Francis Mechner

Francis Mechner is an American research psychologist best known for having developed and introduced (in 1959) a formal symbolic language for the codification and notation of behavioral contingencies. He has published articles about the language's applications in economics, finance, education, environment, business management, biology, clinical practice, and law. Mechner is also known for a variety of contributions to instructional technology and basic research in the field of learning.

Mechner received his PhD in 1957 from the Columbia University Department of Psychology under Professors F. S. Keller and William N. Schoenfeld. As Lecturer on the Department’s teaching faculty from 1955 to 1960, he developed and taught a novel type of laboratory course in experimental psychology in which the students learned to design and conduct experiments on learning, perception, and concept formation, and to analyze and interpret data. He taught two sections of that course—one for Columbia's Teachers College graduate students and one for Columbia graduate and undergraduate students.

Throughout his career, Mechner continued to conduct basic and applied research in the fields of learning and educational technology. In 1957, as Director of the Schering Corporation psychopharmacology laboratory, he built the first computerized behavior research laboratory in which he conducted research on behavioral effect of drugs, and basic behavior research using rats, pigeons, monkeys, and humans. In 1960 he introduced a new instructional technology in conjunction with his founding of Basic Systems, Inc. with business partner David Padwa, a company they sold to Xerox Corporation in 1965. Key aspects of this technology are the specification of learning objectives at the outset of the development process, analysis of the subject matter in terms of its component skills and concepts, the systematic sequencing of these, active response by the learner, and cycles of testing and revision of the material on the intended target population.

Mechner applied this technology to elementary school and high school courses in science and mathematics, nursing and medical education, for the training of industry personnel, and in 1962 for interpersonal skill training via the audio-lingual programs in “Effective Listening” and “Professional Selling Skills.” The latter, when marketed by Xerox Learning Systems (the renamed Basic Systems, Inc.) and later by Learning International, Inc., was claimed to be the most widely used training system of all time. Another Basic Systems-Xerox program that applies this technology and is still being sold today is “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess.”

In 1963, under a contract with the office of Governor Peabody of Massachusetts, Dr. Mechner developed the design for a residential training center for disadvantaged youths, and in 1965 the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity awarded his company Basic Systems, Inc. a contract for establishing and operating such a Job Corps Training Center in Huntington, West Virginia The Job Corps Training Centers that were subsequently established throughout the United States under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 were based in part on that design.

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