Nathan H. Azrin: A Case Study in Research Translation in Behavior Science

Abstract

Nathan H. Azrin (1930-2013) contributed extensively to the fields of experimental and applied behavior analysis. His creative and prolific research programs covered a wide range of experimental and applied areas that resulted in 160 articles and several books published over a period of almost 6 decades. As a result, his career illustrates an unparalleled example of translational work in behavior analysis, which has had a major impact not only within our field, but across disciplines and outside academia. In the current article we present a summary of Azrin's wide ranging contributions in the areas of punishment, behavioral engineering, conditioned reinforcement and token economies, feeding disorders, toilet training, overcorrection, habit disorders, in-class behavior, job finding, marital therapy, and substance abuse. In addition, we use scientometric evidence to gain an insight on Azrin's general approach to treatment evaluation and programmatic research. The analysis of Azrin's approach to research, we believe, holds important lessons to behavior analysts today with an interest in the applied and translational sectors of our science.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40614-020-00278-4.

Keywords: Azrin; scientometrics; sociology of scientific knowledge; translational research.

Fig. 1

Azrin’s cumulative number of publications and citations, period 1956–2020 (Source: Scopus; Search date: September 12, 2020).

Fig. 2

Illustrations of some of the designs by Azrin and colleagues in their studies on behavioral engineering. Panel A shows the apparatus designed for the treatment of slouching (Azrin, Rubin, et al., , p. 102). Panel B illustrate the devices implemented for the treatment of toilet training in patients with cognitive disability (Azrin et al., , p. 250). Reprinted with permission.

Fig. 3

The effect of the overcorrective oral hygiene and verbal warning procedures on mouthing in a child with intellectual disability. The ordinate is labeled in terms of the percent of time samples in which mouthing was observed. The first slash marks on the abscissa indicates a three-month period. During the baseline periods, no contingencies were in effect for mouthing. From Foxx and Azrin (1973b). Reprinted with permission.

Fig. 4

Left: Citations per year of Azrin and Nunn's Habit Reversal: A Method for Eliminating Nervous Habits and Tics before and after the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the habit reversal method. Right: Cumulative all-time citations of Azrin's publications on habit reversal (1973–1995) disaggregated by research design.

Figure 5.

A 3-month wait-list randomized controlled trial by Azrin and Peterson (1990) illustrates a compromise between single-subject analysis and RCT methodology. Reprinted with permission.