Here’s something interesting to ponder: According to Web of Science, below are the papers published in Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, the flagship ABA publication, that have been cited most often in each year of that journal’s existence.
You can find out more about the figure in Note 1, but mainly just take a moment to soak in what you see above. Notice which articles from JABA have made the biggest splash in each of the years since that journal started publishing.
Note 1: Details About The Figure
[1] Clarification on what’s being measured: Our focus is on the JABA paper that was cited most often in a given year, regardless of that paper’s publication date. It would also be interesting to know other things, like the JABA paper published in each given year that has been most cited, and the source (from anywhere) that is cited most often by JABA’s articles in each year. These just convey different things.
[2] Below is a summary of most of the articles shown in the figure. I say “most” because early in the journal’s history, its articles were too new to have been cited much. Thus several articles qualified as “most” cited on the basis of a scant handful of citations, which doesn’t communicate anything important. The articles I omitted were: (a) Madsen et al (1968). Rules, praise, and ignoring: elements of elementary classroom control. JABA, 1(2), 139-150; (b) Powell & Azrin (1968). The effects of shock as a punisher for cigarette smoking. JABA, 1(1), 63-71; and (c) Thomas, et al. (1968). Production and elimination of disruptive classroom behavior by systematically varying teacher’s behavior. JABA, 1(1), 35-45.
| YEARS RANKED #1 (incl. ties) | ARTICLE |
|---|---|
| 19 | Baer et al. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. JABA, 1(1), 91-98. |
| 15 | Iwata et al. (1994). Toward a functional analysis of self‐injury. JABA, 27(2), 197-209. |
| 9 | Stokes & Baer (1977). An implicit technology of generalization. JABA, 10(2), 349-367. |
| 8 | Wolf (1978). Social validity: the case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. JABA, 11(2), 203-214. |
| 3 | Hall et al. (1968). Effects of teacher attention on study behavior. JABA, 1(1), 1-12. |
| 2 | Carr & Durand (1985). Reducing behavior problems through functional communication training. JABA, 18(2), 111-126. |
| 2 | Keller(1968). Good-bye, teacher… JABA, 1(1), 79. |
And as you reflect, also take in this pithy observation:
“I am unaware of any field that has survived as a vital intellectual area on the basis of minor elaboration.” (Hayes, 2001; download here)
Stasis and Progress
Hayes (2001), in writing the quote above, was concerned about the continuing need for scientific disciplines to get their metaphorical shark on (proverbially, if not literally, sharks must move forward or die). Hayes specifically was frustrated by what he saw as an unproductive fixation among behavior analysts, in studies of verbal phenomena, on Skinner’s (1957) book Verbal Behavior. Hayes of course acknowledged that book’s importance in the history of behavior analysis but opined that:
“Something is seriously amiss when a scientific area can use a 50 year old [source] as if it is current.“
I have two reactions to this. First, in general terms, “move forward or die” does seem like common-sense advice. Science is about generating new knowledge, and if it ceases to do that, arguably it ceases to be science. I could do a whole post on scientific movements that got stuck and morphed into something other than science… something more like a social club, or a religion, or even a cult.
Second, whether or not science “moves forward” is heavily affected by social contingencies. As Skinner explained (in Verbal Behavior, ironically enough), a science is a verbal community that selectively reinforces certain types of scientific behaviors. And presumably not all verbal communities establish contingencies that will assure their long term survival.
Research by Alan Neuringer shows that what you get from reinforcement contingencies depends, unsurprisingly, on what you reinforce. Contingencies that are static — i.e., reinforcement is always contingent on the same behavior topography — tend to promote stereotypy in behavior, or “more of the same.” Contingencies that reinforce topographical variability produce novelty in behavior. It follows that if you’re looking for a spirit of innovation in science, an approach that values ongoing adventurousness, you want to reinforce variability to some degree. But here’s the rub. When early successes are reinforced, in the immediate run it’s tempting (and consistent with behavior laws) to do more of what worked originally. The costs of static reinforcement contingencies would become evident only over an extended time scale.
Okay, so, what do we know about the verbal community “calling its culture applied behavior analysis” (Baer et al., 1987, p. 313)? It had impressive early successes, of course, but since then what has been reinforced? Return to the figure that led off this post and speculate on that.
