Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

B.F. Skinner

 
Who2 Biography: B.F. Skinner, Psychologist
B. F. Skinner
Source

  • Born: 20 March 1904
  • Birthplace: Susquehana, Pennsylvania
  • Died: 18 August 1990
  • Best Known As: The behaviorist who invented the Skinner Box

Name at birth: Burrhus Frederic Skinner

B.F. Skinner was one of the 20th century's most famous psychologists, known especially for his emphasis on behaviorism. After earning a doctorate in 1931, Skinner built his work on the conditioned response theories of Ivan Pavlov. A professor at Harvard University for many years, Skinner authored several books, including The Behavior of Organisms (1938), Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) and the novel Walden Two (1948). He developed the "air-crib," a modified crib designed to take care of infants' needs, and the Skinner box, a laboratory device for animal experimentation, designed to study responses to external stimuli.

The story that Skinner raised his own daughter in a box is untrue.

Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics
Biography: Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Top

The American experimental psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) became the chief exponent of that form of behaviorism known as operationism, or operant behaviorism.

Born in Susquehanna, PA, B. F. Skinner attended Hamilton College. He then went to Harvard, where he received a master's degree in 1930 and a doctorate in experimental psychology in 1931. In 1936 he began teaching at the University of Minnesota, the same year he married Yvonne Blue; they had two daughters.

In Skinner's first book, Behavior of Organisms (1938), he "clung doggedly to the term reflex, thus allowing his immediate psychological roots in classical or early behaviorism." A Guggenheim fellowship enabled him to begin writing Verbal Behavior in 1941. He continued on the fellowship through 1945, finishing most of the manuscript. In 1947 he gave a course at Columbia University and the William James Lecture at Harvard, both based on Verbal Behavior, which, however, he put off publishing for 20 years. Walden Two (1948) described his notions on a feasible design for (utopian) community living.

In 1954 Skinner became chairman of the Department of Psychology at Indiana University and published "Are Theories of Learning Necessary?" Conferences begun at Indiana culminated in 1958 in a new journal, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Air Crib and Skinner Box

Toward the end of World War II, with the birth of his second child, Skinner built an air crib for baby care in which the infant, instead of staying in a tight crib wrapped in layers of cloth, can lie with only a diaper on in an enclosed space which is temperature-controlled and plastic-sheeted, thus allowing the child greater freedom of movement. Many babies are now raised in this way.

During the 1950s, stimulated by an interest in psycho-pharmacology, Skinner studied operant behavior of psychotics at the Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Mass. For his systematic experiments on this type of behavior, Skinner designed his famous Skinner box, a compartment in which a rat, by pressing a bar, learns to repeat the act because each time he does so a pellet of food is received as a reward. Skinner demonstrated that when these reinforcements accompany or follow certain specific behavior, learning occurs in the experimental animal. Such a response, reinforced by food or other means, is called operant behavior and is distinguished from respondent behavior, which is elicited by a stimulus. Skinner's main concern in studying operant behavior and its parameters was neither "with the causal continuity between stimulus and response, nor with the intervening variables, but simply with the correlation between stimulus (S) and response (R)."

Two Important Books

Skinner's books Verbal Behavior (1957), while omitting the citation of experimental evidence for its assertions, gives a highly objective functional account of language, with the basic unit of analysis being the verbal operant. He explains how differential social reinforcement from other members of the speech community forms, strengthens, or weakens dependency relations between stimulus variables and verbal responses. Included also are discussions of how listener "belief" is fortified by reinforced responses to a speaker's words; how the metaphorical expressions of a speaker reflect the kinds of stimuli which control his behavior; how and why it is that we cease verbalizing; suggestions regarding the nature of aphasia; and logical and scientific verbal behavior.

In Schedules of Reinforcement (1957) Skinner and his coauthors reported on a research program that was "designed to evaluate the extent to which an organism's own behavior enters into the determination of its subsequent behavior." They demonstrated that response rates, temporal patterns of rates, and patterning of rate in the temporal vicinity of the reinforcer are dependent upon the schedule of reinforcement. No detailed quantitative laws emerge, however, from their 70,000 hours of data gathering. Schedules is suggestive regarding the power of the operant as a tool to investigate psychopharmacological and neurophysiological problems.

Skinner acknowledged Roger Bacon as an influence on his thinking and formulating. Skinner said that he emulated him because Bacon rejected verbal authority; studied and asked questions of phenomena rather than of those who had studied the phenomena; classified in order to reveal properties; recognized that experimentation included all contingencies, whereas mere observation overstresses stimuli; and realized that if nature can be commanded, it must also be obeyed.

Critics of operationism maintained that it disregarded problems such as motives, personality, thought, and purpose or greatly diminished their relevance or importance. Although Skinner dealt with complex psychological problems, his mode of treatment of these problems was criticized as having been seriously limited. His basic behaviorist viewpoint itself has been questioned recently, in part because it rejects consciousness. The concept of consciousness cannot be omitted from psychology without a serious loss in explaining much that man does - since the viewpoint is completely indifferent to introspection.

On August 18, 1990 Skinner died and was buried at the Mt. Auburn Cemetary in Massachussetts. He left behind many distinctive awards and achievements. In 1968 he was awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1971 he was honored with the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation Award, and in 1985 was given the Albert Einstein School of Medecine award for excellence in psychiatry. Skinner continued to write throughout his later years, authoring such works as Enjoy Old Age (1983), Upon Further Reflection (1986), and Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior.

