Professor of Psychology and Director of the Undergraduate ProgramUniversity of Maryland Baltimore County
An Honors University in Maryland
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
Professor of Psychology and Director of the Undergraduate Program
University of Maryland Baltimore County
An Honors University in Maryland
1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, MD 21250
My two central intellectual interests are psychology and talmud. The material below focusses on my interests in psychology.
Follow this link to Shimoff's Talmud page
My general approach to psychology is the experimental analysis of behavior, a perspective on behavior that focuses on the environmental causes of behavior. The overarching theme of it all is that causes of behavior are best sought in the history of th e individual and the species, and can be best revealed by careful experimental analysis.
Over the years, I have looked at such diverse issues as Pavlovian conditioning, reinforcement and punishment, and verbal behavior. I have worked with a broad range of species: rats, pigeons, monkeys, pre-school children, college students, and college professors; the focus is not on the species, but on the behavior.
My current interests involve complex visual discriminations and delay of reinforcement in pigeons, and complex learning in college students.
A parallel interest -- really the conjunction of my work in the laboratory and my classroom teaching, is the development of interactive software to give college students a sense of the fun, excitement, and pure thrill of getting real behavioral data, a nd to teach students what psychology is really all about -- the joy of finding out about behavior.
Some potentially useful links