Brian Iwata: My First Student, Who Shaped on My Behavior

03Original abstract

My life changed in the fall of 1970. A few days before the beginning of class, I was in my new office on the 3rd floor of the Florida State University (FSU) Psychology Building, busy unpacking books and trying to get settled in when there was a knock at the partially opened door. A young man in his early 20s pushed the door open and said, “Hi, I'm Brian Iwata. I'm your new student.” I replied, “Welcome, Brian. It's nice to meet you.” Brian followed with, “And what do you do?” Unaware that I was getting a graduate student because the selection process occurred the previous spring while I was still at the University of Kansas (KU), this came as quite a surprise. Jumping ahead a little, I would have to say that this was the most fortunate thing that could possibly have happened to me. Someone on the admissions committee did me a giant favor that would make an enormous difference in my career. Sadly, I never learned who that was. But, back to the story. I explained that I was a new assistant professor and that my specialty was behavior analysis, applied behavior analysis to be more specific. We chatted a bit about Brain's trip to Tallahassee from Baltimore. He told me he was newly married and this was a big adventure for him and his wife, Peg, as they had not been to Florida before. I believed that our initial meeting went well the second that Brian gestured to my partly filled bookcase and said, “Do you have anything that I can read? I'd like to learn about this field of yours.” I pulled out my heavily marked-up copy of Science and Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953) and Case Studies in Behavior Modification (Ullman & Krasner, 1965) and gave these to him as good introductions to behaviorism. I explained that these books included important examples of how applied behavior analysis could be used to change behavior. I concluded with pointing to the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) sitting on my desk as I said, “And this is going to be the primary journal for our new field. Mont Wolf is the editor. I studied under him.” When I arrived at FSU, I was in the School Psychology program in the Psychology Department. I was assigned to teach undergrad courses in Educational Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Child Psychology. I was told I might get a graduate course to teach the next semester (I asked for research methods). As a new professor, I was expected to set up a lab, but because my interests were in the community, I turned down the offer of the space that had been held for me. I completed my dissertation at Achievement Place in Lawrence, Kansas, under Mont Wolf, and I worked in the schools as part of the Home Based Reinforcement Project where we tested the use of daily report cards for motivation. My plan was to discuss these topics with Brian the next time I saw him and then determine if he was interested in similar settings where we might do some research. Brian was excited about this idea. He chose to work in the schools, and he helped me set up a tutoring experience at a fairly new elementary school as part of his departmental teaching assistantship. As a part of the tutoring experience, the undergrads in the educational psychology class would spend 3 hr per week for this one-credit course. For my part, having this requirement gave me a reason to visit half a dozen schools over the next few weeks. Activities included meeting with the principals, touring classrooms, drinking coffee, and trying to make a good impression. What we were offering was desirable; college students under our supervision would come to the schools at an assigned time and work with specific students whom the teachers determined could benefit from tutoring. I taught strategies, sometimes using my young son as the demo, on how to prompt and reinforce young children in reading and basic math. As it turned out, this assistance benefited both the children and the school, and it was greatly appreciated by the teachers and principals. As a result, later when I brought up the idea of doing some research at the schools, they were receptive, cooperative, and supportive. This connection led to several research projects for my graduate students in successive semesters and one in particular became the setting for Brian's thesis where he made friends with Mrs. Forster, an extremely competent special education teacher. Quickly adapting to the school environment and making fast friends with the principal, Mr. McElwee, Brian needed no tutoring in the social skills department. He was proficient in his listening skills, and he knew how to respond to prompts the principal sprinkled throughout their numerous conversations about teachers who could use some help with certain classroom problems. One teacher implemented a rather rudimentary token economy, but it was not producing any desirable results. Basically, the students were running wild, and she needed HELP. This was at the beginning of Brian's second year, after he had taken my applied behavior analysis (ABA) research methods course and was on top of the JABA literature (which was the only text for the course) on token economies (Kaufman & O'Leary, 1972; Kazdin & Bootzin, 1972; McLaughlin & Malaby, 1972). Brian was able to help the teacher modify her system and gain control, and even better, it gave him an idea for his thesis. The published studies at that time did not make clear whether reward or cost token systems were better, and Brian had a research design to evaluate this. This is where the perfect combination of Brian's social skills and Mrs. Forster came in. He sold her on the idea of comparing the two approaches in her class, and she was eager to help this young man from the university who was always smiling and complimenting her on her teaching, which was sincere and well placed. She was an