On August 14, 1996, Montrose M. Wolf, Nancy Reagan, and Michael Jordan, the Founding Editor of the Journal of Applied Among Others

MONTROSE M. WOLF: THE ORIGIN OF THE DIMENSIONS OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

TODD R. RISLEY

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA

On August 14, 1996, Montrose M. Wolf, Nancy Reagan, and Michael Jordan, the founding editor of the Journal of Applied among others. Behavior Analysis, received the Father Flan- The award is not given lightly. But agan Award for Service to Youth. The testi- when an individual like Dr. Wolf ded- monial accompanying the award reads: icates his life to the betterment of others, Boys Town is proud to highlight As one of the country’s leading child his fine example. That is why, on Au- treatment scientists and practitioners, gust 14, 1996, Dr. Montrose M. Wolf Montrose M. Wolf, Ph.D., of the Uni- joined an elite group of genuine hu- versity of Kansas, was the driving force manitarians in receiving the Father behind the development of Boys Town’s Flanagan Award for Service to Youth. Family Home Program. Dr. Wolf’s Teaching Family Model revolutionized The invitation to the award ceremony how Boys Town cares for and treats its stated that Montrose Wolf ‘‘has never sought children. The model became the foun- (or received) the kind of recognition that he dation for Boys Town’s far-reaching so richly deserves.’’ It is fitting that the field programs that have served more than that was modeled on his work and the jour- one million troubled or at-risk girls and nal that he founded recognize anew his con- boys since Dr. Wolf brought his ideas tributions and celebrate with him this to Boys Town in 1975. award. That same year, Boys Town present- Thirty-five years ago, in 1962, Montrose ed its first Father Flanagan Award for Wolf completed his doctoral program under Service to Youth to Mrs. Spencer Tracy. Jack Michael (and Arthur Staats and Israel Through the years, the Flanagan Goldiamond) at Arizona State University Award, Boys Town’s highest award, has and arrived as a postdoctoral research asso- honored a select group of outstanding ciate at the Institute for Child Development individuals who believe that the mean- at the University of Washington. There he ing of life is giving and not taking. This was assigned to teach the reluctant preschool group includes Mother Teresa, Bob teachers an introductory course in learning Hope, Dr. Jonas Salk, Danny Thomas, principles. The four class projects designed by Wolf and carried out by the teachers con- stituted the first real-life discovery of the Correspondence regarding this commentary should be addressed to the author at HC-01 Box 6820, Palmer, Alas- power of social attention. We had never seen ka 99645 (E-mail: [email protected]). or imagined such power! As experimental

