Episode 297 - Matching Law

ABA Inside Track

Robert Parry-Cruwys

Behavioralscience, Education, Appliedbehavioranalysis, Autism, Social Sciences, Aba, Science, Specialeducation

4.6 • 623 Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite being a cornerstone of the science of behavior, we’ve gone nearly 300 episodes without ever really delving into the details of the matching law. Maybe it’s because it involves too many equations. Maybe it’s because a lot of the research seems to focus exclusively on choice in basketball shots. In any case we’re getting every up to speed on the basics of the matching law and its importance in studying choice. Plus, Rob has spicy hot takes. Sweet sassy mo-lassy!

This episode is available for 1.0 LEARNING CEU.

Articles discussed this episode:

Reed, D.D. & Kaplan, B.A. (2011). The matching law: A tutorial for practitioners. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 4, 15-24. doi: 10.1007/BF03391780

Alferink, L.A., Critchfield, T.S., Hitt, J.L., & Higgins, W.J. (2009). Generality of the matching law as a descriptor of shot selection in basketball. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 42, 595-608. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2009.42-595

Morris, S.L. & Vollmer, T.R. (2022). The matching law provides a quantitative description of social time allocation in children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55, 934-957. doi: 10.1002/jaba.934

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Welcome to ABA Inside Track, the podcast. That's like reading in your car, but safer.
0:19.4	I'm your host, Robert Robert Perry Cruz and with me as
0:21.1	always are my fabulous co-hosts. Hello Rob. It's me, Diana Perry Cruz. You might recognize me from
0:29.1	living here with you in your house. Yes. And it's me, Jackie, who does not live here and I just
0:36.1	sneaking through the window every week.
0:38.7	And then you just find me sitting here.
0:41.1	We would like to win the door, you know.
0:42.6	No, I don't want that.
0:43.7	I know.
0:44.2	Just wait down here.
0:44.8	I want to be elfish and sneak in through the window.
0:48.8	Oh, boy.
0:50.1	Well.
0:52.0	Oh, boy.
0:52.8	We could sing Let the Ether Etheridge come to my window
0:55.9	no we're not going to do that
0:59.1	but Rob but we could but we could and we could look at the
1:02.1	alternative behaviors if I came through the window
1:04.6	and then every time I came to the window
1:07.3	Diana came in and sang Melissa Etheridge with me
1:09.9	versus if I came in through the door and I just came in through the door and I really just sing a three doors down song.
1:16.4	Yeah. So I might allocate my responding differently based on the rate of reinforcement right there.
	...

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