Concept
A. Charles Catania
Overview
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. 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, has edited or co-edited six books, and has written two textbooks on learning. Topics on which he has published include schedules of reinforcement, human verbal behavior, and the history of behavior analysis.
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. 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.
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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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Now you will say that, regardless of whether the driving force behind the analysis is called transference or suggestion, the danger still remains that our influence upon the patient may bring the objective certainty of our discoveries into doubt; and that what is an advantage in therapy is harmful in research. This is the objection that has most frequently been raised against psycho-analysis; and it must be admitted…
Sigmund Freud, Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
States what A. Charles Catania is.
Cato the philosopher was brother to Servilia, the mother of Brutus, and he it was whom of all the Romans his nephew most admired and studied to imitate, and he afterwards married his daughter Porcia. Of all the sects of the Greek philosophers, though there was none of which he had not been a hearer and in which he had not made some proficiency, yet he chiefly esteemed the Platonists; and, not much approving of the…
Plutarch, Plutarch
States what A. Charles Catania is.
On behaviourist lines, there is no important difference between proper names and what are called “abstract” or “generic” words. A child learns to use the word “cat”, which is general, just as he learns to use the word “Peter”, which is a proper name. But in actual fact “Peter” really covers a number of different occurrences, and is in a sense general. Peter may be near or far, walking or standing or sitting…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
States what A. Charles Catania is.
Related ideas
- Harvard University
- Emeritus
- Noam Chomsky
- Linguistics
- Psychology
- Fellow
- B. F. Skinner
- Behaviorism
- Verbal Behavior
- Columbia University
- New York University
Place in the tradition
Part of Behaviorism.