Further Reading

Skinner's autobiographical account is in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, vol. 5 (1967), edited by E. G. Boring. William S. Sahakian, ed., History of Psychology: A Source Book in Systematic Psychology (1968), has representative selections from Skinner's writings. Richard Isadore Evans, B. F. Skinner: The Man and His Ideas (1968), is a useful full-length study. Skinner's importance in the history of psychology is analyzed in the excellent study of Henryk Misiak and Virginia Staudt Sexton, History of Psychology: An Overview (1966).

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Top

(born March 20, 1904, Susquehanna, Pa., U.S. — died Aug. 18, 1990, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. psychologist and influential theorist of behaviourism. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and first achieved notice with The Behavior of Organisms (1938). In the mid-1940s he presented his "Air-Crib," a soundproof, germ-free, air-conditioned box meant to serve as an optimal environment for the first two years of childhood. In Walden Two (1948), a controversial but popular work, he described a utopia based on behavioral engineering. He spent most of his teaching career at Harvard (1948 – 74). His other works include Science and Human Behavior (1953), Verbal Behavior (1957), Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), and an autobiography (3 vol., 1976 – 83). He received the National Medal of Science in 1968.

For more information on Burrhus Frederic Skinner, visit Britannica.com.

Philosophy Dictionary: Burrhus Frederick Skinner
Top

Skinner, Burrhus Frederick (1904-90) American psychologist, gained his doctorate at Harvard and returned there to work in 1948. In his time one of the most influential of world psychologists, Skinner championed an uncompromising behaviourism. The mind is an unnecessary construct; science concerns itself with inputs and outputs: learning takes place because ‘behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of the consequence modifies the organisms tendency to repeat the behavior in the future.’ It is usually felt that this view of human learning was entirely destroyed by Noam Chomsky in his 1959 review of Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour, while philosophically the rise of functionalism and cognitive science in general has superseded Skinner's behaviourism.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Top
Skinner, Burrhus Frederic, 1904-90, American psychologist, b. Susquehanna, Pa. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as an instructor until 1936, when he moved to the Univ. of Minnesota (1937-45) and to Indiana Univ., where he was chairman of the psychology department (1945-48). He returned to Harvard in 1948, becoming the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology in 1958. Skinner was the leading exponent of the school of psychology known as behaviorism, which explains the behavior of humans and other animals in terms of the physiological responses of the organism to external stimuli. Like other behaviorists, he rejected unobservable phenomena of the sort that other forms of psychology, particularly psychoanalysis, had studied, concerning himself only with patterns of responses to rewards and stimuli. Skinner maintained that learning occurred as a result of the organism responding to, or operating on, its environment, and coined the term operant conditioning to describe this phenomenon. He did extensive research with animals, notably rats and pigeons, and invented the famous Skinner box, in which a rat learns to press a lever in order to obtain food. Skinner's more well-known published works include The Behavior of Organisms (1938), Walden Two (1948), Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), and About Behaviorism (1974, repr. 1976).

Bibliography

See his autobiography (3 vol., 1984); studies by F. Carpenter (1974) and S. Modgil, ed. (1987).

Education Encyclopedia: B. F. Skinner
Top
(1904–1990)

Burrhus Frederick Skinner pioneered the science of behavioral analysis and positive reinforcement as an educational tool. Skinner grew up in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, a small railroad town thirty miles from the New York state line. His father was an ambitious lawyer for the Erie railroad; his mother, a civic-minded woman that continually reminded Frederick to be aware of "what other people think." Despite his mother's strictures, young Skinner enjoyed his Susquehanna boyhood, roamed the countryside, built ingenious gadgets, and did well in school. In 1922 he was valedictorian of his high school class, having gained a reputation for debating intellectual matters with his teachers. That year he enrolled in Hamilton College, just outside Utica, New York, where he spent a miserable first year as he lacked athletic ability and connections with Hamilton alumni. In his second year, however, he entered a social circle at Hamilton that appreciated intellectual and artistic life. He began writing short stories; one was praised by poet Robert Frost.

Graduating in 1926, Skinner, against the advice of his parents, decided to spend the next year becoming a writer. He moved into their house in Scranton where his father had taken a position as general counsel for a coal company. It was Skinner's "dark year" as he discovered he had "nothing to say" as a writer. But he was drawn toward behavioral psychology, having read philosopher Bertram Russell's favorable review of John B. Watson's Behaviorism (1928). After a short fling with bohemian life in Greenwich Village, Skinner enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University in the psychology department.

Behavioral Analysis

Skinner, however, was not attracted to psychology at Harvard so much as to the physiology of Professor William Crozier, a student of German physiologist Jacque Loeb. Loeb and Crozier insisted that real science depended on controlling experimental results rather than mere observation of the phenomena being studied. For Skinner the foundation of behavioral analysis became the control of experimental variables. By 1930 he had devised an apparatus to control a specific behavior of a rat. Starting with a runway resembling a rat maze, Skinner gradually fashioned a box with a lever that delivered a food pellet when the rat pushed it. He also invented the cumulative recorder, a kymograph-like device that marked a paper every time the rat pressed the lever. He allowed the rat (only one to a box) to be fed a pellet only after it pressed a certain number of times, a behavior control known as schedules of reinforcement. He was able to shape lever-pressing behavior so that every time a rat was put on a particular schedule of reinforcement the rate of lever pressing remained constant. The measured behavior was as regular as a pulse beat and marked the beginning of the science of behavioral analysis.

