Jack Michael's Approach to Teaching from Skinner's (1957) Book Verbal Behavior belongs in serious BCBA study because it shapes whether behavior-analytic decisions stay useful once they leave a clean training example and enter language assessment, teaching sessions, caregiver coaching, and natural communication routines. In Jack Michael's Approach to Teaching from Skinner's (1957) Book Verbal Behavior, for this course, the practical stakes show up in clearer case conceptualization, better instructional targets, and stronger generalization, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via The Verbal Behavior Conference
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Join Free →In 1955, B. F. Skinner sent Jack Michael an early draft of his upcoming book Verbal Behavior (1957). Jack began to incorporate that content into his courses at the University of Kansas. After the book was published, he offered a full course on verbal behavior at the University of Houston (1959). Jack felt that Verbal Behavior was fundamental to behavior analysis, but the book was a difficult read and the topic was complicated. In his efforts to teach from the book, Jack reorganized Skinner's presentation of the material, regularly added supplemental content, sharpened terms and analyses, developed refinements and extensions, identified applications, and with his students, conducted research. During the 1970s and early 1980s, I was Jack's graduate assistant for fourteen of his undergraduate and graduate courses at Western Michigan University. Five of those courses were on verbal behavior (including basic verbal behavior, advanced verbal behavior, and verbal behavior applications). In this presentation, I will describe how Jack taught from Skinner's book including his course structure, objectives, lectures, and exams. In addition, I will describe the rationale for several of Jack's refinements of Verbal Behavior including motivating operations, the duplic and codic relations, automatic contingencies, multiple control, and topography- and selection-based verbal behavior. It is hoped that this presentation will demonstrate how Jack Michael's method of teaching (Michael, 1991), and his refinements of Verbal Behavior, can help students, professors, and others comprehend and use what Skinner considered to be his most important work (Skinner, 1978).
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
| COA | 1 | — |
Mark Sundberg, Ph.D., BCBA-D received his doctorate degree in Applied Behavior Analysis from Western Michigan University (1980) under the direction of Dr. Jack Michael. Dr. Sundberg is the author of the VB-MAPP and co-author of the ABLLS and the book Teaching Language to Children with Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities. He has published over 50 professional papers and 6 book chapters. Dr. Sundberg is the founder and past editor of the journal The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, a twice past-president of The Northern California Association for Behavior Analysis, a past-chair of the ABAI Publication Board, and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the B. F. Skinner Foundation. Dr. Sundberg is a licensed psychologist with over 45 years of clinical experience working with children with autism or other intellectual disabilities. His awards include the 2001 “Distinguished Psychology Department Alumnus Award” from Western Michigan University, the 2013 “Jack Michael Outstanding Contributions in Verbal Behavior Award” from ABAI’s Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group, and he was named an ABAI Fellow.
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.