Jack Michael, PhD. Dr. Michael was born in 1926 in Los Angeles, and entered UCLA in 1943 as a chemistry major. He served two years in the army, and returned to UCLA in 1946, this time as a psychology major. He obtained a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at UCLA, finishing in 1955. As a graduate student his main interests were statistical methodology, physiological psychology, and learning theory. During his first teaching job (Kansas University) he was much influenced by B. F. Skinner's Science and Human Behavior, and since then has been primarily involved in teaching behavioral psychology at Kansas U., the University of Houston, Arizona State University, and since 1967 at Western Michigan University. In 1957 as a result of influence by the rehabilitation psychologist, Lee Meyerson, he began to apply Skinner's behavior analysis to applications in the areas of mental retardation, mental illness, and physical disability. During the next several years "behavior modification" was in a period of rapid expansion and Dr. Michael contributed with his teaching, writing, and public presentations. Most recently he has been concerned with the technical terminology of behavior analysis, basic theory regarding motivation, and verbal behavior. Dr. Michael contributed to the founding of the Association for Behavior Analysis in 1974 and served as its president in 1979. Dr. Michael was Western Michigan University's Distinguished Faculty Scholar for 1989. He received the 2002 Award for Distinguished Service to Behavior Analysis from the Association for Behavior Analysis, and the 2002 Don Hake Award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Michael's keynote address is the culmination of 25 years of work on motivating operations that started with the 1982 publication of his seminal article "Distinguishing between discriminative and motivational functions of stimuli" in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.


Thursday, February 8, 2007 • 4:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m.    (top)
On the Role of Behavior Analysts in the Assessment and Treatment of Pediatric Feeding Disorders

Cathleen C. Piazza, PhD. Dr. Piazza received her doctorate from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. She completed a pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the Kennedy Institute (KKI) and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSM) in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Piazza was a faculty member at JHUSM and KKI where she was the Chief Psychologist of the Neurobehavioral Unit, the Director of Training, and the Director of the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program. In 1999, she became Director of the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program and the Training Program at the Marcus Institute. Currently, Dr. Piazza is a Professor in Pediatrics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and the director of the Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program at Munroe-Meyer Institute (MMI). She is a former Associate Editor, the current Book Editor, and the Editor-elect of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Dr. Piazza was recruited to MMI/UNMC to further her research on the study of brain-behavior relations in individuals with medical and behavior problems. This work is aimed at evaluating the potential role of biological mechanisms in the etiology and maintenance of behavior problems and integrating knowledge about biological mechanisms that influence behavior with the technology of behavior analysis in order to better understand and treat these problems. A major component of this work has been the clinical and scientific application of behavioral science to problems found in pediatric medicine. Dr. Piazza's current research involves the assessment and treatment of three types of behavior problems common to children: 1) pediatric feeding problems, 2) dangerous behaviors that lead to injury, and 3) pediatric sleep problems. For example, her work in the area of pediatric feeding problems is centered around understanding the interaction between physiological and behavioral causes of feeding problems and the use of this information in treatment development.


Friday, February 9, 2007 • 8:30 a.m. – 9:20 a.m.    (top)
Some Reflections on Equivalence Relations

Murray Sidman, PhD. Murray Sidman lived a happy but otherwise unremarkable boyhood in Boston from 1923 until 1940, when he started at Columbia University. After World War II military service, he returned in 1946 to complete his AB, and went on to a Ph.D in 1952. His principal advisors, Fred S. Keller and W. N. Schoenfeld, had strong assists from Ralph Hefferline, Clarence Graham, and a small group of fellow graduate students. After that, he spent nine years in the exciting and productive interdisciplinary environment of the Neuropsychiatry Division at Walter Reed Army Hospital. He then joined the Neurology Service of the Massachusetts General Hospital for another nine years. Dr. Sidman's human and nonhuman behavioral research laboratories moved eventually to the E. K. Shriver Center and Northeastern University, where he remained as professor of psychology until he retired from academe, continuing his research at the New England Center for Children. Although retired from there in 2001, Dr. Sidman continues research and writing. One outcome of his lifetime of research is his conviction that extending experimental results out of the laboratory not only adds an intrinsically valuable dimension to basic research, but is essential to its survival in a world of increasing competition for ever more limited resources.

Dr. Sidman's keynote commemorates the 25th anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking article with William Tailby, "Conditional discrimination vs. matching to sample: An expansion of the testing paradigm" (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 1982, Vol. 37, 5-22), which set off an explosion of research on stimulus equivalence and related topics.

Meet Dr. Sidman at his book signing on Friday!