Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior: The first thirty years (1957-1987).
SEAB created the journals that now feed every evidence-based practice you use with adults who have ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The author looked back at the first thirty years of the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
He traced how SEAB started its two journals in 1957 because mainstream editors kept rejecting operant studies.
The piece is a story, not an experiment, told through meeting notes, editorials, and submission counts.
What they found
By 1987 SEAB had published thousands of articles and turned the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis into the go-to place for real-world interventions.
The group proved that when researchers own the press, new fields like ID services can grow fast.
How this fits with other research
Later studies on adults with ID rest on this foundation. Lin et al. (2011) used SEAB outlets to warn that early aging in ID is ignored by policy makers.
Prigge et al. (2013) showed mild-ID hospital stays doubled in length, the kind of data you now read in JEAB spin-off journals.
Matson et al. (2013) tested Active Mentoring for older adults with ID and got more activity engagement, a direct child of the applied journal SEAB birthed.
Together the papers form a timeline: SEAB opened the door, then researchers walked through with hard numbers and fixes.
Why it matters
If you serve adults with ID, remember your evidence base exists because early behavior analysts refused to stay locked out. When you read long-stay warnings or try Active Mentoring, you are using tools made possible by SEAB. Push your own data into the same journals; the pipeline still works.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In the early and mid-1950s, the group of psychologists who had been attracted to the study of operant conditioning found that the journals that seemed most appropriate as out- lets for their work were not hospitable toward it. Both the Journal ofExperimental Psychology and the Journal of Comparative and Physiolog- ical Psychology did publish studies by some of the most creative contributors to the new field. But, by and large, few members of their edi- torial boards had much sympathy toward an approach that stressed the behavior of indi- vidual organisms and eschewed formal design and hypothesis testing, both hallmarks of most of the work being published in these journals. By the beginning of 1957, this unhappiness had become so intense that a group met at the annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) and decided to start a new journal. This they did, the Journal of the Ex- perimental Analysis of Behavior UEAB) first appearing in early 1958. Ten years later, heartened by the success of their first venture into publishing, they founded a second journal, the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis UABA). In 1957, when the first journal was discussed, the group decided to assume complete responsibility for the business as well as the editorial aspects of the enterprise. Instead of turning to a professional publisher, they incorporated the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (SEAB), with the Board of Editors of JEAB serving as the Board of Directors of SEAB.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1987 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1987.48-495