A. Charles Catania

Anthony Charles Catania
BornJune 22, 1936
New York, NY, United States
Children2, including Kenneth C. Catania
AwardsABAI Distinguished Service to Behavior Analysis Award; Murray Sidman Award for Enduring Contribution to Applied Behavior Analysis; Victor G. Laties Award for Lifetime Service; SEAB Don F. Hake Award for Translational Research
Scientific career
FieldsBehavior analysis

Anthony Charles Catania (born June 22, 1936) is an American researcher in behavior analysis known for his theoretical, experimental, and applied work. He is an Emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he taught and conducted research for 35 years prior to his retirement in 2008. He received a B.A. (1957) and M.A. (1958) at Columbia University in Psychology.[1] He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at Harvard University in 1961. He remained at Harvard to conduct research as a postdoctoral researcher in B. F. Skinner's laboratory. Prior to his career at UMBC, he held a faculty position for nearly a decade at New York University (NYU).

He studies the behavior of both human and nonhuman animals. He has written over 200 journal articles and book chapters,[2] has edited or co-edited six books,[3][4][5][6] and has written two textbooks[7][8] on learning. Topics on which he has published include schedules of reinforcement,[9] human verbal behavior,[10] and the history of behavior analysis.[11][12]

Related to his professional interests in learning and verbal behavior, since 2022 Catania has participated in a published series of one-on-one conversations with linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky.[13][14] Topics discussed include the history of cognitive science and scientific and philosophical disputes concerning verbal behavior.

At UMBC, Catania founded the graduate-level (MA) program in Applied Behavior Analysis.[15]

Catania was the chief editor at the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (1966–69) and served as an associate editor at several journals, including Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Behaviorism, and the European Journal of Behavior Analysis. He served as President of the Maryland Association for Behavior Analysis. He twice served as President of the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (SEAB; from 1966-1967 and 1981–83) and as President of the Association for Behavior Analysis [now Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI)], from 1981 to 1984. He is a Fellow of Divisions 3, 6, 25, and 28 of the American Psychological Association (APA) and served as President of Division 25 from 1996 to 1998.

He resides in Columbia, Maryland.

  1. ^ "Bookshelf | Columbia College Today". www.college.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-14.
  2. ^ "A Charles Catania - Google Scholar". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  3. ^ "The selection of behavior: The operant behaviorism of BF Skinner". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  4. ^ "Sloan Publishing - At My Own Pace". www.sloanpublishing.com. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  5. ^ "Variations and selections: An anthology of reviews from the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  6. ^ "Contemporary research in operant behavior". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  7. ^ "Sloan Publishing - ug_catania". www.sloanpublishing.com. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  8. ^ "Sloan Publishing - catania5". www.sloanpublishing.com. Retrieved 2020-07-15.
  9. ^ Catania, A. Charles; Reynolds, G. S. (1968). "A Quantitative Analysis of the Responding Maintained by Interval Schedules of Reinforcement1". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 11 (3S2): 327–383. doi:10.1901/jeab.1968.11-s327. ISSN 1938-3711. PMC 1338497. PMID 5672248.
  10. ^ Catania, A. Charles; Matthews, Byron A.; Shimoff, Eliot (1982). "Instructed Versus Shaped Human Verbal Behavior: Interactions with Nonverbal Responding". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 38 (3): 233–248. doi:10.1901/jeab.1982.38-233. ISSN 1938-3711. PMC 1347864. PMID 16812300.
  11. ^ Catania, A. Charles (2002). "The Watershed Years of 1958–1962 in the Harvard Pigeon Lab". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 77 (3): 327–345. doi:10.1901/jeab.2002.77-327. ISSN 1938-3711. PMC 1284866. PMID 12083685.
  12. ^ Catania, A. Charles (2015-06-10). "Behavior Analysis as a Biological Science: An Alternate History". European Journal of Behavior Analysis. 15: 25–31. doi:10.1080/15021149.2014.11434471. S2CID 218769766.
  13. ^ LANGUAGE and VERBAL BEHAVIOR I with NOAM CHOMSKY and CHARLES CATANIA ~ enGrama #100, retrieved 2023-07-20
  14. ^ LANGUAGE and VERBAL BEHAVIOR II with NOAM CHOMSKY and CHARLES CATANIA ~ enGrama #110, retrieved 2023-07-20
  15. ^ "M.A. in Human Services Psychology: Applied Behavior Analysis". psychology.umbc.edu. Retrieved 2023-07-20.