(1935–2004) BEFORE APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS Mont Wolf

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2005, 38, 279–287 NUMBER 2(SUMMER 2005) MONTROSE M. WOLF (1935–2004) TODD RISLEY UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA Montrose Madison Wolf, who discovered the reinforcing power of adult attention for children and based on that discovery invented and named the nonviolent parenting procedure time-out; who discovered that absent speech and social development could be artificially created with operant conditioning techniques; who first engineered a token economy into a useful motivational system; who invented the good behavior game; who orchestrated the massive research program that developed and refined the Teaching-Family Model as a residential treatment solution for delinquent development; who reinvented field observation, repeated measurement, and single-subject research methods; who introduced and named the concept of social validity; and who led the founding of the discipline of problem-solving real-world research called applied behavior analysis, died of Huntington’s disease on March 19, 2004, at his home in Lawrence, Kansas. _______________________________________________________________________________ BEFORE APPLIED ground Mont did not qualify for the degree!) BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS At Arizona State, Wolf was mentored by Jack Michael, and both his thesis and dissertation Mont Wolf was born in Houston, Texas, research studies were laboratory experiments on May 29, 1935. He received a BS in with animals. But from Lee Meyerson he psychology from the University of Houston in learned the clinician’s ethical principle to 1959. At Houston he was introduced to the personally know the individual people one is ‘‘problem-solving science’’ and the ‘‘experi- studying and serving, and to be responsible for menting society’’ notions of Francis Bacon, tracking and improving their well-being—an Claude Bernard, and B. F. Skinner by Jack ethic on which he later built the observation, Michael, and was enthused by the ground- measurement, and single-subject experimental breaking real-world field research in a mental design conventions of applied behavior analysis. hospital of his graduate student friend Ted He also served as a research assistant to both Ayllon (e.g., Ayllon & Michael, 1959). At Israel Goldiamond and Arthur Staats, gaining Houston he met and married fellow psychology experience in hands-on work with people and in student Sandra Spiller, who was his lifelong programmatic research. With Staats and others colleague and companion. (Staats, Minke, Finley, Wolf, & Brooks, 1964; Mont and Sandra followed Jack Michael to Staats, Staats, Schultz, & Wolf, 1961), Wolf Arizona State University where Mont received was a coauthor of the first two limited experi- an MA in psychology in 1961 and a PhD in mental demonstrations of an artificial reinforce- psychology in 1963. (Because his was among ment system—one that he soon developed into the first PhD degrees awarded at Arizona State, practical token economies and point systems of representatives from other departments carefully the type now adopted by many parents, monitored his dissertation defense. Mont teachers, and community service providers. recalled that an English professor’s minority opinion was that the PhD signified that one was a ‘‘cultured gentleman,’’ and that on that THE ORIGINS OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS Address correspondence to Todd Risley, HC-5 Box 6820, Palmer, Alaska 99645 (e-mail: risley@alaska.net). In the early summer of 1962, Wolf doi: 10.1901/jaba.2005.165-04 joined Sidney Bijou at the Institute of Child 279 280 TODD RISLEY Development at the University of Washington ‘‘Effects of Social Reinforcement on Isolate as a research assistant professor. Bijou, a major Behavior of a Preschool Child,’’ became Wolf’s figure in experimental child psychology, di- first citation classic (i.e., identified as one of the rected the Institute with its preschools, child most frequently cited publications by Current clinic, and experimental child laboratories, and Contents: Social & Behavioral Sciences). Forty he also coordinated the child clinical and years later, social reinforcement (positive atten- developmental psychology areas of the tion, praise, ‘‘catching them being good’’) has Department of Psychology at the University of become the core of most American advice and Washington. Bijou had recruited Donald Baer training for parents and teachers—making this and Jay Birnbrauer as new assistant professors of arguably the most influential discovery of developmental psychology and Robert Wahler modern psychology. as the postdoc director of the child clinic. Bijou The research methods that Wolf pioneered in had established a grant-funded human learning these studies were also