In 1973, Georgia Layton and I came to Eugene so I could spend a year as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oregon. One thing led to another, and we’ve been here ever since.
I was thrilled to come to Eugene. Over the previous two years, I had been learning about the exciting new developments in clinical psychology and education that were resulting from the use of the behavioral principles that B.F. Skinner had propounded.
Behaviorism had been around since 1913, when John B. Watson published his paper, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” But Skinner’s book, “Science and Human Behavior,” was the first to thoroughly explore how a science of human behavior could improve human well-being.
Many people were shocked by the notion that human behavior was determined by the environment. Initially, I was one of them. But a small number of psychologists began to seriously explore the possibility that human behavior could be affected by its consequences. One of those people was Jerry Patterson, a psychologist at the UO. He and a number of colleagues began to study how reinforcement could affect behavior.
Their first success came around 1965, when they were asked to work with a hyperactive child in a classroom. The child would push his desk all over the room, wreaking havoc on classroom order. They rigged a radio device that allowed them to turn on a light on the boy’s desk whenever he sat still for 10 seconds. It worked! The boy started to sit still and do his schoolwork.
By 1973, when we came to Eugene, the UO had become a hotbed of research on behavioral interventions. In the College of Education, Hill Walker, Hy Hops, and Charlie Greenwood had developed programs to help children in elementary school learn social skills and how to control their aggression. Siegfried Engelmann, Wesley Becker, and Doug Carnine were developing effective teaching strategies and testing them in schools throughout the country.
In the psychology department, Ed Lichtenstein had created the first effective treatment to help people stop smoking. Peter Lewinsohn had shown that people who were depressed were not engaging in reinforcing activities, and he was developing a treatment program to help them become more active. Bob Weiss was developing one of the first interventions to help married couples reduce their conflict.
Eugene has continued to be one of the leading places in the world for behavioral science research. Work in the College of Education and the psychology department at the UO, along with research at the Oregon Research Institute, the Oregon Social Learning Center and Decision Research, has continued to make significant contributions to our understanding of human behavior and our ability to nurture human well-being.
For example, from the initial work on parenting skills training that Jerry Patterson and John Reid did at ORI and then at OSLC, numerous parenting programs have been developed.
Marion Forgatch has helped Norway implement a program called Parent Management Training Oregon throughout that country.
Patti Chamberlain developed the Treatment Foster Care Oregon model, which helps keep troubled children and youth out of the juvenile justice system, and is being implemented in numerous communities around the country.
Tom Dishion and his colleagues developed the Family Check-Up, which can prevent aggressive social behavior, drug abuse and delinquency.
As a result of these and similar research-based programs, thousands of children have been prevented from developing aggressive behavior and related problems such as academic failure, delinquency and substance abuse, which develop when children become aggressive.
Similarly, initial research on effective ways of helping children develop social, behavioral and academic skills have led to worldwide dissemination of effective teaching strategies and supports for positive social behavior.
The work that Hill Walker and Hy Hops did on helping aggressive children learn to cooperate in school was foundational for the creation of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, a program that helps children succeed in school by establishing a positive school climate. It is being implemented in more than 15,000 schools nationwide. Ed Kame’enui and colleagues have created the Center on Teaching and Learning, which extended the seminal work of Engelmann, Becker and Carnine to gaming programs and technology.
I have long thought that Eugene’s contribution to behavioral science is one of our best-kept secrets. We are not just “Track Town.” We are one of the leading places in the world for ground-breaking behavioral sciences research that improves human well being.
To honor that work, the Oregon Research Institute has scheduled a meeting to celebrate behavioral science in Eugene. The event, which is open to the public, will be held from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sept. 21 at the Oregon Research Institute, 1776 Mill Race Drive in the Riverfront Research Park in Eugene.
Anthony Biglan, senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, is the author of “The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior can Improve Our Lives and Our World.”