Ph.D.

T.V. Joe Layng has over 40 years' experience in the experimental and applied analysis of behavior, with a particular focus on the design of teaching/learning environments. In 1999, Joe co-founded Headsprout, which was acquired by Newell–Rubbermaid in the spring of 2011. At Headsprout, Joe led the scientific team that developed the generative instruction technology that formed the basis of the company’s patented early-reading and reading-comprehension programs, for which he was the chief architect.

He currently serves as a partner at Generategy, LLC, an educational software publisher. Joe earned a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he collaborated with Paul Andronis and Israel Goldiamond on investigating the production of untrained recombinant, complex symbolic repertoires in pigeons from simpler behavioral components, a process the Chicago group described as contingency adduction. This research led to some of the key elements upon which generative learning/instruction technology is based.

Also at Chicago, working with pigeons, Joe investigated animal models of psychopathology, specifically the recurrence of pathological patterns (head-banging) as a function of normal behavioral processes. He also has extensive clinical behavior analysis experience with a focus on ambulatory schizophrenia, especially the treatment of delusional speech and hallucinatory behavior. He taught Behavioral Models and Programs I and II in the clinical doctoral program at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in the mid-1990s.

From 1991 to 1996, Joe was the director of the academic support center, and then dean of Public Agency and Special Training programs at Malcolm X College in Chicago, where he established the award-winning Personalized Curriculum Institute for underprepared college students. Joe is currently a scientific advisor for the DOE-supported Center on Innovations in Learning and is a member of the board of trustees of TCS Education System, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Pacific Oaks College, and the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, where he is also member of the Board of Directors. He recently published the interactive iBook, Decisions and Judgments in Ambiguous Situations: A Conceptual Introduction to Signal Detection Theory.