377 378 COMMENT psychologists, we assumed that learning similarity to the laboratory procedure), and principles combined in such complex and demonstrated its power with a reversal de- subtle ways that they would be hard to see sign. Thirty years later, half the parents and in the real life of normal children—and we teachers in the United States sporadically use were resigned to study them in the labora- this nonviolent practice and call it ‘‘time- tory. We were all amazed at the obvious ef- out,’’ which makes it a social invention un- fects of simple adjustments of such a ubiq- matched in modern psychology. uitous variable as adult attention. That study and three follow-up studies are We were also captivated by the method- noteworthy in that they introduced the di- ology that was evolving as the studies pro- rect reinforcement of verbal imitation and gressed: direct observation with interval sam- the subsequent shaping of meaningful pling, interobserver reliability, reversals of speech. It is amusing to recollect the expres- conditions, and concurrent multiple mea- sions of amazement from professionals— sures—this at a time when the real-time data even behavioral professionals working with being published were from automatic re- children with autism—at the sight of Mon- corders in laboratory settings, and the few trose Wolf matter-of-factly using bites of real-world efforts were being documented food to shape functional speech with chil- only with field notes (excepting the hospital dren with autism and mental retardation. studies of Teodoro Ayllon). The methodol- These studies about managing the problems ogy of these studies marked the beginning and establishing speech for children with au- of applied behavior analysis as we know it tism and other disabilities (‘‘Application of today. These landmark studies (‘‘Effects of Operant Conditioning Procedures to the Be- Social Reinforcement on Isolate Behavior of haviour Problems of an Autistic Child,’’ a Nursery School Child,’’ Allen, Hart, Buell, Wolf, Risley, & Mees, 1964; ‘‘Experimental Harris, & Wolf, 1964; ‘‘Effects of Positive Manipulation of Autistic Behaviors and Social Reinforcement on Regressed Crawling Generalization into the Home,’’ Risley & of a Nursery School Child,’’ Harris, John- Wolf, 1966; ‘‘Establishing Functional ston, Kelley, & Wolf, 1964; ‘‘Effects of So- Speech in Echolalic Children,’’ Risley & cial Reinforcement on Operant Crying,’’ Wolf, 1967; ‘‘Application of Operant Con- Hart, Allen, Buell, Harris, & Wolf, 1964; ditioning Procedures to the Behaviour Prob- ‘‘An Application of Reinforcement Principles lems of an Autistic Child: A Follow-Up and to Development of Motor Skills in a Young Extension,’’ Wolf, Risley, Johnston, Harris, Child,’’ Johnston, Kelley, Harris, & Wolf, & Allen, 1967) were conducted during the 1966) were conducted during the 1962– 1962–1963 and 1963–1964 academic years 1963 and 1963–1964 academic years at the at the University of Washington. University of Washington. Among Wolf’s other duties at Washington At the same time, Montrose Wolf was as- was the task of building an experimental signed the task of getting a vision-impaired classroom for children with mental retarda- 3-year-old boy with autism, who displayed tion at Rainier State School, 40 miles away. tantrums and self-injury and who resided in He had brought from Arizona State the first a psychiatric hospital 50 miles distant, to seed of a system of symbolic reinforcers that wear his glasses. Thus began a year of weekly he cultivated into a durable motivational sys- drives that culminated in the premier study tem to maintain academic behavior, which of behavior modification. That study intro- he then labeled a token economy. (He also duced the procedure of contingent social iso- helped to design an ingenious curriculum of lation, labeled it time-out (to note the vague reading comprehension.) After a year at Ar- COMMENT 379 izona, Wolf came to Kansas in 1965 and co- companion to JEAB—although some of the founded the Juniper Gardens Children’s Pro- more applied of the JEAB authors were of ject in an economically deprived neighbor- the opinion that field research was not very hood whose residents were primarily Afri- important because things that were discov- can-American. He established an ered in the lab were simply ‘‘applied’’ as after-school remedial classroom in a church needed. (I see that Division 25 has currently basement and further developed his token reverted once more to being for ‘‘basic re- economy to maintain the academic efforts of search and its application,’’ rather than for inner-city children. The evolution of the to- laboratory and field research.) ken economy from a small hot-house dem- The obvious and interested candidates for onstration to a long-term motivational sys- founding editor were Donald Baer, Charles tem occurred from 1960 to 1967 (‘‘The Ferster, Goldiamond, and Murray Sidman. Conditioning of Textual Responses Using Nate Azrin, who was everyone’s first choice, ‘Extrinsic’ Reinforcers,’’ Staats, Staats, declined and urged that youth and dedica- Schutz, & Wolf, 1962; ‘‘Programmed In- tion were needed for such an enormous struction in the Classroom,’’ Birnbrauer, Bi- task—and Wolf was chosen to shape the jou, Wolf, & Kidder, 1965; ‘‘Classroom Be- new journal. He created its name, the Jour- haviour of Retarded Pupils with Token Re- nal of Applied Behavior Analysis, to empha- inforcement,’’ Birnbrauer, Wolf, Kidder, & size field research, not explanation or anec- Tague, 1965; ‘‘Experiments with Token Re- dote. He then put in 3 years of heroic effort inforcement in a Remedial Classroom,’’ to create the thing we know as JABA. He Wolf, Giles, & Hall, 1968). had help in building a system for production Wolf’s discoveries and inventions at the from Vic Laties and Kay Dinsmoor, but the University of Washington were enabled by manuscript handling and reviewing process Sidney Bijou, one of the true heroes of ex- had to be developed from scratch. To appre- perimental child psychology. Bijou invested ciate the abysmal state of the submissions, his funds and risked his reputation to ar- one needs to go back to edited books of range, support, and protect the revolution- readings in the late 1960s to sample the ary and controversial work that Wolf was in- work being done before JABA began to serve stigating at the Institute for Child Devel- its intended function as an incentive and opment. (See Bijou, 1996, to appreciate his model for field research with reliable mea- vision in developing the Institute as the cen- surement and valid design. Wolf was an un- ter for the behavior analysis of child devel- named coauthor on half of the articles in the opment.) first two volumes; he helped the authors to In 1966, Wolf began building support for reanalyze and rewrite their reports. He also a new journal. He was dissatisfied with the ‘‘educated by review’’: Everyone who sub- spotty quality in the therapy journals that he mitted an article was assigned someone else’s had been using for his work and was dis- article to review. He gave extensive feedback couraged at the nondifferentiation of labo- to everyone—authors and reviewers—and ratory analogue and real-world research in circulated reviews to everyone who needed a the experimental journals. Several publishers better example, and edited offensive state- were willing, but the society (the Society for ments out of the comments of inexperienced the Experimental Analysis of Behavior) that reviewers. Whatever policies and procedures published the Journal of the Experimental that now define JABA are based on the sys- Analysis of Behavior decided to allocate some tem Wolf created from nothing in 1967. of their resources to subsidize an applied Concurrent with founding JABA, Wolf was 380 COMMENT creating the Teaching-Family Model: a system- Everyday Experience of Young American Chil- atic empirical development of a complete so- dren, Betty Hart and I end our acknowledg- lution to a social problem. Every JABA reader ments as follows: should be familiar with this effort, which was the flagship of applied behavior analysis But our deepest gratitude and admira- throughout the 1970s. The elegance and stra- tion must be reserved for our mentor, tegic efficacy of the studies that systematically the great Montrose Wolf, who taught built the model, piece by piece, moved our us to look directly at the world in order field to a larger vision of our job and our to learn how it really works and to con- possibilities (see Wolf, Kirigin, Fixsen, Blase, cern ourselves with trying to solve the & Braukmann, 1995, for an overview of the real problems of real people. model and its development). Mont has taught many people these same Although he is a truly humble person, lessons, and all of us should especially ac- Wolf accepted second or last authorship for knowledge him as the teacher and model of many products of his practical ingenuity as the best things that each of us, in turn, has a practical way to motivate his collaborators. done for others. The acceptance of last authorship of a pub- lication by its senior designer (which became a minor tradition in our field) may account REFERENCES for the failure of later generations to recog- Allen, K. M., Hart, B. M., Buell, J. S., Harris, F. R., nize the architect of the structures in which & Wolf, M. M. (1964). Effects of social rein- they are working. Also, many of his creations forcement on isolate behavior of a nursery school have been attributed to others who elabo- child. Child Development, 35, 511–518. rated upon them—single-subject experimen- Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of behavior modification. New York: Holt. tal designs and social validity come imme- Bijou, S. W. (1996). Reflections on some early events diately to mind. To document the influence related to behavior analysis of child development. of his early work, I turn to two classic re- The Behavior Analyst, 19, 49–60. Birnbrauer, J. S., Bijou, S. W., Wolf, M. M., & Kid- views of behavior modification. In 1969, der, J. D. (1965). Programmed instruction in the Bandura’s Principles of Behavior Modification classroom. In L. P. Ulman & L. Krasner (Eds.), contained twice as many references to Wolf’s Case studies in behavior modification (pp. 358– 363). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. works than to any except the author’s own Birnbrauer, J. S., Wolf, M. M., Kidder, J. D., & Ta- work. In Leitenberg’s 1976 classic, Hand- gue, C. (1965). Classroom behaviour of retarded book of Behavior Modification and Behavior pupils with token reinforcement. Journal of Ex- Therapy, Wolf was still the most cited author perimental Child Psychology, 2, 219–235. Harris, F. R., Johnston, M. K., Kelley, C. S., & Wolf, by a small margin over Azrin and by a large M. M. (1964). Effects of positive social reinforce- margin over everyone else. ment on regressed crawling of a nursery school I consider Montrose Wolf to be the child. Journal of Educational Psychology, 55, 35–41. Hart, B. M., Allen, K. E., Buell, J. S., Harris, F. R., founder of applied behavior analysis. As is & Wolf, M. M. (1964). Effects of social rein- characteristic of him, he led by example and forcement on operant crying. Journal of Experi- encouragement, not by discussion and ex- mental Child Psychology, 1, 145–153. hortation. His earliest work gave us the Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American models for our field. His design of JABA in- children. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes. sured that real-world problem-solving re- Johnston, M. K., Kelley, C. S., Harris, F. R., & Wolf, search had a forum. That forum has sur- M. M. (1966). An application of reinforcement principles to development of motor skills in a vived, as designed, for 30 years. young child. Child Development, 3, 397–387. In our book, Meaningful Differences in the Leitenberg, H. (1976). Handbook of behavior modifi- COMMENT 381

