Remembering an ABA pioneer: Dr. Jack Michael
Dr. Jack Michael (January 16, 1926 - November 13, 2020)
It is with great sadness that our field of ABA has lost Dr. Jack Michael at age 94 years. Dr. Michael was an American psychologist and professor at Western Michigan University. He developed one of the first token economies and is also a pioneer of behaviour modification and what is now referred to as applied behaviour analysis. Dr. Jack Michael’s most substantive contributions to the field of behaviour analysis include:
A well-defined conceptualization of motivation that can be applied in any setting to improve human behaviour
A career in teaching Skinner’s Verbal Behavior that has greatly influenced university teaching and research programs
An emphasis on behavioural treatments for language acquisition has resulted in autism treatment clinics in the US and internationally
Dr. Jack Michael's Bio
Dr. Jack Michael was a professor emeritus of psychology at Western Michigan University (WMU), where he taught in the behaviour analysis program for 36 years. While at the University of Kansas in 1955, his first academic position after graduating from UCLA, he was influenced by B. F. Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior and, for the rest of his career, advanced behaviour analysis through his teaching and writing. He held faculty positions at the University of Houston, Arizona State University, and WMU, where he taught generations of leaders in the field of behaviour analysis and made pioneering applied and conceptual contributions.
He was one of the founders of the Association for Behavior Analysis International and served as its president in 1979. Dr. Michael has received numerous awards for his achievements, including a distinguished faculty scholar award from WMU, distinguished teaching awards from the American Psychological Association and WMU, and lifetime service awards from ABAI and the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. In 2012, he was the first recipient of an award named in his honour by the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group affiliated with ABAI. Dr. Michael retired from WMU in 2003, after 48 years of teaching.
One of his pivotal articles was The Psychiatric Nurse as a Behavioral Engineer.