Skinner took great pains to distinguish his science from the stimulus-response conditioning of Ivan Pavlov. The latter conditioned surgically altered dogs. He measured the increase in saliva flow (the response) when a bell was rung (the stimulus) before feeding. Skinner, on the other hand, always used intact organisms (either rats or pigeons), and was only concerned with lever-pressing behavior, never glandular secretion. He acknowledged Pavlov's pioneering work in reinforcement and conditioning but insisted that the science of behavioral analysis involved operant conditioning. By 1933 he admitted that there were a multitude of rat behaviors that were not conditioned in what became known as the Skinner Box. The rat ran about, stood on hind legs, sniffed, and so forth. But the operation (operant) of lever-pushing was controlled by the schedule of rein-forcement - not immediately by the food itself but by the sound of the magazine as it dropped the pellet. Hence although stimulus and response could not always be identified, let alone controlled, the operant or behavior of lever-pressing could be. The rat was not conditioned, only one class of rat behavior was.

The Behavior of Organisms (1938) clearly established operant behavioral analysis as a new science. Had he only been exclusively concerned with the behavior of rats and pigeons, Skinner would have already secured a significant place in the history of science. But he became a social inventor whose creations (both mechanical and literary) made him one of the most controversial scientists of the twentieth century. The Behavior of Organisms announced Skinner's vision for the future of behavioral analysis: "The importance of a science of behavior derives largely from the possibility of an extension to human affairs" (pp. 441-42). Ultimately this extension would impact American education.

Social Service

Upon leaving Harvard in 1936 (he received his doctorate in 1933 but continued as a junior fellow) Skinner married Yvonne (Eve) Blue after accepting a position at the University of Minnesota. There he began to transfer operant science to social service. During World War II Skinner and a team of students developed a guidance system for bomb-carrying missiles. A pigeon was conditioned through positive reinforcement to peck the aiming device. But the army deemed "Project Pigeon" unfeasible for wartime use. Disappointed but not discouraged, Skinner moved more directly into a career as a social inventor. He turned his attention to building a baby-tender, later trademarked the aircrib, for his youngest daughter, Deborah.

The contraption was a carefully designed enclosed space, thermostatically controlled to allow the infant to move freely without constraining clothes. The child could be removed from the baby-tender at any time. It also freed the mother from constant vigilance over the baby because the infant was much more secure than in a conventional crib. Skinner did not do operant experiments on Deborah in the baby-tender; rather, it was designed to improve the quality of life for both mother and child. After an article in Life magazine, the baby-tender was immediately criticized as another Skinner Box, one that imprisoned the child and destroyed the intimate mother-child relationship. For the first time Skinner's fascination with social invention had thrust him into national limelight and controversy.

Thereafter Skinner became evermore controversial as he moved aggressively into the possibilities for using operant science to build a better world. Walden Two (1948) envisioned a planned environment that shaped the behaviors of a community using operant techniques of positive reinforcement. Community cooperation and welfare were seemingly naturally conditioned and destructive competition disappeared. The novel met fierce critical commentary as many Americans thought it a grotesque distortion of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Nonetheless by the late 1960s the book became a best-seller and several actual communities were established modeled after the fictional Walden Two.

Educational Reform

Leaving the University of Minnesota in 1945, Skinner spent three years at Indiana University before returning to Harvard in 1948. In November 1953 he visited a Cambridge school where Deborah was a student and was appalled by the mathematics instruction. Students were given problems to solve while the teacher walked up and down the aisles, helping some but ignoring others. Some students finished quickly and fidgeted; others struggled. Graded papers were returned days later. Skinner thought there must be a better way and immediately fashioned a crude teaching machine by cutting up manila folders. The manila folder effort evolved into a slider machine used mostly for arithmetic and spelling. Math problems, for example, were printed on cards that students placed in the machine. The right answer caused a light to appear in a hole in the card. Later he made a device that allowed students to compose answers to questions on a tape that emerged from the machine. Later still, students could compose answers on cardboard disks. A lever was moved that covered the student's answer with a Plexiglas plate - an innovation that prevented altering the answer and also revealed the correct one. Students mostly answered correctly because questions were designed sequentially from simple to complex. This "programmed instruction" was engineered with positive reinforcement coming from correctly answering the questions. With few mistakes the student progressed rapidly toward mastering arithmetic and spelling. Hence, learning behaviors were shaped by immediate positive reinforcement.

Skinner did not invent the first teaching machine and gave full credit to Sidney Pressey of Ohio State University who had developed a revolving drum device in 1926. Pressey's machine allowed students to press one of four buttons that revealed the correct or incorrect answer - in effect a multiple choice test. Skinner's machines, however, facilitated programmed instruction designed as sequential positive reinforcement. The teaching machine simply transferred immediate positive reinforcement to the mastery of subject matter. One teacher could not possibly immediately reinforce twenty or thirty students in a classroom. What was needed in American education was a technology that incorporated operant conditioning to shaping the learning behavior of each individual student. Skinner assembled a group of former students and colleagues to produce programmed instruction across of full spectrum of subject matter. He convinced companies such as IBM and Rheem to develop prototype teaching machines that could be mass produced. He hoped for a revolution in American education that he described in Technology of Teaching (1968).

But the companies refused to aggressively market the machines and educational leaders, most notably former Harvard President James Bryant Conant, though initially enthusiastic, lost interest. IBM and Rheem could make more money on safer investments, while Conant believed the machines and programmed instruction had not proved their viability to educational experts in each subject area. Then, too, the fears of school administrators and teachers over losing control of a traditionally structured classroom, and perhaps also their jobs, dampened enthusiasm for the teaching machine and programmed instruction. The failure of his teaching machine to become as common as automobiles and televisions was Skinner's most bitter disappointment as a social inventor. He fervently believed that the survival of American culture depended upon a revolution in education. With population growth threatening to overwhelm the ability of people to avoid catastrophic wars and ecological disasters, only a technology of teaching incorporating behavioral science could properly educate a citizenry capable of effectively coping with an enveloping ominous world.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) was Skinner's last and most controversial social statement. He attacked what he believed were the fictions of individual freedom and autonomous man. Every person was under the control of his or her evolutionary, cultural, and immediate operant or behavioral contingencies. What was needed was not only a frank admission of this reality, but the application of the science of behavioral analysis to social problems - most importantly to the obvious failure of U.S. schools. But the critics and the public read the word beyond in the book title as in place of and were enraged. Skinner made the cover of Time with the inscription, "B. F. Skinner Says We Can't Afford Freedom." He was bewildered by the firestorm of criticism and spent his remaining years answering critics and defending behavioral analysis. He never quite understood the historical entrenchment of treasured American values such as freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, the alternative road for American schools that Skinner, a great and provocative thinker-inventor, devised remains an important contribution to the field of education.

