Sidney W. and Janet R. Bijou Fellowship Recipients
2003: Marleen Adema, University of Wales, Bangor
Marleen Adema is a linguist from The Netherlands “brought up” scientifically in an environment of Chomskyan linguistics, Functional Grammar and cognitive psychology. During her studies at the University of Amsterdam she more and more developed an interest in behaviorism and behavior analysis, much to the surprise of her lecturers. She specialized in first language acquisition, and also took classes in psychology and philosophy. Philosophy classes in high school had taught her that behavior analysis was a serious option in science. However, it was hardly treated as such during lectures in either psychology or linguistics at University. All the misunderstandings that surround behaviorism and behavior analysis attracted her attention and made her want to study the primary sources. She heard the claim ‘behaviorism is dead’ often enough to believe it, and was delighted to discover one day in the library that behavior analysis was still being practiced. She studied the ‘discussion’ between Skinner and Chomsky, and for her Master's thesis she compared radical behaviorism and connectionism especially in the field of the learning of verbal behavior.
After graduation for her Masters in December 1999 there was no opportunity to do a PhD in behavior analysis in The Netherlands. Attending several international behavior analytic conferences in the years after graduation made for exciting experiences and the end of isolation as a behaviorist. It also opened up new possibilities.
Marleen Adema is currently taking an MSc course in Research Methods in Psychology at the School of Psychology of the University of Wales, in Bangor (UK), where a group of behavior analysts led by Prof. Fergus Lowe and Dr. Pauline Horne is working in several areas of research. At Bangor, Marleen specializes in Learning, Language and Development. She is specifically interested in a combination of theoretical and experimental work within behavior analysis and language development or, more generally, child development. The research project for her MSc focuses on the development of imitation. For her PhD, starting in September of this year, she will study child development in further detail.
Other 2003 Recipients:
Caio Miguel, Western Michigan University
Back to Bijou Fellowship Recipients