John E. R. Staddon

James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience
Education & Training
Ph.D., Harvard University 1964
Overview
Until my retirement in 2007, my laboratory did experimental research on learning and adaptive behavior, mostly with animals: pigeons, rats, fish, parakeets. We were particularly interested in timing and memory, feeding regulation, habituation and the ways in which pigeons and rats adapt to reward schedules. The aim is to arrive at simple models for learning that can help to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. I continue to do theoretical and historical work on the power law in psychophysics, operant learning, timing and memory, habituation and feeding regulation. I have applied some of these ideas to economics and financial markets and social issues such as traffic control (Distracting Miss Daisy, The Atlantic, 2008) and smoking (Unlucky Strike, Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking, with David Hockney, UBP, 2013). A second edition of Adaptive Behavior and Learning (Cambridge UP) was published in 2016. Most recently I have Scientific Method: How Science Works, Fails to Work, and Pretends to Work. to be published by Routledge in December.
Location
Contact
Staddon, JER. "Simply Too Many Notes." The Behavior Analyst 40.1 (June 2017): 101-106. Full Text Open Access Copy
Staddon, J. "Theoretical Behaviorism, Economic Theory, and Choice." History of Political Economy 48.suppl 1 (2016): 316-331. Full Text Open Access Copy
Cerutti, DT, Jozefowiez, J, and Staddon, JER. "Rapid, accurate time estimation in zebrafish (Danio rerio)." BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES 99 (October 2013): 21-25. Full Text Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. "Faith, Fact, and Behaviorism." BEHAVIOR ANALYST 36.2 (2013): 229-238. Full Text Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER, MacPhail, RC, and Padilla, S. "THE DYNAMICS OF SUCCESSIVE INDUCTION IN LARVAL ZEBRAFISH." JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR 94.2 (September 2010): 261-266. Full Text Open Access Copy
Jozefowiez, J, McDowell, J, and Staddon, JER. "CHOICE STUDIES IN TRANSITION." JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR 94.2 (September 2010): 159-160. Full Text Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. "Faith and goodness: A reply to Hocutt." Behavior and Philosophy 37 (December 1, 2009): 181-185.
Jozefowiez, J, Staddon, JER, and Cerutti, DT. "The Behavioral Economics of Choice and Interval Timing." PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW 116.3 (July 2009): 519-539. Full Text
John Staddon, . "Distracting Miss Daisy." The Atlantic (July 2008): 102-104. (Academic Article)
John Staddon, . "Gridlock: Research, teaching, curriculum, and the faculty in the modern university.Review of Whatever Happened to the Faculty? Drift and Decision in Higher Education, by Mary Burgan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006." Academic Questions 20 (2008): 370-381. (Academic Article)
Pages
Staddon, JER. "Learning as adaptation." Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes: Volume 2: Conditioning and Behavior Theory. January 1, 2014. 37-98. Full Text
Jozefowiez, J, Machado, A, and Staddon, JER. "Cognitive versus associative decision rules in timing." Subjective Time: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Temporality. January 1, 2014. 355-377.
Staddon, JER. "Optimality Analyses of Operant Behavior and their Relation to Optimal Foraging." Limits to Action: The Allocation of Individual Behavior. New York: Academic Press, 1980. 101-141. (Chapter) Open Access Copy
Staddon, J. Scientific method: How science works, fails to work, and pretends to work. December 1, 2017. Full Text Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. Adaptive Behavior and Learning. Cambridge University Press, February 29, 2016. Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. The New Behaviorism. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, 2014. (Monograph)
Staddon, J. The new behaviorism, second edition. January 1, 2014. Full Text
Staddon, JER. The Malign Hand of the Markets. McGraw-Hill, 2012. (Monograph)
Staddon, JER. Unlucky Strike: Private Health and the Science, Law and Politics of Smoking. Buckingham, UK: University of Buckingham Press.. (Monograph)
Staddon, JER. Scientific Method.. (Monograph) Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. Scientific Method.. (Monograph) Open Access Copy
Staddon, JER. "Is animal learning optimal?." 2007. Full Text
Staddon, JER. "Humanism and Skinner's radical behaviorism." 2003.
Cerutti, DL, Chelaru, IM, and Staddon, JER. "Detecting mine-like targets: Synergistic effects of correlated and uncorrelated sensor channels." 2001. Full Text
Cerutti, DT, Chelaru, IM, and Staddon, JER. "Detecting hidden targets: A procedure for studying performance in a mine-detection-like task." 2000. Full Text
Staddon, JER. "The dynamics of memory in animal learning." 1998.
Staddon, JER, and Chelaru, IM. "A diffusion-based guidance system for autonomous agents." 1998. Full Text
Staddon, JER. "Why behaviorism needs internal states." 1997.
DRAGOI, V, and STADDON, JER. "A COMPETITIVE NEURAL-NETWORK MODEL FOR THE PROCESS OF RECURRENT CHOICE." 1994.
STADDON, JER. "A NOTE ON RATE-SENSITIVE HABITUATION." 1993.
Staddon, JER. "Reinforcement learning: Reverse-engineering the behavior of pigeons." December 1, 1992.