Control, prediction, order, and the joys of research.
JEAB's first decade featured control of individual behavior by operant contingencies, where the experimenter could interact with a subject in real time and obtain fairly immediate evidence of control, with the possibility of direct extension to applied settings. In subsequent decades, emphasis shifted toward long-term parametric studies with quantitative analyses of individual and group data. As a result, the reinforcers for the experimenter shifted from controlling behavior to uncovering and describing order, often using mathematical expressions. The same sorts of reinforcers are available for quantitative descriptions of aggregate behavioral data that may inform public policy.