138 A Psychological Behaviorism Theory of Personality
study provided strong verification of the PB behavior modifi-
cation approach, and its publication in a Skinnerian journal had
an impact great enough to be called the “seeds of the behav-
ioral revolution” by radical behaviorists (Malott, Whaley, &
Malott, 1997, p. 175). Ayllon and Michael’s paper was written
as though this approach derived from Skinnerian behaviorism
and this error was repeated in many works that came later. For
example, Fordyce (see 1990) followed Michael’s suggestion
both in using the PB principles and in considering his pain
theory to be Skinnerian.
The study of child behavior modification began similarly.
Following my development of the behavior modification prin-
ciples with simple problems, I decided that a necessary step
was to extend behavior analysis to more complex behavior
that required long-term treatment. At UCLA (where I took my
doctoral degree in general experimental and completed clini-
cal psychology requirements) I had worked with dyslexic
children. Believing that reading is crucially important to
human adjustment in our society, I selected this as a focal
topic of study—both remedial training as well as the original
learning of reading. My first study—done with Judson Finley,
Karl Minke, Richard Schutz, and Carolyn Staats—was ex-
ploratory and was used in a research grant application I made
to the U.S. Office of Education. The study was based on my
view that the central problem in dyslexia is motivational.
Children fail in learning because their attention and participa-
tion are not maintained in the long, effortful, and nonreinforc-
ing (for many children) learning task that involves thousands
and thousands of learning trials. In my approach the child was
reinforced for attending and participating, and the training
materials I constructed ensured that the child would learn
everything needed for good performance. Because reading
training is so extended and involves so many learning trials, it
is necessary to have a reinforcing system for the long haul,
unlike the experimental analysis of behavior studies with
children employing simple responses and M&Ms. I thus
introduced the token reinforcer system consisting of poker
chips backed up by items the children selected to work for
(such as toys, sporting equipment, and clothing). When this
token reinforcer system was adopted for work with adults, it
was called the token economy (see Ayllon & Azrin, 1968) and,
again, considered part of Skinner’s radical behaviorism.
With the training materials and the token reinforcement,
the adolescents who had been poor students became attentive,
worked well, and learned well. Thus was the token methodol-
ogy born, a methodology that was to be generally applied.
In 1962 and 1964 studies we showed the same effect with
preschool children first learning to read. Under reinforcement
their attention and participation and their learning of reading
was very good, much better than that displayed by the usual
four-year-old. But without the extrinsic reinforcement, their
learning behavior deteriorated, and learning stopped. In
reporting this and the treatment of dyslexia (Staats, 1963;
Staats & Butterfield, 1965; Staats, Finley, Minke, & Wolf,
1964; Staats & Staats, 1962), I projected a program for using
these child behavior modification methods in studying a wide
variety of children’s (and adults’) problems. The later devel-
opment of the field of behavior modification showed that this
program functioned as a blueprint for the field that later devel-
oped. (The Sylvan Learning Centers also use methods similar
to those of PB’s reading treatments, with similar results.)
Let me add that I took the same approach in raising my own
children, selecting important areas to analyze for the applica-
tion of learning-behavior principles to improve and advance
their development as well as to study the complex learning in-
volved. For example, in 1960 I began working with language
development (productive and receptive) when my daughter
was only several months old, with number concepts at the age
of a year and a half, with reading at 2 years of age. I have
audiotapes of this training with my daughter, which began
in 1962 and extended for more than 5 years, and videotapes
with my son and other children made in 1966. Other aspects
of child development dealt with as learned behaviors include
toilet training, counting, number operations, writing, walking,
swimming, and throwing and catching a ball (see Staats,
1996). With some systematic training the children did such
things as walk and talk at 9 months old; read letters, words,
sentences, and short stories at 2.5 years of age; and count
unarranged objects at 2 years (a performance Piaget suggested
was standard at the age of 6 years). The principles were also
applied to the question of punishment, and I devised time-out
as a mild but effective punishment, first used in the literature
by one of my students, Montrose Wolf (Wolf, Risely, & Mees,
1964).
Traditional behaviorism was our background. However,
the research developed in Great Britain and by Wolpe and by
me and a few others constituted the foundation for the field of
behavior therapy. And this field now contains a huge number
of studies demonstrating that conditioning principles apply to
a variety of human behavior problems, in children and adults,
with simple and complex behavior. There can be no question
in the face of our behavior therapy evidence that learning is a
centrally important determinant of human behavior.The State of Personality Theory and Measurement
in the Field of Behavior TherapyBehaviorism began as a revolution against traditional psy-
chology. The traditional behaviorist aim in analyzing psy-
chology’s studied phenomena was to show behaviorism’s