Full Answer Section

Watson’s rationale for focusing on observable behavior and the environment was that these are the only things that can be objectively measured and studied. He argued that internal events, such as thoughts and feelings, are subjective and cannot be directly observed.

Some important events and developments in behaviorism from Watson’s (1913) declaration of the importance of a behavioral approach through Skinner’s (1974) development of radical behaviorism include:

• 1916: Watson publishes his book Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, which is considered to be the first book on behaviorism.
• 1920: Ivan Pavlov publishes his work on classical conditioning, which shows that learned responses can be conditioned to new stimuli.
• 1938: B.F. Skinner publishes his book The Behavior of Organisms, which outlines the principles of operant conditioning.
• 1947: Skinner publishes his book Walden Two, which is a utopian novel that describes a society based on the principles of behaviorism.
• 1959: Teodoro Ayllon and Jack Michael publish their article “The psychiatric nurse as a behavioral engineer,” which is considered to be one of the first articles on applied behavior analysis.
• 1968: The journal Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis is first published.

Important historical figures that drove these developments in applied behavior analysis include:

• John B. Watson (1878-1958)
• Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
• Teodoro Ayllon (1921-2012)
• Jack Michael (1938-)

The development of behaviorism had a profound impact on our understanding of behavior and on the development of new treatments for a variety of psychological disorders. Applied behavior analysis is now one of the most widely used approaches to treatment for autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities.