Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies with Animals

10/25/2025

A few ORCA members presented their research at UNT's Behavior Analysis Research Colloquium (BARC) on Friday! Trinity Beaty discussed her Silent Shelter thesis project, Sarah Owen talked about the Transfer of Stimulus Control: Revisiting the Delayed-Cue Procedure, and Maia Huff-Owen shared her preliminary research on Extinction and Variability: Function, Cause or Context?

All three presentations prompted excellent questions and discussion from the audience.

Thanks to Maia, Trinity and Sarah for sharing their research, and of course to ORCA advisor Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz!

10/04/2024

If you will be at the LAABA conference in New Orleans this week, be sure to check out this thought provoking symposium on assent with our amazing M.S. student Hannah McGee presenting with colleagues!

12/02/2023

ORCA students are doing AMAZING things! ORCA Student Group President Hannah McGee was interviewed for the Animal Training Academy podcast with host Ryan Cartlidge!

Hannah and Ryan have an in-depth and informative discussion of assent, a topic Hannah has studied extensively as part of her thesis work under the guidance of Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz.

We hope Hannah's podcast sparks some ideas for how to better address assent in training programs. Great work, Hannah!!

Congrats to Behavior Explorer employee Hannah McGee who was featured in Episode 213 of the Animal Training Academy podcast.

In the episode, host Ryan Cartlidge interviews Hannah about the topic of assent.

Assent is a popular topic these days when working with both human and animal learners. Do our learners REALLY want to participate in our teaching sessions? How can we know?

In the episode, Ryan and Hannah discuss the differences between assent and consent, how we can inadvertently be coercive even when teaching with positive reinforcement, and how understanding the idea of “degrees of freedom” can help us improve our teaching sessions.

I hope you’ll check out the episode!

You can find it on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or Spotify, or you can listen directly on the Animal Training Academy website.

12/02/2023

The ORCA Lab had an awesome guest join us last month!! Barbara Heidenreich visited us before Thanksgiving to talk to the students about emotions as contingency descriptors and how we can use this to improve interventions with animals.

We loved having her with us! Thank you for such a great conversation, Barbara!

11/08/2023

Heads up! Want to join ORCA?

If you've ever thought about behavior analysis graduate school (and working with Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz at UNT), check out this event.

The Behavior Analysis Department at the University of North Texas will be hosting a Zoom open house this evening, which will be all about the department's Master of Science program.

Perhaps we are a little biased, but UNT has an excellent program. :) :) :)

The photo description has more details about the event and about how to register.

We are hosting a virtual open house on Wednesday, November 8th at 6:30 PM CST. Please register if you’d like to learn about our Master of Science in Behavior Analysis degree. Faculty will give an overview of our program and be available to answer questions. Facebook doesn’t like to post PDFs, so the link is not clickable in the picture below. Please use this link- https://unt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kdmuRAVhTBOMPJ2cWVBIdQ #/registration

10/25/2023

Mark your calendars for THIS FRIDAY!!!

ORCA Student Group President and 3rd year MS student Hannah McGee and Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, Ph.D. will be presenting their amazing work on assent at the Behavior Analysis Research Colloquium (BARC) on Friday, October 27th at 3:00 - 5:00PM CST!!

The lecture will be available in person on the UNT campus and via Zoom here: https://unt.zoom.us/my/behavioranalysis

We hope you will be able to join us as Hannah and Jesús discuss their assent work with rats. Assent is a very hot topic in behavior analysis and animal training alike, you won't want to miss what Hannah and Jesús have to say about it!!

10/11/2023

We had a familiar face join us for our meeting today! UNT alum Morgan Katz presented her work with the MSPCA-Angell adoption centers in Massachusetts, including how they design adoption programs "to best match the behavioral needs of the animals in our care with the environment, lifestyle, and expectations of the families looking to adopt", and how the centers "layer in behavior support for both the humans and the animal before, during, and after adoption".

We were so happy to catch up with Morgan and to hear about the work she is doing. Thank you, Morgan!

10/10/2023

Last month, our ORCA student group went on an outing to the Rhythms at the River Walk Duck Derby in Flower Mound, TX! They enjoyed food trucks, live music, and other activities including a race of 30,000 rubber ducks down the river. Take a peek at the fun the students, and their unofficial mascot, the adorable border collie Ponyboy, had at the race!

02/13/2023

01/10/2023

Recently, several of our ORCA students have been practicing their training skills with chickens! Training chickens is a fun way to sharpen your animal training skills.

This photo is from yesterday's training session. The students worked with several roosters and hens. The students and birds practiced target training, targeting through a tunnel, and reinforcement systems.

Thanks to Paula and Tangled Tails Ranch for providing the ORCA students with this opportunity!

12/14/2022

We have had the privilege of hosting several guest speakers recently.

A couple of weeks ago, Emily Strong gave us an awesome presentation. We like to let the speaker choose to talk about whatever is on their mind.

Emily chose to talk about the importance of environmental enrichment. She gave us a deep-dive into what enrichment means to her, and the different strategies she uses in practice. We had a lot of good questions and conversations during the meeting.

Thank you so much Emily for sharing your thoughts and time with us!