Ogden R. Lindsley: I Followed the Idea of the Missoula Smokejumpers
Track how often a behavior happens per minute, not just right or wrong, to spot real learning gains sooner.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Heward sat down with Ogden Lindsley and recorded his life story.
Lindsley told how he built precision teaching in the 1960s.
The paper is a short, first-person history, not an experiment.
What they found
Lindsley wanted schools to watch how fast kids answer, not just if the answer is right.
He called this rate-of-response measurement.
He said frequency data show learning curves that accuracy scores hide.
How this fits with other research
AHamama et al. (2021) turned Lindsley’s idea into a five-step system you can use Monday morning.
Vostanis et al. (2021) showed the system works: students with intellectual disabilities jumped from below-average to above-average math after daily fluency timings.
Van et al. (2026) stretched the same charting tool to thoughts and feelings, proving frequency building changes private events too.
Why it matters
If you only record correct versus incorrect, you miss speed and learning momentum.
Add a one-minute timing and plot the count on a Standard Celeration Chart.
Now you see true growth, celebrate earlier, and adjust faster for any learner.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In 1990, Ogden R. Lindsley served as guest faculty for Ohio State University’s Teleconference on applied behavior analysis. He captivated students and faculty with tales of his personal journey from experiences during World War II to studying under B. F. Skinner, and his development of precision teaching (PT) to preserve rate of response measurement in educational applications. Derived from an audio cassette recording of that seminar session, this article captures highlights of those stories and Dr. Lindsley’s discussion of topics ranging from his opinion of the open classroom movement to critiques of Sesame Street and errorless learning.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2024 · doi:10.1007/s40617-024-00987-1