A Legacy of Growth: Human Operant Research in the Psychological Record, 1980-1999 Simon Dymond

Laboratory analyses of human behavior are crucial for evaluating the interspecies generality of operant principles, and The Psychological Record provided early leadership in publishing human operant articles. To assess the journal's modern status in this research area, we determined the prevalence of human operant studies in The Psychological Record for the years 1980 through 1999. The number of these studies increased consistently across the census period. During the 1990s, the journal published more human operant studies overall, and more studies in 3 of 5 content areas, than the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, which usually is regarded as the natural home for this type of research. These data indicate that The Psychological Record continues to play an important role in the development of a human laboratory tradition in operant psychology.