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In a replication and extension of Conger and Killeen's (1974) widely cited demonstration of matching in conversations, we evaluated nine participants' allocation of speech and gaze to two conversational partners. German speakers participated in two 90-min sessions in which confederates uttered approval on independent variable-interval schedules. In one of the sessions, confederates uttered approval contingent upon and contiguous with eye contact whereas in the other session approval was uttered independent of the participant's gaze. Several measures of participants' verbal behavior were taken, including relative duration and rate of speech and gaze. These were compared to confederates' relative rate of approval and relative duration and rate of talk. The generalized matching equation was fitted to the various relations between participants' behavior and confederates' behavior. Conger and Killeen's results were not replicated; participants' response allocation did not show a systematic relation to the confederates' relative rate of approval. The strongest relations were to overall talk, rather than approval. In both conditions, the participant talked more to the confederate who talked less-inverse or antimatching. Participants' gaze showed the same inverse relation to the confederates' talk. Requiring gaze to be directed toward a confederate for delivery of approval made no difference in the results. The absence of a difference combined with prior research suggests that matching or antimatching in conversations is more likely due to induction than to reinforcement.

The behavioral phenotype of an organism results from selective processes acting on variation in behavioral traits during ontogeny (during life span) and phylogeny (across generations). Different adaptive processes can be categorized as environment-phenotype feedback loops. In this cross-disciplinary approach, we discuss the interaction of ontogenetic selective processes, traditionally studied by behavior analysts, and phylogenetic selection processes, traditionally studied by biologists. We elaborate upon the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by addressing the connection between selection as a domain-general process and phenomena such as classical and operant conditioning, imprinting, adjunctive behavior, and gene-culture coevolution. Selection is in this context understood as a dynamic iterative feedback loop producing a phenotype beyond the strict morphotype. The extended phenotype is related to the concept of niche construction in which the behavior of organisms shapes their environment, which again selects the behavior of the organisms in an iterative process. A discussion of interacting environmental factors selecting human food choice both during phylogeny and ontogeny exemplifies the generality of selection processes acting on behavior.

The place of the concept of response strength in a natural science of behavior has been the subject of much debate. This article reconsiders the concept of response strength for reasons linked to the foundations of a natural science of behavior. The notion of response strength is implicit in many radical behaviorists’ work. Palmer (2009) makes it explicit by applying the response strength concept to three levels: (1) overt behavior, (2) covert behavior, and (3) latent or potential behavior. We argue that the concept of response strength is superfluous in general, and an explication of the notion of giving causal status to nonobservable events like latent behavior or response strength is harmful to a scientific endeavor. Interpreting EEG recordings as indicators of changes in response strength runs the risk of reducing behavior to underlying mechanisms, regardless of whether such suggestions are accompanied by behavioral observations. Many radical behaviorists understand behavior as a discrete unit, inviting conceptual mistakes reflected in the notion of response strength. A molar view is suggested as an alternative that accounts for the temporally extended nature of behavior and avoids the perils of a response-strength based approach.