Bibliography

Bjork, Daniel. 1993. B. F. Skinner: A Life. New York: Basic Books.

Skinner, B. F. 1935. "The Generic Nature of the Concepts of Stimulus and Response." Journal of General Psychology 9:40 - 45.

Skinner, B. F. 1938. The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Skinner, B. F. 1948. Walden Two. New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. 1958. "Teaching Machines." Science 129: 969 - 977.

Skinner, B. F. 1968. The Technology of Teaching. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Skinner, B. F. 1971. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Knopf.

Smith, Laurence D., and Woodward, William R., eds. 1996. B. F. Skinner and Behaviorism in American Culture. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press.

— DANIEL BJORK

Works: Works by B. F. Skinner
Top
(1904-1990)

1948Walden Two. The behavioral psychologist presents a utopian community in which positive and negative reinforcements are built into the social structure. The book stirs controversy over the implications of Skinner's vision.

Science Dictionary: B. F. Skinner
Top

An American psychologist of the twentieth century who stressed the similarities between human and animal learning processes. To measure learning, Skinner devised a box (the Skinner box) in which an animal learns to press a lever to get food or water. (See also behaviorism and conditioned response.)

World of the Mind: Burrhus Frederic Skinner
Top
(1904–90). American psychologist, educator, and author, born in the small Pennsylvanian town of Susquehanna. Skinner was educated at Harvard and studied under E. G. Boring, earning his master's and doctoral degrees in 1930 and 1931 respectively. In 1936 Skinner moved to Minneapolis to teach at the University of Minnesota and in 1945 he took a position as chairman of the psychology department at Indiana University. In 1948 he returned to Harvard where he stayed for the rest of his life.

At Harvard he was heavily influenced by the work of B. John Watson, the 'Father of Behaviourism'. Stemming from this influence, Skinner became the foremost exponent in the USA of the behaviourist school of psychology, where mental processes do not determine what we do; rather we are a product of our conditioning. For cognitive psychologists, this throws the baby out with the bathwater, as it rejects consciousness.

Early on in his Harvard career, Skinner invented the cumulative recorder, a mechanical device that recorded every response as an upward movement of a horizontally moving line, where the slope showed the rate of responding. Skinner discovered that the rate at which the rat pressed the bar depended not on any preceding stimulus (as Watson and Pavlov had insisted), but on the following bar presses. Unlike the reflexes that Pavlov studied and which formed the basis of classical conditioning, this kind of behaviour operated on the environment and was controlled by its effects. Skinner named it 'operant behaviour', and the process of arranging the contingencies of reinforcement responsible for the producing this behaviour 'operant conditioning'.

Throughout his career, Skinner insisted that psychology should be a scientific, empirically driven discipline. The principles of reinforcement that he developed were built upon by clinical psychologists and applied to treatment of mental disorders. The application of behaviourism to clinical psychology was not short-lived, as empirically supported treatments for anxiety disorders (e.g. panic disorder, simple phobia) and child conduct problems are based upon behavioural principles, though may be criticized as ameliorating symptoms without affecting cures.

Among his important works are Behaviour of Organisms (1938), Walden Two (a novel, 1948), and The Technology of Teaching (1968). In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971) Skinner advocated mass conditioning as a means of social control. Later works include Particulars of my Life (1976) and Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978).

(Published 1987)

See also behaviourism; behaviourism, Skinner on; conditioning.

— Richard L. Gregory

    Bibliography
  • Bjork, D. W. (1997). B. F. Skinner: A Life.
  • Hawkins, R. (2001). 'The life and contributions of Burrhus Frederick Skinner'. Education and Treatment.


Quotes By: B(urrhus) F(rederic) Skinner
Top

Quotes:

"Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten."

"A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying."

"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything."

"Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless."

"Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters."

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

See more famous quotes by B(urrhus) F(rederic) Skinner

Wikipedia: B. F. Skinner
Top
Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Born March 20, 1904(1904-03-20)
Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
Died August 18, 1990 (aged 86)
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality American
Fields Psychologist
Institutions University of Minnesota
Indiana University
Harvard University
Alma mater Hamilton College
Harvard University
Known for Behavior analysis
Operant conditioning
Radical behaviorism
Verbal Behavior
Operant conditioning chamber
Influences Charles Darwin
Ivan Pavlov
Ernst Mach
Jacques Loeb
Edward Thorndike
William James
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform,[1][2] and poet.[3] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.[4] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism,[5] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[6] He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[7][8] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[9] He was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.[10][11]

Contents

Biography

Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania to Grace and William Skinner. His father was a lawyer. His brother Edward, two and a half years his junior, died at age sixteen of a cerebral hemorrhage.

He attended Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a writer. While attending, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. He wrote for the school paper, but as an atheist, he was critical of the religious school he attended.[12] He received his B.A in English literature in 1926. After graduation, he spent a year at his parents' home in Scranton, attempting to become a writer of fiction. He soon became disillusioned with his literary skills and concluded that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write.