Important caveat to this discussion: Clearly we have no record of the day to day interactions that mediate reinforcement contingencies in our science. We don’t know what people say to each other in labs and clinics, no repository of journal reviews that tell us what referees think of various scientific practices, and so forth. But we do have one very concrete trail of breadcrumbs: People writing scholarly articles use citations to indicate what influenced them, so in science-as-social-enterprise it’s reasonable to think of citations as a marker for what people in a discipline value (reinforce). With this in mind, what does the figure above suggest is being reinforced in ABA?
“Influence Shelf Life”
As you ponder that, let’s take a step back and construct a frame of reference for the figure, a template of what you might expect to see in a healthy science. Science is cumulative, so we always “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Our current work is always, to some extent, derivative of work that came before, so in a way a healthy science is always simultaneously standing still and moving forward. That makes interpreting the graph I showed you a bit tricky.
What Hayes (2001) was suggesting is that breakthroughs in a dynamic science will have an influence shelf life. They burst onto the scene, for a time causing a constructive kerfluffle that can be seen in citation counts. Eventually, however, even a highly valued breakthroughs should fade from the citation spotlight. To understand why that might be so, consider the following example.
Everyone working in the discipline of evolutionary biology is beholden to Darwin… but that doesn’t mean contemporary evolutionary biologists fixate on Darwin per se. His ideas succeeded so thoroughly that many of them are now, in effect, common knowledge. Thus, in the everyday trenches of evolutionary biology research, new questions arise all the time for which Darwin provides a very broad historical context but is not the central guiding light or primary focus. And because all evolutionary biologists trace their thinking to the same historical context, everyone knows this, so often there is no reason to cite Darwin, even though he laid the groundwork for most contemporary investigations.
What an influence shelf life implies, therefore, is that cool new things will be actively discussed for a time, but eventually overshadowed by (or perhaps, more precisely, absorbed into) newer breakthroughs. It’s a sign of strength that evolutionary biology remains committed to the general paradigm of Darwin without having to name-drop Darwin every five minutes. Had Darwin not faded into the background, well, today’s evolutionary biology would still be a lot like that of the late 1800s. And stasis like that is not a great look in science.
ABA in Context
What the data you’ve seen so far imply is that during the 1960s through 1980s a few key ABA papers came out, rocketed to the top of the most-cited rankings, and subsequently some of then stayed right at the top of the rankings. Check out the specifics for several of those articles:
Time frame is the same as in the preceding figure (1968-2025). Data from Web of Science.
A critic might say that the fact that ABA research, as it appears JABA, cites older stuff a heckuva lot seems to run counter to the profile of a discipline that is moving forward, one in which older advances eventually are replaced by or absorbed into new developments.
Ah, but what is “eventually”? For how long is it healthy for a field to embrace its older breakthroughs? After how long might that embrace suggest a lack of “moving forward”? I doubt there’s a standard answer to those questions, but we can at least seek some perspective by looking at what happens in journals other than JABA.
To make the figure below, for JABA and two other long-running behavior analysis journals (Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and Behavior Modification) I found the most-cited paper for each year of each journal’s existence. Then for each journal I then computed a five-year running average of the age (years since publication) of those most-cited papers.
The two comparison journals seem to fit pretty well with the Hayes-predicted trajectory in which early breakthroughs retain their influence for a time and then are replaced by more recent work. Note how, in those journals, the age of the most-cited paper got bigger for a while (meaning those doing the citing hung on to seminal sources), then decreased (presumably because newer work gained citation supremacy). For JABA, however, the age of the most-cited papers has basically just gone up and up (see Note 2).
Note 2: Worse Than It Looks
The reality of JABA is a bit worse than the figure implies, because the classic Iwata et al. (1994) paper is really a reprint of a 1982 original, so the work is even older than my calculations assumed.
To clarify those effects let’s look at the year-by-year data for the comparison journals. Here’s JEAB.
Note: For display purposes the first four years were combined.
And here’s Behavior Modification (see Note 3).
Note: For display purposes the first four years were combined
Note 3: How Behavior Modification Differs From JABA
BM is an interesting comparison journal for JABA because, although it has featured some of the same kind of content — stuff you might call core ABA — it is really a hybrid journal that also includes a lot of other stuff: work in developmental disabilities that’s not core ABA; behavior therapy; and mainstream clinical psychology.
These cases seem different from JABA in two ways: More articles hold the most-cited title at least once, and at some point newer articles overtake older “classics” (though see Note 4).