cation and behavior therapy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: A., & Braukmann, C. J. (1995). The Teaching- Prentice Hall. Family Model: A case study in data-based pro- Risley, T., & Wolf, M. M. (1966). Experimental ma- gram development and reﬁnement (and dragon nipulation of autistic behaviors and generalization wrestling). Journal of Organizational Behavior into the home. In R. Ulrich, T. Stachnik, & J. Management, 15, 11–68. Mabry (Eds.), Control of human behavior. Glen- Wolf, M. M., Risley, T., Johnston, M., Harris, F., & view, IL: Scott, Foresman. Allen, E. (1967). Application of operant condi- Risley, T., & Wolf, M. M. (1967). Establishing func- tioning procedures to the behaviour problems of tional speech in echolalic children. Behaviour Re- an autistic child: A follow-up and extension. Be- search and Therapy, 5, 73–88. haviour Research and Therapy, 5, 103–112. Staats, A. W., Staats, C. K., Schutz, R. E., & Wolf, Wolf, M. M., Risley, T., & Mees, H. (1964). Appli- M. M. (1962). The conditioning of textual re- cation of operant conditioning procedures to the sponses using ‘‘extrinsic’’ reinforcers. Journal of the behaviour problems of an autistic child. Behaviour Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 5, 33–40. Research and Therapy, 1, 305–312. Wolf, M. M., Giles, D. K., & Hall, V. R. (1968). Experiments with token reinforcement in a remedial classroom. Behaviour Research and Therapy, Received November 4, 1996 6, 51–64. Final acceptance November 19, 1996 Wolf, M. M., Kirigin, K. A., Fixsen, D. L., Blase, K. Action Editor, David P. Wacker