During this time, which Skinner later called "the dark year," he chanced upon a copy of Bertrand Russell's recently published book An Outline of Philosophy, in which Russell discusses the behaviorist philosophy of psychologist John B. Watson. At the time, Skinner had begun to take more interest in the actions and behaviors of those around him, and some of his short stories had taken a "psychological" slant. He decided to abandon literature and seek admission as a graduate student in psychology at Harvard University. While a graduate student, he invented the operant conditioning chamber and cumulative recorder, developed the rate of response as a critical dependent variable in psychological research, and developed a powerful, inductive, data-driven method of experimental research. During this time Skinner was influenced by the physiologist Crozier.

Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in 1931, and remained there as a researcher until 1936. He then taught at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and later at Indiana University, where he was chair of the psychology department from 1946–1947, before returning to Harvard as a tenured professor in 1948. He remained at Harvard for the rest of his career.

In 1936 Skinner married Yvonne Blue (1911–1997); the couple had two daughters, Julie (m. Vargas) and Deborah (m. Buzan). He died of leukemia in 1990 and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Theory

Radical behaviorism which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences.

Reinforcement- processes were emphasized by Skinner, and were seen as primary in the shaping of behavior. A common misconception is that negative reinforcement is some form of punishment. This misconception is rather pervasive, and is commonly found in even scholarly accounts of Skinner and his contributions. To be clear, while positive reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the application of some event (e.g., praise after some behavior is performed), negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the removal or avoidance of some event (e.g., opening and raising an umbrella over your head on a rainy day is reinforced by the cessation of rain falling on you). Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior, or increase the probability of a behavior reoccurring, the difference is in whether the reinforcing event is something applied (positive reinforcement) or something removed or avoided (negative reinforcement). Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behavior, or decreasing the probability of a behavior reoccurring, by the application of an aversive event (punishment) or the removal of a rewarding event (extinction).

Graduate School and Discovery

At the age of 24 Skinner enrolled in the Psychology Department of Harvard University. Still rebellious and impatient with what he considered unintelligent ideas, Skinner found a mentor equally caustic and hard-driving. William Crozier was the chair of a new department of Physiology. Crozier fervently adhered to a program of studying the behavior of "the animal as a whole" without appealing, as the psychologists did, to processes going on inside. That exactly matched Skinner's goal of relating behavior to experimental conditions. The student was encouraged to experiment. Each department, Psychology, and Physiology, assumed the other was supervising the young student, but the fact was he was "doing exactly as I pleased". With his enthusiasm and talent for building new equipment, Skinner constructed apparatus after apparatus as his rats' behavior suggested changes. After a dozen pieces of apparatus and some lucky accidents (described in his A Case History in Scientific Method), Skinner invented the cumulative recorder, a mechanical device that recorded every response as an upward movement of a horizontally moving line. The slope showed rate of responding. This recorder revealed the impact of the contingencies over responding. Skinner discovered that the rate with which the rat pressed the bar depended not on any preceding stimulus (as Watson and Pavlov had insisted), but on what followed the bar presses. This was new indeed. Unlike the reflexes that Pavlov had studied, this kind of behavior operated on the environment and was controlled by its effects. Skinner named it operant behavior. The process of arranging the contingencies of reinforcement responsible for producing this new kind of behavior he called operant conditioning. Because of a fellowship, Skinner was able to spend his next five years investigating not only the effect of following consequences and the schedules on which they were delivered, but also how prior stimuli gained control over behavior-consequence relationships with which they were paired. These studies eventually appeared in his first book, The Behavior of Organisms (1938).[13]

Inventions

Air crib

In an effort to help his wife cope with the day to day tasks of child rearing, Skinner – a consummate inventor – thought he might be able to improve upon the standard crib. He invented the 'air-crib' to meet this challenge. An 'air-crib' [14][15](also known as a 'baby tender' or humorously as an 'heir conditioner') is an easily-cleaned, temperature and humidity-controlled box Skinner designed to assist in the raising of babies.

It was one of his most controversial inventions, and was popularly mischaracterized as cruel and experimental.[16] It was designed to make the early childcare more simple (by greatly reducing laundry, diaper rash, cradle cap, etc.), while encouraging the baby to be more confident, mobile, comfortable, healthy and therefore less prone to cry. (Babies sleep and will sometimes play in aircribs but it's misleading to say they are 'raised' in them. Apart from newborns, most of a baby's waking hours will be spent out of the box.) Reportedly it had some success in these goals.[16] Air-cribs were later commercially manufactured by several companies. Air-cribs of some fashion are still used to this day, and publications continue to dispel myths about, and tout the progressive advantages of Skinner's invention.[citation needed]

A 2004 book by Lauren Slater [17] caused much controversy by mentioning claims that Skinner had used his baby daughter Deborah in some of his experiments and that she had subsequently committed suicide. The book never refutes such claims and indeed Slater lets the reader believe Deborah has gone into hiding supporting the theory that she might perhaps have been damaged by the experience in the Aircrib. Deborah Skinner (now aka Deborah Buzan) wrote a vehement riposte in the Guardian.[18]

Cumulative recorder

The cumulative recorder is an instrument used to automatically record behavior graphically. Initially, its graphing mechanism has consisted of a rotating drum of paper equipped with a marking needle. The needle would start at the bottom of the page and the drum would turn the roll of paper horizontally. Each response would result in the marking needle moving vertically along the paper one tick. This makes it possible for the rate of response to be calculated by finding the slope of the graph at a given point. For example, a regular rate of response would cause the needle to move vertically at a regular rate, resulting in a straight diagonal line rising towards the right. An accelerating or decelerating rate of response would lead to a curve. The cumulative recorder provided a powerful analytical tool for studying schedules of reinforcement.

