clear puzzle box with a treat inside, they solve it. But if the box is later presented empty, they attempt to solve it again. In the article, this is a mystery – they can’t “expect” a treat from an empty box, so perhaps they “anticipate” future treats, or want to “discover” information.

But this “mystery” of raccoon behavior was solved by Skinner directly after the Brelands published, and expanded upon by Baum. When the food is paired with the nonfood item, the nonfood item is associated (not by the animal, but within the environment) with food. Hence the nonfood item evokes a behavior class associated with food.

Continuing education

UPCOMING:

BehaviorLive has free events: 3/19, 3/20, 3/24, 3/25 (ETH/SUP), 3/26

Flashback

Our “Sonsils” dead end

Ogden Lindsley wrote about a system of which we had never heard. Francis Turnley, according to Og, wrote a brilliant book that taught reading via “sonsils,” the basic sounds of language. This method was incredibly effective, but didn’t catch on, leading Turnley to commit suicide. 

Hell, we could probably find it on the internet!

It has been scanned by Google (and relatedly on HathiTrust). For some reason, it is not available due to copyright – despite being an 80 year old book that was never popular in the first place and surely never had a second printing. It is available at a few libraries, but none we are able to easily access. It is not available in pirated form.

We wanted to write a piece about this book, and about Turnley, but there’s a chance it won’t happen. So, what we know about Turnley:

• Born in England, moved to Canada at age 16, served in WWI as a Canadian where he was wounded

• He might have been a strange (or principled) guy; he was in legal trouble for putting up anti-war signs around his house around the time of WWII

• As referenced in the previous link, he sold cars; he had several jobs and apparently academic writing was just one

• He authored a book in 1928 entitled “The Alphabet of Wisdom,” described on GoodReads as: “A prescient, idiosyncratic introduction to the author's philosophy of planetarianism, which advocates for an age of clear thinking through vegetarianism, co-operation, ease of travel and thought transference by radio.”

• In fact, he may have been something of a conservationist:

• The Department of Education in Canada did pilot the Turnley system, but did not adopt it, for unknown reasons; whatever the case, Turnley was publicly upset about it

• There is an uncomfortable undertone, as he uses his daughter Fern as the main evidence for the success of his system