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TEACHING-FAMILY MODEL

MONTROSE M. WOLF

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

As one of the founders of the Teaching-Fam- lent when we began. We present the ily model, I was honored for our team’s con- research on the components of the tribution to the success of the programs at model and the outcome research on the Boys’ Town. We have described the history complete model. of the model’s development in a couple of We share the serious problems that recent articles. One description appears in occurred when we attempted to repli- Wolf, Kirigin, Fixsen, Blase, and Braukmann cate the program in other communi- (1995): ties. We argue that the subjective consumer feedback questionnaire (and the A case study in program development other components of the comprehen- and reﬁnement is presented. We de- sive quality reﬁnement system that have scribe the Teaching-Family model and evolved over the past 25 years) have its history, the original research goal of played an important role in the survival developing a community-based pro- and success of the model. We recom- gram that was more humane, more ef- mend that people interested in increas- fective in teaching community-living ing the quality and survival rates of skills, and less expensive than the tra- ditional large state institutions preva- their human services programs may want to consider developing a similar technology driven by systematic recip- Address correspondence to the author at the Depart- ment of Human Development and Family Life, 4001 Dole rocal feedback from consumers and line Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045. staff instead of relying on unplanned 382 COMMENT

consumer and staff feedback, as many Family model: A case study in data-based program development and reﬁnement (and dragon wres- programs do now. Such feedback helps tling). Journal of Organizational Behavior Manage- us to continue improving the quality of ment, 15, 11–68. the always evolving Teaching-Family model. (pp. 11–12) Received September 19, 1996 Final acceptance October 28, 1996 Action Editor, David P. Wacker REFERENCE Wolf, M. M., Kirigin, K. A., Fixsen, D. L., Blase, K. A., & Braukmann, C. J. (1995). The Teaching-