excellent teacher who was calm, organized, pleasant with her students, and sensitive to their needs. Brian and Mrs. Forster were a dynamic team, and it was a good thing because this study ran far longer than was expected. As a grad student, I had no courses on how to teach or how to guide a person through their thesis. My fall back was to try and replicate my experience at KU with Mont Wolf. His gentle model was straightforward. Students were treated like colleagues from day one, so this became my plan with Brian. Fortunately, Brian reinforced this behavior and we both benefited. I didn't tell him what to choose for his thesis. He naturally found his own topic, ran his ideas by me, listened to my concerns, and made the necessary adjustments. I learned that asking questions was a good way to bring up issues and that in doing so we figured out solutions together—like colleagues. Brian wanted to execute his study using a multielement within a reversal design. He had seen something similar in JABA and wanted to try it. After some back-and-forth conversations, he convinced me that he could do this, and of course, he did. The design was elegant, and it controlled for all the variables; this was Brian's project through and through. By the time he got to his thesis, Brian wasn't doing this research for me. He had total buy-in, which I discovered is the most powerful form of reinforcement. A rather unusual incident happened right at the end of his study. I was at a conference in Washington DC where I was attending a seminar on token economies. The first speaker talked about the two ways to set up a token economy, explaining that the tokens could either be earned for correct responses or taken away for incorrect responses. Oh, no! It looked like we were about to be scooped, as this was a prominent person in the field and the data looked good. Brian and I planned to submit his thesis to JABA as soon as he had his master's defense, but that wasn't scheduled for several weeks. If this researcher submitted his work before Brian, then his study would probably not be accepted. This was an all-out academic crisis. I ran from the room, packed my bag, and headed to the airport. Fortunately, I was able to catch an earlier flight that would get me back to Tallahassee a day ahead of time. I called Brian from a pay phone while I was waiting in the departure area. I told him what was happening and probed him for the status of his write-up. “It's basically done,” he said. “While you were out of town, I completed the Method and Results, and I am finishing the graphs now.” This was typical Brian, always one step ahead of me, anxious to move ahead, wanting to complete the project. “I don't want to press you on this,” I said, “but we need to add another condition to your study—something that will make it different from what I just saw here.” In his calm, unflappable style he replied, “Okay, I'll work up some ideas and we'll meet as soon as you get back.” When we met early the next day, Brian recounted a conversation he had with Mrs. Forster a few days prior. He brought up the difference between the reward and the cost systems and asked her which she liked the most. “Well, the reward system of course, I like giving the students their tokens when they behave. It makes me feel good and they respond well as you can tell.” But surprisingly, Brian went on to say that it looked to him that the students preferred the cost system. “Can you ask them why and see what they say? More importantly is there a way to test this quickly, we're running out of time.” That was the only prompt he needed. All of our troubleshooting sessions over the past months and our “think outside the box” discussions were paying off. “We'll just run some ‘choice’ sessions with the students,” he said. “They have had plenty of experience with our alternating reward and cost sessions, let's let them choose.” It was risky, but how could we lose, data was data. “It's your call, Brian, you're in charge here.” My young behavioral researcher did in fact pull this off in record time, and the data were clear and interesting. Mrs. Forster consistently said she preferred the reward system, but the students chose the cost method. When queried, the students explained that each period started with them having all their tokens in a cup on their desks, and as long as Mrs. Forster didn't see them off task or acting out, they could keep their tokens. The students were basically counting on her missing enough that they came out ahead with the cost system! This was one of the first studies to implement a choice alternative and measure the results. By the end of the week, Brian had the data analyzed and written up, and he presented me with a journal-ready draft. Not every student would have this ability. The extremely fluent writing skills came from Brian's undergraduate training at Loyola College, and his work ethic of responsibility, dedication, and professionalism he no doubt got from his parents. In an unbelievably short period, the manuscript was in the mail to Todd Risley, the JABA editor. After two revisions, it was accepted (Iwata & Bailey, 1974). Brian, a second year graduate student, had just successfully published in the flagship journal in our field, and I had trained my first apprentice. He was over the moon, and I was right behind him. More importantly, Brian reinforced me for my mentoring style and my commitment to the student-as-colleague model. “It works,” I said to myself, “I think I like this professor business.” In his third year, Brian accepted a position at the local Sunland Tallahassee, a residential center for individuals with severe and profound developmental disabilities. His job was a supervisory position where he was in charge of four living “units” that consisted of 127 clients and 50 staff who appeared somewhat unmotivated. We talked about in-service training and maybe bringing in the superintendent for