Learning and Practicing Skilled Performance
This a book by Francis Mechner, 101 pages in length, which can be downloaded. Click here for the Table of Contents.

Learning History and Resurgence Patterns                * NOW AVAILABLE *
This is an interim report of an experimental research program which has been in progress for several years and is being conducted by the staff of the Mechner Foundation.

B.  The Revealed Operant
The "revealed operant" is intended as a laboratory research model of any operant response. Its purpose is to permit the internal structure and properties of operants to be recorded and studied. See the CCBS Behavior Monograph The Revealed Operant: A Way to Study the Characteristics of Individual Occurrences of Operant Responses by Francis Mechner, with Commentaries by Donald M. Baer, M. Jackson Marr, John A. Nevin, and Thom Verhave.

C.  Presentation of a Presumed Reinforcer 
Chapter 9.0, of the monograph The Revealed Operant: A Way to Study the Characteristics of Individual Occurrences of Operant Responses is entitled "What Are the Effects of Reinforcer Presentations?" That chapter develops the thesis that the usual effect of a reinforcer is not to increase the strength of the preceding behavior, but rather to perpetuate its direction of change. 

D. Software for designing and programming revealed operant experiments
This software, developed by David A. Mechner, functions like a menu for the design of experiments that use the revealed operant. The experimenter can specify dozens of parameters for a wide range of experiments. The software, like all documents available on this website, can be downloaded.

E.  The Mechner Notation System
This notation system is used for specifying all type of behavioral contingencies. It has uses in behavior analysis, the specification of experimental procedures, analysis of social interaction dynamics, micro-economics, and law. The two principal publications that explain the Mechner Notation System are referenced in the Mechner list of publications. The Weingarten and Mechner article, which was published in a book that is now out of print, can be downloaded from this website.

F.  The "Power Measure" for assessing knowledge-based skills
This paper, entitled "Power of a Player" proposes a computerized method for measuring knowledge and skill in chess and the oriental strategy game Go. The power measure combines knowledge and the speed with which the knowledge can be marshaled.

G. Methodological Points for Behavioral Scientists
This paper discusses the status of hypothetical constructs, models, and explanatory fictions in science generally, and in psychology in particular. It explores possible reasons why the problem is particularly insidious in the behavioral sciences.

H. A New Approach to Programmed Instruction
Programmed instruction was defined in the early 1960s as using active response by the learner, immediate confirmation of correct responses, and successive approximations towards the knowledge to be learned. This paper, written in 1977, proposes some new and presumably more effective techniques of programmed instruction and the theoretical justification of those techniques.

I. The Solomon Lerner Project
This article describes Solomon Lerner, a Russian-born painter whose work received international acclaim during his lifetime. His work is now in danger of being forgotten. The Foundation is endeavoring to bring his work to the attention of the art world.