Dr. Stephanie Jones

Areas of Expertise

• Effective behavior-analytic staff training strategies, interactions between staff behavior and client behavior (i.e., effects of fidelity errors during practice), laboratory examinations of clinical challenges, enhancing effectiveness of behavior-analytic treatments

Education

• B.A. in psychology, Rollins College (2016)
• M.S. in psychology, West Virginia University (2019)
• Ph.D. in psychology, West Virginia University (2021) 

View My CV

What's My Why?

When I was a teenager, I volunteered in respite care settings to support individuals with disabilities or behavioral challenges. Through this work, I learned that individuals with behavioral challenges often have difficulties finding effective care, partially due to a lack of qualified professionals. My teaching and research focus on addressing this long-standing resource gap in behavioral health with a focus on preparing my students to adapt their future practice based on new scientific discoveries so that their clients are always receiving the best possible treatment. I teach my students to adhere to the scientist-practitioner model through engagement in clinical and laboratory research activities, experiential learning in clinical settings, and application of evidence-based teaching practices in the classroom.

Professional Experience

My primary research focuses on effects of implementer errors that occur during well-established behavioral treatments. To meet this aim, I conduct laboratory and applied research with the aim of supporting development of robust behavioral interventions. I started teaching at Salve in 2021 and began the Translational Research and Applied Intervention Lab (TRAIL) in 2024. Through TRAIL, I support research engagement of students at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral training levels. I publish in and review for several peer-reviewed behavior analytic journals, such as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and Education and Treatment of Children.

Selected Publications

Jones, S. H., & St. Peter, C. C. (2022). Nominally acceptable integrity failures negatively affect interventions involving intermittent reinforcement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 55(4), 1109-1123. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.944

Jones, S. H., St. Peter, C. C., & Williams, C. (2023). Effects of commission and omission errors on the efficacy of noncontingent reinforcement. Education and Treatment of Children, https://doi.org/10.1007/s43494-023-00096-8

Morris, C., Jones, S. H., & Oliveria, J. H.* (2024). A practitioner’s guide to measuring procedural fidelity. Behavior Analysis in Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-024-00910-8

Ward, R.*, Jones, S. H., Pullar, T.*, & Celona, C.*(2025). A scoping literature review of demand fading. Education and Treatment of Children. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43494-024-00143-y

Jones, S. H. St. Peter, C. C., & Ruckle, M. M.* (2020). Reporting of Demographic Variables in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 53(3),1-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.722