Operant conditioning chamber

While at Harvard, B. F. Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure responses of organisms (most often, rats and pigeons) and their orderly interactions with the environment. This device was an example of his lifelong ability to invent useful devices, which included whimsical devices in his childhood [19] to the cumulative recorder to measure the rate of response of organisms in an operant chamber. Even in old age, Skinner invented a Thinking Aid to assist in writing.[20]

Teaching machine

The teaching machine, a mechanical invention to automate the task of programmed instruction

The teaching machine was a mechanical device whose purpose was to administer a curriculum of programmed instruction. It housed a list of questions, and a mechanism through which the learner could respond to each question. Upon delivering a correct answer, the learner would be rewarded.[21]

Pigeon Guided Missile

The US Navy required a weapon effective against the German Bismarck class battleships. Although missile and TV technology existed, the size of the primitive guidance systems available rendered any weapon ineffective. Project Pigeon[22][23] was potentially an extremely simple and effective solution, but despite an effective demonstration it was abandoned as soon as more conventional solutions were available. The project centered around dividing the nose cone of a missile into three compartments, and encasing a pigeon in each. The compartments for each had a video image of what was in front of them, and the pigeons would peck toward the object, thereby directing the missile.[24] Skinner complained "our problem was no one would take us seriously."[25] The point is perhaps best explained in terms of human psychology (i.e., few people would trust a pigeon to guide a missile no matter how reliable it proved).[26]

Radical behaviorism Skinner branched off his own version he called Radical behaviorism which unlike methodological behaviorism did not require truth by consensus so it could accept private events such as thinking, perception and emotion in its account.

Verbal Behavior

Challenged by Alfred North Whitehead during a casual discussion while at Harvard to provide an account of a randomly provided piece of verbal behavior[27] Skinner set about attempting to extend his then-new functional, inductive, approach to the complexity of human verbal behavior. Developed over two decades, his work appeared as the culmination of the William James lectures in the book, Verbal Behavior. Although Noam Chomsky was highly critical of Verbal Behavior, he conceded that it was the "most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such speculations", confusing Skinner's stance with "S-R psychology" [28] as a reason for giving it "a review." Verbal Behavior had an uncharacteristically slow reception, partly as a result of Chomsky's review, paired with Skinner's neglect to address or rebut any of Chomsky's condemnations.[29] Skinner's peers may have been slow to adopt and consider the conventions within Verbal Behavior due to its lack of experimental evidence—unlike the empirical density that marked Skinner's previous work.[30] However, Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior has seen a resurgence of interest in applied settings.[citation needed]

Influence on education

Skinner influenced education as well as psychology. He was quoted as saying "Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching." Skinner asserted that positive reinforcement is more effective at changing and establishing behavior than punishment, with obvious implications for the then widespread practice of rote learning and punitive discipline in education. Skinner also suggests that the main thing people learn from being punished is how to avoid punishment.

Skinner says that there are five main obstacles in learning:

  1. People have a fear of failure.
  2. The task is not broken down into small enough steps.
  3. There is a lack of directions.
  4. There is also a lack of clarity in the directions.
  5. Positive reinforcement is lacking.

Skinner suggests that any age-appropriate skill can be taught using five principles to remedy the above problems

  1. Give the learner immediate feedback.
  2. Break down the task into small steps.
  3. Repeat the directions as many times as possible.
  4. Work from the most simple to the most complex tasks.
  5. Give positive reinforcement.

Skinner's views on education are extensively presented in his book The Technology of Teaching. It is also reflected in Fred S. Keller's Personalized System of Instruction and Ogden R. Lindsley's Precision Teaching.

Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Skinner is popularly known mainly for his books Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The former describes a visit to an imaginary utopian commune in 1940s United States, where the productivity and happiness of the citizens is far in advance of that in the outside world because of their practice of scientific social planning and use of operant conditioning in the raising of children.

Walden Two, like Thoreau's Walden, champions a lifestyle that does not support war or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption, rich social relationships, personal happiness, satisfying work and leisure.[31]

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner suggests that a technology of behavior could help to make a better society. We would, however, have to accept that an autonomous agent is not the driving force of our actions. Skinner offers alternatives to punishment and challenges his readers to use modern technology for more than just war; science can be used, he holds, to better society.

Schedules of reinforcement

Part of Skinner's analysis of behavior involved not only the power of a single instance of reinforcement, but the effects of particular schedules of reinforcement over time.

Skinner's types of schedules of reinforcement involved: interval (fixed or variable) and ratio (fixed or variable).

  • Continuous reinforcement — constant delivery of reinforcement for an action; every time a specific action was performed the subject instantly and always received a reinforcement. This method is prone to extinction and is very hard to enforce.
  • Interval (fixed/variable) reinforcement (Fixed) — reinforcement is set for certain times. (Variable) — times between reinforcement are not set, and often differ.
  • Ratio (fixed or variable) reinforcement (Fixed) — deals with a set amount of work needed to be completed before there is reinforcement. (Variable) — amount of work needed for the reinforcement differs from the last.

