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Experimental Analysis of Behavior Commons

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Psychiatry and Psychology

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Experimental Analysis of Behavior

How The Rat Turned White, Kenneth J. Shapiro Dec 2015

How The Rat Turned White, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD

This is the first in a three-part series on the use of animals in psychological research. In it, I describe how animals got into laboratories in the first place, and their purpose and life there. In the second, I will describe animal model research, the strategy whereby psychologists' develop nonhuman animal models to study human psychopathology. In the concluding piece, I will present a critique of this enterprise, using original data I gathered. The three articles are based on a forthcoming book, Animal Models of Human Psychology: Science, Ethics, and Policy.


A Rodent For Your Thoughts: The Animal Model Strategy In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro Dec 2015

A Rodent For Your Thoughts: The Animal Model Strategy In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD

In this second of three essays, I describe how the early modern psychologists adopted the strategy of further transforming rats and other species into models of human thought, feeling, and behavior, and, particularly, of disorders of these - in effect taking "a rodent for your thoughts." In the third essay I will provide a critique and empirically-based evaluation of animal model research. Here I indicate what the model strategy in the biomedical sciences, properly understand, is intended to achieve and how, by contrast, particular models are presented to the public and funding agencies. Finally, I describe how they are utilized …


Psychology's Use Of Animals: Current Practices And Attitudes, Kenneth J. Shapiro Dec 2015

Psychology's Use Of Animals: Current Practices And Attitudes, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD

In this chapter, I present a psychology primer for the uninitiated, with special emphasis on psychology's uses of animals. After sketching the scope of the field generally, I review available data on present numbers and species of animals used in psychological research, level of suffering induced and current trends. I also provide several concrete examples of psychological research involving animals. Finally, the chapter concludes with a presentation of attitudes of psychologists toward animals and these practices.


The Ingrown World Of Animal Model Research In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro Dec 2015

The Ingrown World Of Animal Model Research In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro

Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD

In the previous essay, I described the proper function of models in science as heuristic, as a way of generating hypotheses about the actual object of study. Turning to animal models in psychology, I offered a general characterization of that enterprise using sham feeding, an animal model of the eating disorder called bulimia, as an example. In this final of three essays, I offer an evaluation of this animal model strategy that largely employs the tools of social science. I close with a recommendation and a prediction.