Recollections of Jack Michael and the Application of Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behavior

Abstract

Jack Michael offered a course on verbal behavior almost every year throughout his teaching career. Jack was also interested in the application of Skinner's work and in 1976 began to offer a graduate course at Western Michigan University titled Verbal Behavior Applications. Jack and his students pursued the application of Skinner's work on verbal behavior with dozens of empirical studies during the 1970s. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the publication of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior, the current paper presents some of my recollections of Jack's work on verbal behavior as his student, graduate teaching assistant, and research collaborator during that time period. Keywords B. F. Skinner. Jack Michael. Verbal behavior (1957). Verbal behavior applications Jack Michael dedicated his career to teaching behavior analysis. One of his goals was to impart to students the verbal repertoires necessary to use the concepts and principles of behavior analysis to precisely analyze behavior in any context (Michael, 1995, 2004). In the process of teaching others, he was constantly working on furthering his own understanding of Skinner's writings and refining various aspects along the way (e.g., establishing operations, positive and negative reinforcement, automatic reinforcement). Jack was especially interested in Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior (VB). He argued, like Skinner, that an analysis of VB was essential for a complete account of complex human behavior. However, in the early days of our discipline, very little use was made of Skinner's analysis of VB-an issue that was a constant source of irritation to Jack (e.g., Michael, 1984).

Jack Michael: Colleague and friend

“…Ever the Skinnerian, Jack knew that increasing the precision with which we speak about a topic results in an increased understanding of that topic. It is not surprising, then, that perhaps his most important contribution was in further elucidating Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, learning how to effectively teach such a difficult set of concepts, and providing a lab environment in which he could inspire additional research on and clinical applications of verbal behavior (Sundberg, 2017).…”