Welcome to a Site of Dr. Beatrice Barrett's Legacy Work
This is a tribute to Dr. Beatrice H. Barrett, who wrote an important page in the history of encouraging and developing Mentally Retardation?s life via strong philosophical influence of science of behavior.
Her strong concern was measurement and data analysis of behavior for diagnostic tool to Mentally Retarded children.
This web cites is to recognize her contribution by her research and extension of her line of research for the future academic pursuit.
Behavior is a difficult subject matter, not because it is inaccessible, but because it is extremely complex. Since it is a process, rather than a thing, it cannot easily be held still for observation. It is changing, fluid, and evanescent, and for this reason it makes great technical demands upon the ingenuity and energy of the scientist. But there is nothing essentially insoluble about the problems which arise from this fact. (Skinner, 1953 p. 15)
Under such statement, this Web site is about Dr. Barrett?s contribution towards Mental Retardation population. She eventually her research laboratory was named, ?Behavior Prosthesis Laboratory.? Her devotion goes to improve life of such a population. Behavior Analysis is the vehicle of her research. Intentions of her research was to innovate and create behavior analytic measurement system for mentally retarded children, so that their quality of life (QOL) would be improved.
She ran a behavior analysis base research lab for 30 years at Walter E. Fernald State School. In there, she conducted line of research about discrimination and differentiation, reinforcer assessment, programmed instruction, and classroom adjustment of mentally retarded children, and behavioral dimensions of trainability (functional assessment of severely and profoundly retarded children) as well as staff and teachers training.
About This Site
Goals of this website is to disseminate Dr. Barrett’s research contribution in behavior analysis by a) expanding line of her research towards neuro-operant area, and b) preserving and organizing her accomplishment including research data and documents and articles, and make them usefully available with respect to the history of this line of research and to scholar, students and anybody who is interested in behavior analysis and its data.
This is maintained by an endowment that she left for preserve research conducted by her and extend the line of her research that will suit the future technological development.
