Multiplicity
Menu

Papers

Lines of work across behavior, methods, neuroscience, and AI.

This page is less a complete academic archive than a map of the main threads running through the work: applied behavior analysis and measurement, decision-making, neuroscience and motor control, and more recent thinking about AI in ABA. Some of the papers are practical methods pieces. Others are experimental. The common interest is how people and systems behave under real constraints, and how that behavior can be measured clearly enough to make better decisions.

Applied behavior analysis and measurement

Work on tools, validity, and usable methods

One line of work here is explicitly practical: graphing, measurement, and the integrity of the tools people use to make decisions in applied settings. The graphing paper and software project were aimed at making single-case data easier to produce cleanly and consistently. The discounting work, by contrast, asked whether a common measure could be intentionally manipulated and what that meant for interpretation.

  • Formative graphing with a Microsoft Excel 2013 template. A practical methods paper on graphing and measurement infrastructure in behavior analysis. Cole, D. M., & Witts, B. N. (2015). Behavior Analysis: Research and Practice, 15(3-4), 171-186. https://doi.org/10.1037/bar0000021 Article Project page
  • Assessing susceptibility of a temporal discounting task to faking. Research on whether a widely used measure can be deliberately distorted, with direct implications for assessment validity. Cole, D. M., Rung, J. M., & Madden, G. J. (2019). Journal of Clinical Psychology, 75(10), 1959-1974. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22831 Article Data set
  • Faking discounting rates. The associated public data release for the discounting work. Rung, J. M., Cole, D. M., & Madden, G. (2018, April 30). Faking discounting rates [Data set]. Retrieved from https://osf.io/mnsxh

Neuroscience, balance, and motor control

Experimental work on preparation, inhibition, and response variability

Another major thread is experimental neuroscience and motor control. These papers sit closer to laboratory and human-subjects research, but the underlying concern is familiar: how organisms prepare, inhibit, or reorganize action when conditions change quickly.

  • Motor preparation for compensatory reach-to-grasp responses when viewing a wall-mounted safety handle. A study of anticipatory motor preparation in balance-relevant environments. Bolton, D. A. E., Cole, D. M., Butler, B., Mansour, M., Schwartz, S., McDannald, D. W., and Rydalch, G. (2019). Cortex, 117, 135-146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.03.001 Article Data set
  • Staying upright by shutting down? Work on balance recovery and global motor suppression under reactive conditions. Goode, C., Cole, D. M., & Bolton, D. A. E. (2019). Gait & Posture, 70, 260-263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2019.03.018 Article
  • Neuronal response variability as a product of divisive normalization. A more theoretical neuroscience paper with implications for how variability is modeled at larger scales. Ruddy, K. L., Cole, D. M., Simon, C., & Bächinger, M. (2020). HRB Open Research, 3(34). https://doi.org/10.12688/hrbopenres.13062.1 Article

AI in ABA

Conceptual, ethical, and practical questions before the hype settles

The newest thread is not yet a journal-publication trail. It is a developing body of presentations and operating questions about how AI should be understood inside ABA and service organizations. The emphasis here is not on selling novelty. It is on tracing what AI actually is, where the ethical fault lines are, and what a field should think through before tool adoption outruns judgment.

That framing came through clearly in the 2024 Best of ABA talk in Cagnes-sur-Mer, which focused on the evolution and impact of AI in ABA and the conceptual, ethical, and practical issues surrounding it. The planned Brno panel extended the same line of work into a broader discussion format, even though that session was ultimately cancelled due to illness.

  • Inevitable: Opportunities and ethical challenges of artificial intelligence in ABA. Best of ABA Conference, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, 2024.
  • AI in ABA: Conceptual foundations, ethical dilemmas, and practical applications. Planned panel for the 11th Conference of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis, Brno, 2024. Cancelled due to illness.

Other publication

Public-facing and cross-disciplinary writing

Not all of the published work fits neatly into a single academic lane. Some pieces sit closer to public scientific culture, collaboration, and institutional life than to a narrow research specialty.

  • Trying to Manage. A collaborative public-facing piece in Science that sits outside the more technical research arc but still reflects a continuing interest in scientific work, institutions, and coordination. Steinhauff, D., Ellwanger, J. H., Lewinska, M., Sanganyado, E., Ji, Y., Karawdeniya, B. I., Bochatay, N., Moore, E. B., Coulibaly, A., Ibrahim, S., Jansen, D. S., James, J. I., Cole, D. M., Lipkin, A., Adamowicz, B. M., Cohen, C. M., Fatehi, S., Holmstrom, M. H., & Li, R. (2019). Science, 366(6461), 28-30. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz5828