SABA Experimental Fellowship Recipients
2005: Christopher A. Podlesnik, Utah State University
Originally from Latrobe, PA, Christopher A. Podlesnik received a B.A. in psychology and a minor in philosophy from West Virginia University. Chris currently is a graduate student and has his M.A. in the experimental analysis of behavior at Utah State University and is working with his supervisor, Timothy A. Shahan.
Chris became interested in the study of behavior while working with Philip N. Chase at West Virginia University. His undergraduate honors thesis examined the effects of instructions on the persistence of behavior. This was the first time the effects of instructions on behavior had been examined using disruption techniques borrowed from the literature on behavioral momentum theory. The results from this study have been accepted for publication in The Psychological Record.
After time off from school working at a psychiatric hospital, Chris continued pursuing his interests in underlying behavioral processes at Utah State University. His main interests involve testing the boundaries of behavioral momentum theory and the matching law. Chris is currently collaborating on projects that examine how primary reinforcement variables affect response recovery, attending to stimuli, and the allocation and persistence of behavior maintained by conditioned reinforcement. Currently, Chris’s main interests involve how different response-reinforcer contingencies affect the persistence of behavior independently of differences in reinforcement variables.
Similar methods are used to assess behavioral momentum theory in the experimental analysis of behavior and to assess underlying associations between environmental events by researchers in other experimental psychologies. Such similarities recently have led Chris to begin examining those similarities at conceptual, theoretical, and empirical levels. Chris hopes to continue exploring his interests in basic behavioral processes throughout his time at USU and to ultimately land a career teaching and conducting research within academia.
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