groundbreaking: direct laboratory at a rural mental retardation institu- observation with interval recording and in- tion near Seattle and hired Wolf to run it. In terobserver reliability, systematic alteration of retrospect, Wolf never did the job he was hired the natural environment, reversal and multiple to do—generate useful knowledge from a hu- baseline single-subject experimental designs. man operant laboratory—but with the excite- These occurred at a time when, with the ment and productivity of everything else he exception of Ayllon’s work, the only real-time instigated, no one seemed to notice. (Wolf came data of human behavior were from laboratory to consider laboratory research on human settings, and the few real-world efforts were behavior to be an unproductive misdirection being documented only with field notes. Prec- of effort, and 5 years later when he created the edents for the structured observations were editorial policy of the new Journal of Applied found in several early child psychology studies, Behavior Analysis, he explicitly excluded pur- and precedents for field interventions were ported laboratory analogues in favor of the common to all teaching and helping profes- in-context observation and investigation of sions, but the research designs were new to real-world phenomena.) psychology. These designs did not come from When he arrived at the Institute, Wolf was conventional experimental design logic, which assigned to teach the teachers of the four pre- required experimental and control groups to schools a course in learning principles. The four show causality. Nor did they come from the class projects designed by Wolf and carried out conventions of the experimental analysis of by the teachers constituted the original exper- behavior, which relied on multiply revisited imental documentations—the discovery—of steady states of behavior associated with the reinforcing power of adults’ social attention different conditions to show causality. The for children. We had never seen nor imagined reversal or ABAB design that Wolf reinvented such power! The speed and magnitude of the from Claude Bernard’s early examples in effects on children’s behavior in the real world experimental medicine entailed establishing of simple adjustments of something so ubiqui- a baseline of repeated quantified observations tous as adult attention were astounding. Those sufficient to see a trend and forecast that trend four studies were subsequently published (Allen, into the near future (A); to then alter conditions Hart, Buell, Harris, & Wolf, 1964; Harris, and see if the repeated observations become Johnston, Kelly, & Wolf, 1964; Hart, Allen, different than they were forecast to be (B); to Buell, Harris, & Wolf, 1964; Johnston, Kelly, then change back and see if the repeated obser- Harris, & Wolf, 1966), and one of them, titled vations return to confirm the original forecast MONTROSE M. WOLF 281 (A); and, finally, to reintroduce the altered designed a token system for the classroom, and conditions and see if the repeated observations revised it until it was easy to run and success- again become different than forecast (B). (The fully sustained high rates of academic behav- unprecedented multiple baseline design that ior (and the children made steady progress Wolf first demonstrated at this time, and later through the reading, writing, and arithmetic elaborated on with other colleagues, similarly programmed instruction curricula that entailed concurrently establishing baselines of Birnbrauer, Bijou, Wolf and others were repeated observations of either more than one developing) (Birnbrauer, Bijou, Wolf, & behavior, more than one condition, or more Kidder, 1965; Birnbrauer, Wolf, Kidder, & than one person sufficient to see trends in each Tague, 1965). With teachers in another baseline and forecast those trends into the near classroom in that institution, Wolf also pro- future; to then alter conditions for one baseline vided the first example of a functional analysis and see if the repeated observations of that of a severe problem behavior with a field baseline become different than they were fore- experiment demonstrating that the frequent cast to be, and that the other baselines remain as vomiting by a student was, surprisingly, operant forecast; to then similarly alter conditions for behavior maintained by its function of return- a second baseline and see if it too becomes ing her to her dormitory (Wolf, Birnbrauer, different than forecast while the remaining Lawler, & Williams, 1970; Wolf, Birnbrauer, baselines confirm their original forecasts; and Williams, & Lawler, 1965). Wolf’s values, and so on.) Wolf reinvented these methods to fit the his intervention strategies, were always about problems being studied: how to show that this energizing people with positive reinforcement beneficial

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