Political views

Skinner's political writings emphasized his hopes that an effective and humane science of behavioral control – a technology of human behavior – could help problems unsolved by earlier approaches or aggravated by advances in technology such as the atomic bomb. One of Skinner's stated goals was to prevent humanity from destroying itself.[32] He comprehended political control as aversive or non-aversive, with the purpose to control a population. Skinner opposed the use of positive reinforcement as a means of coercion, citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Emile: or, On Education as an example of freedom literature that "did not fear the power of positive reinforcement".[1] Skinner's book, Walden Two, presents a vision of a decentralized, localized society, which applies a practical, scientific approach and futuristically advanced behavioral expertise to peacefully deal with social problems. Skinner's utopia, like every other utopia or dystopia, is both a thought experiment and a rhetorical piece. In his book, Skinner answers the problem that exists in many utopian novels – "What is the Good Life?" In Walden Two, the answer is a life of friendship, health, art, a healthy balance between work and leisure, a minimum of unpleasantness, and a feeling that one has made worthwhile contributions to one's society. This was to be achieved through behavioral technology, which could offer alternatives to coercion,[1] as good science applied correctly would help society,[2] and allow all people to cooperate with each other peacefully.[1] Skinner described his novel as "my New Atlantis", in reference to Bacon's utopia.[33] He opposed corporal punishment in the school, and wrote a letter to the California Senate that helped lead it to a ban on spanking.[34]

When Milton's Satan falls from heaven, he ends in hell. And what does he say to reassure himself? 'Here, at least, we shall be free.' And that, I think, is the fate of the old-fashioned liberal. He's going to be free, but he's going to find himself in hell.
B. F. Skinner,  from William F. Buckley Jr, On the Firing Line, p. 87.

Superstition in the pigeon

One of Skinner's experiments examined the formation of superstition in one of his favorite experimental animals, the pigeon. Skinner placed a series of hungry pigeons in a cage attached to an automatic mechanism that delivered food to the pigeon "at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior." He discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with whatever chance actions they had been performing as it was delivered, and that they subsequently continued to perform these same actions.[35]

One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return.[36][37]

Skinner suggested that the pigeons behaved as if they were influencing the automatic mechanism with their "rituals" and that this experiment shed light on human behavior:

The experiment might be said to demonstrate a sort of superstition. The bird behaves as if there were a causal relation between its behavior and the presentation of food, although such a relation is lacking. There are many analogies in human behavior. Rituals for changing one's fortune at cards are good examples. A few accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to set up and maintain the behavior in spite of many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has released a ball down the alley but continues to behave as if she were controlling it by twisting and turning her arm and shoulder is another case in point. These behaviors have, of course, no real effect upon one's luck or upon a ball half way down an alley, just as in the present case the food would appear as often if the pigeon did nothing—or, more strictly speaking, did something else.[36]

Modern behavioral psychologists have disputed Skinner's "superstition" explanation for the behaviors he recorded. Subsequent research (for instance, by Staddon and Simmelhag in 1971) while finding similar behavior failed to find support for Skinner's "adventitious reinforcement" explanation for it. By looking at the timing of different behaviors within the interval, Staddon and Simmelhag were able to distinguish two classes of behavior: the terminal response, which occurred in anticipation of food, and interim responses, that occurred earlier in the interfood interval and were rarely contiguous with food. Terminal responses seem to reflect classical (rather than operant) conditioning, rather than adventitious reinforcement, guided by a process like that observed in 1968 by Brown and Jenkins in their "autoshaping" procedures. The causation of interim activities (such as the schedule-induced polydipsia seen in a similar situation with rats) also cannot be traced to adventitious reinforcement and its details are still obscure (Staddon, 1977).

[38]

Awards

Criticism

J.E.R. Staddon

As understood by Skinner, ascribing dignity to individuals involves giving them credit for their actions. To say "Skinner is brilliant" means that Skinner is an originating force. If Skinner's determinist theory is right, he is merely the focus of his environment. He is not an originating force and he had no choice in saying the things he said or doing the things he did. Skinner's environment and genetics both allowed and compelled him to write his book. Similarly, the environment and genetic potentials of the advocates of freedom and dignity cause them to resist the reality that their own activities are deterministically grounded. J. E. R. Staddon (The New Behaviorism, 2001) has argued the compatibilist position, that Skinner's determinism is not in any way contradictory to traditional notions of reward and punishment, as he believed[citation needed].

Noam Chomsky

Perhaps Skinner's best known critic, Noam Chomsky, published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior two years after it was published. The review (1959) became better known than the book itself.[3] It has been credited with launching the cognitive movement in psychology and other disciplines. Skinner, who rarely responded directly to critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's critique. Many years later, Kenneth MacCorquodale's reply[41] was endorsed by Skinner.

Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, utilizing the same basic motifs as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were that Skinner's laboratory work could not be extended to humans, that when it was extended to humans it represented 'scientistic' behavior attempting to emulate science but which was not scientific, that Skinner was not a scientist because he rejected the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing, that Skinner had no science of behavior, and that Skinner's works were highly conducive to justifying or advancing totalitarianism.[42]

Anthony Burgess

In his novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess criticizes Skinner's theories as being immoral, claiming that moral choice is a necessary part of one's humanity. The novel's protagonist, Alex, believes he can be released from prison early by participating in an Ivan Pavlov/B.F. Skinner inspired rehabilitation program referred to as the "Ludovico technique," which conditions criminals to become nauseous from the mere thought of violence. Before participating in the program the prison chaplain warns against it, declaring that an action is only good if derived from good intentions. Thus conditioning in any form is criticized for being dehumanizing and oppressive.

