John Moore
- Professor Emeritus, Psychological & Brain Sciences
Education
- Ph.D., University of California - San Diego, 1975
Courses Taught
- PSYCH 101 - Introduction to Psychology
- PSYCH 514 - Conditioning and Learning Seminar I
- PSYCH 551 - Learning and Motivation Theories
- PSYCH 724 - Proseminar in Behavior Analysis
- PSYCH 914 - Seminar in Learning--Stimulus Control
- PSYCH 919 - Seminar in Learning Theory--Classical Conditioning
Teaching Interests
Dr. John Moore teach courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. At the undergraduate level, he teaches Introductory Psychology as well as upper division courses in conditioning and learning. At the graduate level, he teaches basic and advanced courses in the history of psychology, behavior analysis, and conditioning and learning.
Research Interests
Dr. John Moore am an experimental psychologist with training in behavior analysis. His laboratory research interests are in the areas of operant conditioning and positive reinforcement. The students he supervises typically carry out projects with pigeons and operant conditioning chambers in Dr. Moore's laboratory for their master's theses and doctoral dissertations, although recently a student investigated the operant choice behavior of humans at a computer-controlled console for a dissertation.
Many of the research projects in his laboratory concern the molar vs. molecular question: Are the independent variables that control behavior better formulated in terms of large-scale/molar or small-scale/molecular relations? To investigate these questions Dr. Moore often uses a two-alternative choice procedure. One alternative is better than the other according to a molar measure, but the other alternative is better according to a molecular measure. The alternative that the subject prefers then guides our conclusions about which relations are more effective.
Another of Dr. Moore's interests is the historical, theoretical, and philosophical development of psychology. In this regard, he has published a variety of papers on the nature and history of behaviorism, as well as the relation between behaviorism and various other movements in philosophy, such as cognitive psychology. Many of these papers deal with traditional issues in the philosophy of science, but from the unique perspective of behavior analysis.