The History of Behavior Analysis

Where do YOU fit in?

First, who is the most famous REAL psychologist?

See page 56 in your textbook. (4th Paragraph)

B.F. Skinner Wrote Science and Human Behavior in 1953.

“Discovered” Operant Conditioning and the principles of behavior using Thorndike’s Law of Effect.

Studied at Harvard University

Wrote Behavior of Organismsin 1938.

Taught at Indiana University, the University of Minnesota, and Harvard University.

Fred Keller

Went to Harvard Graduate School and became close friends with BF Skinner.

Wrote Principles of Psychology, an introductory psychology textbook based on Skinner’s work.

Created Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) in which study objectives, frequent quizzes, and mastery level criteria are utilized.

Taught at Columbia University, in Brazil, and Arizona State University.

Jack Michael studied at UCLA.

By chance, read a copy of Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior to help him prepare to teach an introductory psychology course at the University of Kansas in 1955.

Used Keller’s Principles of Psychology textbook for that course.

After Kansas University, he taught at the University of Houston and met Lee Meyerson. Jack supervised TeodoroAyllon’s Ph.D. dissertation on “psychotic talk” in 1959.

Jack Michael

Check out page 185 in your textbook.

(Bottom left-hand corner)

After teaching at Houston, Jack moved on to Arizona State University. ASU was affectionately known as “Skinner’s Desert Fortress” due to it’s geography and behavioral approach to the study of psychology.

Among the graduate students Jack taught at Arizona State University were: W. Scott Wood, Albert Neal, Brian Jacobson, Dick Powers, Jon Bailey, and others.

Jack Michael left ASU in 1967 and began teaching behavior analysis at Western Michigan University (WMU) until 2003.

Around same time, a young Dick Malott was studying at Columbia University. He graduated with his Ph.D. in 1963.

He began teaching behavior analysis at Western Michigan University in 1969.

This is NOT a young Dick Malott, but it IS Dick Malott!

The classic behavioral psychology textbook, Principles of Psychology, was no longer being printed, so Dick Malott and others wrote what was to become Principles of Behavior in 1967.

In the late 1960’s, Al Neal, a former ASU graduate student of Jack’s began setting up a behavioral

program at Central Michigan University.

Carl Johnson studied under Dick Malott and others at Western Michigan University, and he began teaching at Central Michigan University in the 1980s.

He met his wife, Sharon, at Michigan State University.

In 1994, a young community college transfer student, by chance, enrolled in PSY 384 Behavior Analysis at

Central Michigan University.

The course was taught by Al Neal with help from a graduate assistant, Eric Burkholder.

The textbook used was Malott’s Elementary Principles of Behavior 3rd Edition.

There was a rat lab and the student went on to become a teaching assistant for the course becoming friends with Eric, Susan, Sean, and others.

We all went to our first Association of Behavior Analysis convention in Washington DC in 1995. (S-dee: Jack Michael and “Extinction!”)

(I put individual student pictures here arranged in the same way they sit in our classroom.)

Where can you go from here?

Eastern Connecticut University Dr. Fitzgerald

Southern Connecticut State University Dr. James Mazur

UCONN- Waterbury campus Dr. Kim Treadwell

Institute of Professional Practice

Temple University -Philadelphia

Northeastern, UMASS Amherst, May Institute,

Columbia Teacher’s College, SUNY Stonybrook, Queen’s College

Behavior Analyst Board Certification

http://www.behavior.org/

http://www.abainternational.org/

http://www.bacb.com/