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 oth- ers, Boys Town is proud to highlight As one of the country's leading child his ®ne 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 ®tting that the ®eld 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-®ve years ago, in 1962, Montrose ed its ®rst 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 ®rst 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 childrenÐand 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 professionalsÐ suresÐthis at a time when the real-time data even behavioral professionals working with being published were from automatic re- children with autismÐat 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 ®eld 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 ®rst 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 modi®cation. 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 JEABÐalthough 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 ®eld 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 ®eld 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 ®rst 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- taskÐand 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 ®eld 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 ®eld 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.) ®rst 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 dissatis®ed 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 everyoneÐauthors and reviewersÐand ratory analogue and real-world research in circulated reviews to everyone who needed a the experimental journals.