Allen Neuringer is a noted American psychologist. He is a highly published and well recognized scientist in the field of the experimental analysis of behavior pioneered by B.F. Skinner. As of June 2008, Dr. Neuringer is retiring from being a professor of psychology at Reed College. His areas of research include human volition studies, the generation of randomness in organisms, self-experimentation, and many other areas.
He has served on National Institute of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) committees, received numerous awards and grants for his research, and has published in dozens of journals. He received his B.A. at Columbia College and his Ph. D at Harvard University.
Neuringer's work focused on the production of "pure randomness" in human and other organismic behavior, something that was widely considered impossible. Matching and reinforcing human and animal responses to a random number generator he was able to have humans and other organisms behave "randomly".
Dr. Neuringer has suggested that behavior analysis as a field might benefit from using experimental designs that explicitly and directly attempted to meliorate the condition of an experimental subject. He envisaged placing practical every-day goals as the objective of experiments and, especially, self-experiments.
He has been an editor or assistant editor on four journals, and currently is an editor for the widely cited and influential Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB). He has been a reviewer on 23 journals, including Science and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis.
Dr. Neuringer's work has received numerous NSF/NIMH grants and awards.
Neuringer's faculty web page at Reed College
Neuringer's CV