Episode 350: Dr. Claire St Peter and Dr. Carol Pilgrim Part 2: Going Beyond the Basics of Stimulus Control

This is part two of our conversation with Dr Claire St Peter from the University of West Virginia where she is currently the Chair of the Department of Psychology, and Dr Carol Pilgrim, a Professor Emerit in the Psychology Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Dr Pilgrim has received many honors throughout her career including the North Carolina Board of Governors Teaching Excellence Award, the Faculty Scholarship Award, the Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, the ABAI Student Committee Outstanding Mentor Award in 2006, and the ABAI Distinguished Service to Behavior Analysis award in 2017.

Her research contributions include both basic and applied behavior analysis, with an emphasis in human operant behavior and relational stimulus control.

Our subject is for this podcast is stimulus control. In Part 1 Dr. Pilgrim started us out with definitions and an introduction to the subject. She shared the story of Clever Hans, a horse who was said to be able to do complicated math problems. What he really could do was read the very subtle cues his handler and others were giving that told him when he had reached the right answer.

In part two we take a deeper into the subject of stimulus control, including a discussion of relational stimulus control.