Written works

Articles by B. F. Skinner

See also

Authors on Skinner

  • Bjork, D. W. (1993) B.F. Skinner: a life
  • Dews, P. B. (Ed.)(1970) Festschrift For B. F. Skinner.New York : Appleton-Century-Crofts.
  • Evans, R. I. (1968) B. F. Skinner: the man and his ideas
  • Nye, Robert D. (1979) What Is B. F. Skinner Really Saying?. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall.
  • Sagal, P. T. (1981) Skinner's Philosophy. Washington, D.C. : University Press of America.
  • Skinner, B.F. (1976) Particulars of my life: Part 1 of an Autobiography
  • Skinner, B.F. (1979) The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part 2 of an Autobiography
  • Skinner, B.F. (1983) A Matter of Consequences: Part 3 of an Autobiography
  • Smith, D.L. (2002). On Prediction and Control. B.F. Skinner and the Technological Ideal of Science. In W.E. Pickren & D.A. Dewsbury, (Eds.), Evolving Perspectives on the History of Psychology, Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
  • Wiener, D. N. (1996) B.F. Skinner: benign anarchist

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d B. F. Skinner, (1948) Walden Two. The science of human behavior is used to eliminate poverty, sexual oppression, government as we know it, create a lifestyle without that such as war.
  2. ^ a b Skinner, B. F. (1972). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-553-14372-7. OCLC 34263003. 
  3. ^ a b B. F. Skinner, (1970) "On 'Having' A Poem" talks about the poem, its publication, and contains the poem and a reply to it as well. Real Audio mp3 Ogg
  4. ^ http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
  5. ^ B. F. Skinner, About Behaviorism
  6. ^ see Verbal Behavior for research citations.
  7. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1938) The Behavior of Organisms.
  8. ^ C. B. Ferster & B. F. Skinner, (1957) Schedules of Reinforcement.
  9. ^ Review of General Psychology, June, 2002, pp. 139-152.
  10. ^ http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~allanr/biblio.html, accessed on 5-20-07.
  11. ^ another bibliography
  12. ^ Paraphrased from "Biography of B.F. Skinner". AllPsych.com. http://allpsych.com/biographies/skinner.html. 
  13. ^ http://www.bfskinner.org/BFSkinner/AboutSkinner.html
  14. ^ A photograph of one is in an archive here
  15. ^ Picture taken from the LHJ article
  16. ^ a b Snopes.com "One Man and a Baby Box", accessed on 12-29-07.
  17. ^ Slater, L. (2004) Opening Skinner's Box; Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, London, Bloomsbury
  18. ^ "I was not a lab rat" (Guardian)
  19. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1984) Particulars of My Life. Devices included a potato shooting machine and a perpetual motion machine, as well as a device to separate ripe from unripe berries.
  20. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1987) "A Thinking Aid," Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20, 379–380. [1]
  21. ^ "Programmed Instruction and Task Analysis". College of Education, University of Houston. http://www.coe.uh.edu/courses/cuin6373/idhistory/skinner.html. 
  22. ^ Skinner, B. F. (1960). Pigeons in a pelican. American Psychologist, 15, 28-37. Reprinted in: Skinner, B. F. (1972). Cumulative record (3rd ed.). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,pp. 574-591.
  23. ^ Described throughout Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist: Part two of an autobiography. New York: Knopf.
  24. ^ "Nose Cone, Pigeon-Guided Missile". National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. http://historywired.si.edu/object.cfm?ID=353. Retrieved 2008-06-10. 
  25. ^ "Skinner's Utopia: Panacea, or Path to Hell?". TIME Magazine. September 20, 1971. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909994-5,00.html. 
  26. ^ Richard Dawkins. "Design for a Faith-Based Missile". Free Inquiry magazine 22 (1). http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_22_1.html. 
  27. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1957) Verbal Behavior. The account in the appendix is that he asked Skinner to explain why he said "No black scorpion is falling on this table."
  28. ^ A. N. Chomsky, (1957) "A Review of BF Skinner's Verbal Behavior." in the preface, 2nd paragraph
  29. ^ Richelle, M. (1993). B.F. Skinner: A reappraisal. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
  30. ^ J. Michael, (1984) "Verbal Behavior," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 42, 363–376.
  31. ^ Ramsey, Richard David, Morning Star: The Values-Communication of Skinner's Walden Two, Ph.D. dissertation, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, December 1979, available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI. Attempts to analyze Walden Two, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, and other Skinner works in the context of Skinner's life; lists over 500 sources.
  32. ^ see Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1974 for example
  33. ^ A matter of Consequences, p. 412.
  34. ^ Asimov, Nanette (1996-01-30). "Spanking Debate Hits Assembly". SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle). http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1996/01/30/MN71634.DTL&hw=spanking+debate&sn=009&sc=334. Retrieved 2008-03-02. 
  35. ^ ECON 252, Lecture 8 by Professor Robert Schiller at Yale University
  36. ^ a b Skinner, B.F. "'Superstition' in the Pigeon," Journal of Experimental Psychology #38, 1947.
  37. ^ Classics in the History of Psychology — Skinner (1948)
  38. ^ Timberlake & Lucas, (1985) "JEAB"
  39. ^ "Recipients of the APF Gold Medal Awards". http://www.apa.org/apf/goldmedal.html. Retrieved 2007-12-28. 
  40. ^ "Humanist of the Year". http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/humanists-year.html. Retrieved 2007-12-28. 
  41. ^ On Chomsky's Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior
  42. ^ A. N. Chomsky, (1972) "The Case Against B. F. Skinner."

Bibliography

  • Chiesa, M. (2004).Radical Behaviorism: The Philosophy and the Science ISBN
  • Epstein, R. (1997) Skinner as self-manager. Journal of applied behavior analysis. 30, 545-569. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on: June 2, 2005 from http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/articles/1997/jaba-30-03-0545.pdf
  • Pauly, P. J. {1987} Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, OUP, New York ISBN

Further reading

  • Sundberg, M.L. (2008) The VB-MAPP:The Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program
  • Basil-Curzon, L. (2004) Teaching in Further Education : A outline of Principles and Practice
  • Hardin, C.J. (2004) Effective Classroom Management
  • Kaufhold, J. A. (2002) The Psychology of Learning and the Art of Teaching

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the B.F. Skinner biography from Who2.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Education Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Education. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Science Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.  Read more
World of the Mind. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Second Edition. Copyright © Oxford University Press, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "B. F. Skinner" Read more