Note 4: Discounting the future in JEAB
In JEAB there’s been a lot of updating of the most-cited source over time, but the lengthy recent run of Myerson et al. (2001) is a bit concerning. JEAB has been the “journal of delay discounting” for a while now. In many ways that’s a good thing because it connects a uniquely behavior perspective to a topic of considerable mainstream. That brings attention to the journal and wisdom to the mainstream. As for Myerson et al. as the poster child of this era in JEAB, well, one wonders whether there hasn’t been SOME development in the past few decades that merits more attention than this 25-year-old methodological article.
What’s It Mean?
The data I’ve shown you raise valid questions about whether ABA is “moving forward” as we would hope of a healthy science. I’m not saying it is or isn’t, only suggesting that maybe we should be vigilant about the risk of any field becoming obsessed with minor variations on a long-established theme. ABA’s persistent focus on contributions that are many decades old certainly can be seen in this light, but there may be other plausible interpretations (see Note 5).
Note 5: Entrenchment, or Maybe Something Else?
There is no single way to parse the problem of how you know whether a field is standing still versus moving forward. In the interest of balance, here’s a plain spoken perspective that tilts in a more patient direction than the present post.
It’s quite possible the data mean something other than ABA being stuck in the past. For instance, has it maybe just developed quirky citation habits that make it appear we’re stuck in time? Consider: If you employ social validity measures, for instance, is it really necessary to cite Wolf (1978) as precedent? Or has social validity assessment become de rigeur in ABA to the extent that, without explicit justification, everyone who’s anyone understands its significance? If you employ functional behavioral assessment, do you really need to mention the precedent of Iwata et al. (1994)? Or does every applied behavior analyst now understand that it’s important to verify the function of target behaviors? Maybe, in areas like these, ABA has made significant progress since 1978/1994… but if that’s true, what are the precedents that need to be mentioned instead? And why aren’t we mentioning them more?
If ABA’s citation habits are atypical, I wonder why. Why is there such a compulsion to identify our newer work with 30+ year old classics? In a 2023 post I suggested that there are two reasons why scientific ideas might be embraced. The first, and laudable, reason is that they are what works. The second possibility is that they function as virtue signaling. Disciplines are in part a social institution, a tribe if you will, and the culture of a social group often includes practices that serve mainly to identify an individual as part of the group. My post asked how we would tell if we in behavior analysis we embrace some practice because it’s the best way of doing business versus because we care about inclusion in the group. The answer isn’t as straightforward as you might think, because virtue signaling behaviors often are accompanied by explanations of the incredible functions those behaviors supposedly serve. See my post for more on this.
So — What do you think? If you believe ABA indeed has become stuck, as the data shown here might suggest, why do you suppose we have failed to “move forward”? Is there something about the ABA verbal community’s contingencies of reinforcement that is responsible for this? And if so, what changes would be needed to yield a more adventurous research agenda?
But maybe you don’t perceive a problem. For instance, could it be that clinically-focused disciplines follow different rules of progress than those in the basic sciences? Or, if there are standard trajectories, do you believe ABA is actually “moving forward” with due haste, contrary to what the present data seem to show? If so, I have questions:
- What are the recent breakthroughs that you think have transformed ABA for the better? For the sake of argument, if we suddenly banned all reference to Baer et al. (1968), Stokes & Baer (1977), Wolf (1978), and Iwata et al. (1994), what sources would you cite when describing the heart and soul of contemporary ABA?
- If there are indeed dynamic recent breakthroughs in ABA, why do they not attract the same kind of citation attention as older “classics”? And, given that we’ve had decades to explore the implications of those classics, why do you think we feel a continued need to cite them to justify what, to behavior analysts, should by now be common knowledge?
Please use the Comments box to share your thoughts on these and related matters.
Author Note: This isn’t just a post about other people who seem stuck in the past. In writing the present offering it dawned on me that I can be guilty too. In previous posts, for instance, I have named-dropped Skinner quite a bit in the way Hayes was concerned about. And I’m honestly not sure why, because although Skinner might have been relevant to a lot of those posts in most cases he wasn’t a make-or-break frame of reference. The fact that I’m unsure why I do this suggests that whatever is driving our collective preoccupation with historical benchmarks in behavior analysis, it must be as subtle as it is pervasive.
THEME ART
