THE LEGACY OF JOHN B. WATSON’S BEHAVIORIST MANIFESTO FOR APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

1. Watson’s Legacy: Applied Behavior Analysis

2. The Conceptual Systems Dimension: Naturalism

3. Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It

4. Experimentation was the third legacy of Watson’s (1913b) article for applied beha- vior analysis, in particular, for its analytic dimension. The experimental methods Wat- son described were mainly prediction and control, which presaged Baer et al.’s

5. The field of applied behavior analysis will probably advance best if the published descriptions of its procedures are not only precisely technological, but also strive for relevance to principle.

6. By the time Watson (1913b) published his article, he was an expert in the objective definition, direct observation, and accurate and reliable measurement of behavior (see Todd & Morris, 1986). Starting with his dissertation, he had conducted intensive studies in neuropsychology, for instance, on the sensory and neural bases of learning

7. Applied behavior analysis participated in the history of behavior analysis, but it too, varied. It varied enough to evolve into a separate sub-discipline. Its history in- cluded not only Skinner’s science, but also his philosophy of science (Skinner, 1945), and not only Skinner (Morris, Altus, & Smith, 2005), but also basic researchers with applied interests (Kazdin, 1978, pp. 233-274)

8. Historical Background

9. Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It

10. The Behavioral Dimension: Objectivity

11. Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Intro- spection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent on the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretations in terms of consciousness

12. In the first psychology of consciousness, human consciousness was psychology’s only subject matter and what it studied through introspection. It came in two varieties