Behavior Analysis & Learning

This text gives a lot of very detailed descriptions and also good examples and charts to help students understand the information. It has been a great supplement to my Operant Behavior course.

As a book about Behavior Analysis, this book doesn't do bad at all. It has its pros and cons as all books do, and it does adopt something of a dogmatic approach when it comes to Skinnerian belief - as many ABA professions do. Still, that is the way of ABA and, in many rights, it does need to be acknowledged in order to understand how to truly help people. Pros: It courts many of the mottos that ABA courts now: it talks about the individual and the mannerisms displayed according to the problem manifesting, it looks at a number of subjects with a little Darwinian "why," and it tries to address ABA in a way that walks the idealistic line between academia and really-real world without leaning too far either way. In some areas it does a great job of that too, helping the reader to better understand the trials and tribulations people face. In other ways it falters, sometimes missing small things and sometimes (debatably so) not streamlining B.F. Skinner enough and softening to some newer approaches. Cons: Were I to fault this book as a text, it would not be for any of the aforementioned things because they are contextual subjects that are open for debate and because all texts are inherently flawed. I would have to say I did have some concerns that had to do with some of the examples proved throughout the reading, thinking they were a tad overbearing sometimes. This isn't to say that all of the examples are bad - some are really thought out and work the way they need to work. Like an overworked essay or a paper with a few too many pages, there are areas when redundancy creeps in. Overall: Perhaps the review of the book seems a bit heavy-handed when it comes to be book, and perhaps it is. To their esteemed credit, the writers do know what they are talking about, they wrote a great job dealing with a subject that far too few people seem to grasp, and their textbook was readable. Above all, that should matter because, in teaching, texts are oftentimes ignored if they are too laden with weights that really don't have to be there because students are, well, students. Keeping all of this in mind, I would recommended this book for review to teachers that agree with the author's points-of-view, that perhaps want more than one text for diversity's sake, and for students looking to do the same.

The 3rd edition of this text was extremely helpful for me in my behavior analysis course. Word definitions were listed in the back for easy access, if they weren't defined in the text itself. Examples given were very helpful in understanding concepts and a lot of diagrams were given to help those of us who understand better via visual learning. Reviews at the end of each chapter included study questions which were very helpful. It was an interesting read, at least for someone already interested in the topic.