They also became experts in child rearing with the publication of The Psychological Care of the Infant and Child in 1928. Watson's ideas of child-rearing were highly radical by anyone's standards. The APA awarded a prestigious Gold Medal to John Watson for his outstanding contributions to psychology in 1957. He died one year later at the age of 80. Today many of the original tenets of behaviorism are finding opposition.
Evidence is mounting to point out the enormous role of heredity in behavior.
Much research has provided enlightenment on the complexities of language and learning that contradict a number of Watson's original ideas. Nevertheless, John Watson had an enormous and lasting impact on the field of psychology. First he changed psychology's major goal from the description and explanation of states of consciousness to the prediction and control of behavior.