a motivational speech, but setting this up would take time. Brian first wanted to take some baseline data, so we discussed how this could be managed. He would need some help with such a large project, and he set out to find some volunteers. In the meantime, another requirement was looming. Referred to despairingly as the “600 paper” (the course number assigned by the department), this was a major roadblock for most third-year students. The 600 paper consisted of a review paper covering the relevant research fundamental to a student's dissertation. It was intended to be an expansive and critical review that examined the methodology in detail, pointed out the flaws, and identified the direction of the study (their dissertation) that would correct the shortcomings. There was an unwritten rule that 600 papers would be a minimum of a couple hundred pages. For the first time, I saw Brian struggle. He had an essentially full time job as a supervisor at Sunland, was still taking grad courses, including some in the clinical program, and he had to decide months in advance on the topic of his dissertation. It was not going well. He was missing deadlines and canceling office hours with me. He was uncharacteristically behind, and I didn't know why. About this time, I was traveling home from a meeting. My flight had been delayed in Atlanta, and we didn't land until nearly 9:00 p.m. I decided to take a shortcut through a neighborhood that I didn't often pass through and happened to notice that the tennis court lights in the park were on and there was a lone player banging tennis balls against the concrete practice wall. “Now there is a diligent athlete I thought …” When I got a little closer, I realized it was Brian! I slowed down to make sure and then headed on my way. He did not have a clue that he had been discovered. I asked him to stop by my office the next day. Surprised to see a dour look on my face, he cheerfully, said, “What's happening?” “It's about your tennis rackets. I saw you practicing last night, and I think that's an incompatible behavior; I want them on my desk tomorrow morning, and I'm keeping them for you until the 600 paper is turned in.” “Done,” was all he said as he turned and left. I was afraid that this might be misinterpreted as punishment and that it would ruin our relationship, but it did not. In fact, Brian seemed relieved. Now he could focus on that odious review paper and look forward to getting his rackets back. With the 600 paper behind him, Brian could focus on his dissertation. He had decided to seek a solution to the motivation problems he found on the four living units at Sunland. State government puts serious limits on changes that can be made with employees. There is no room for monetary reinforcers, time off, or any special privileges. But one thing that Brian read about for his review paper was a suggestion by Ayllon and Azrin (1968) that “work shift preference and vacation choices” might be used as reinforcers and they might possibly be allowed in a state government environment. As it turned out, he had developed a close working relationship with Superintendent of Sunland Mr. Art Trunkfield and negotiated for the use of this form of choice, as long as it was fairly arranged and embedded in a lottery system that Brian would devise. The study itself was textbook perfect in design. He had two experiments planned, the first a sort of well-controlled large-scale pilot study on two of the units involving 26 staff with nine dependent variables (DVs) covering staff activities (custodial work, client training, on- and off-task behavior, etc.) and client welfare (dental care, out of bed, and soiled clothing). This was accomplished by way of 15 volunteer observers including undergrad and grad students who traveled out to Sunland each day according to a prearranged schedule. In keeping with the cutting edge requirements at the time, “reliability” (aka interobserver agreement) was taken on all the DVs over a 49-day period and proved to be consistently above 80%. A second experiment replicated the first but focused on some slightly different DVs (e.g., dental care of the residents was added), and the design was again a multiple baseline. Brian's doctoral committee was most pleased with his elaborate, detailed work, and at the defense, my recollection was that there were no corrections required. All that was left was to cut, cut, cut the dissertation down to size and prepare the manuscript for JABA (Iwata et al., 1976).1 And now to the sad part. My last memory of Brian was when he pulled into my driveway, knocked on the door, and said he was heading to Kalamazoo. His car was packed, and Peg and their two girls Chrissy and Mary were loaded up too. We chatted for a few minutes but kept it brief, as the were anxious to be on their way. We had a good and off he to his academic as Brian University of Psychology. I on the in and It was the day of my life but the my first grad student was off on his own It like only that he knocked on my office door and I'm Brian …” After at where he taught research methods using JABA as the Brian on to University School of in where he as then was to of and and where he made his on the analysis of behavior. He to Florida in and became a at the University of and trained over 50 doctoral students who now all over the and have to applied research of the and their students in Brian's of behavior, an into an of variables and our forward Brian changed the way we think about behavior with his work on analysis (Iwata et al., I tell that he the analysis in applied behavior My most and last with Brian was in a Peg set up about a week before he he was and could but he brought me to again me for him to behavior analysis and training him to be a I told him it was me who be him, after all he taught me to be a professor and changed my

Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2024 · doi:10.1002/jaba.1048