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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 for his emphasis on behaviorism. After earning a doctorate in 1931 he built 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.

 
 
Biography: Burrhus Frederic Skinner

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

(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

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: 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
(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
(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

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.)

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

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

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904August 18, 1990), Ph.D. was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform [1][2][3][4] and poet.[5] He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until retirement in 1974.[6] He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, 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.[7] 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.[8] [9] In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[10] He was an incredibly prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.[11] [12]

Biography

Skinner was born on March 20 1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania to Grace and Moses Skinner. His father was a lawyer. His brother Edward, two and a half years his junior, died at sixteen of a cerebral aneurysm.


He attended Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a writer. While attending, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, and eventually received a 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. But 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.

Skinner received a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard in 1931 and remained at that institution 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 there 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).

Skinner was granted numerous awards in his lifetime. In 1968, he received the National Medal of Science from President Lyndon B. Johnson. Three years later, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation, and in 1972, he was given the Humanist of the Year Award of the American Humanist Association. Just eight days before his death, he received the first Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology by the American Psychological Association (Epstein, 1997).

He died of leukemia and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Theory

He conducted pioneering work in psychology and innovated his own school of Radical Behaviorism, which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences. He is known as the inventor of the operant conditioning chamber (or Skinner box), a research tool used to examine the orderly relations of the behavior of organisms (such as rats, pigeons and humans) to their environment. He is the author of Walden Two, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Verbal Behavior and numerous other books and articles. He discovered what is now called operant conditioning and articulated the now widely accepted term reinforcement as a scientific principle of behavior. His position reflects the extension of the influence of physicist Ernst Mach's The Science of Mechanics to the subject of psychology.[13] Skinner's pioneering research reflected the dual influence of whole organism research in Ivan Pavlov and Jacques Loeb.[14]

Operant Conditioning Chamber

While at Harvard, B. F. Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure organismic responses and their orderly interactions with the environment. This device was an example of his lifelong ability to design and invent useful devices, which included whimsical devices in his childhood [15] 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.[16]

Radical Behaviorism

Finding the Behaviorism of his time to be problematic, Skinner branched off his own version he called Radical Behaviorism[17] 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. Also, unlike all of the other Behaviorisms - Tolman, Hull, Clark and others - Skinner's version radically rejected mediating constructs and the hypothetico-deductive method, [18][13] instead offering a strongly inductive, data driven approach that has proven to be successful in dozens of areas from behavioral pharmacology to language therapy in the developmentally delayed.

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[19] 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. Chomsky himself conceded that it was the "most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such speculations" [20] as a reason for giving it "a review." After a slow reception, perhaps due to its lack of experimental evidence typical of Skinner's previous work [21] Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior has seen a resurgence of interest in applied settings.

Walden Two & Beyond Freedom And Dignity

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

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

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity Skinner suggests that a technology of behavior could help make a better society. However, we would have to accept that an autonomous agent was not the driving force for our actions. Skinner offered alternatives to punishment and challenged his readers to use modern technology for more than just war. Instead science might be used to build a 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: continuous, 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 [22]

Skinner saw the problems of political control not as a battle of domination versus freedom, but as choices of what kinds of control were used for what purposes.[2] Skinner opposed the use of coercion, punishment and fear and supported the use of positive reinforcement.[1] [23](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 more controversial inventions, and was extremely poorly received by the general public due to perceptions of its making child rearing cold and mechanical. 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. Reportedly it had some success in these goals.[24] 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 original.[citation needed]

Urban Legends

One often-repeated but incorrect urban legend claims that Skinner ventured into human experiments by raising his daughter Deborah in a Skinner box (a reference to the Air Crib above), which led to life-long mental illness and a bitter resentment towards her father. Accounts of Deborah's supposed suicide in a bowling alley in Montana even made it to scholarly papers.

In 2004, psychologist and author Lauren Slater published a book, Opening Skinner's Box, which mentioned claims that Deborah Skinner (now Deborah Skinner Buzan) unsuccessfully sued her father for abuse, and later committed suicide. In response, Buzan herself came forward and denounced the story as nothing more than outrageous rumors.[25] Buzan wrote, "there's the story that after my father 'let me out', I became psychotic. Well, I didn't. That I sued him in a court of law is also untrue. And, contrary to hearsay, I didn't shoot myself in a bowling alley in Billings, Montana. I have never even been to Billings, Montana."[24]

This legend might be based on confusion of Skinner's daughter with behaviorist John Watson's granddaughter, Mariette Hartley. Hartley has had some personal problems which she traces to Watson's theories being used in her upbringing.

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.

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.

B.F. Skinner, "'Superstition' in the Pigeon," Journal of Experimental Psychology #38, 1947 [7]

Skinner suggested that the pigeons believed that 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.

Ibid

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). Eduardo J. Fernandez of the Department of Psychology of Indiana University sought to follow up on Staddon and Simmelhag's debunking of Skinner's hypothesis and to "further contrast superstitious versus functional interpretations of behavior" in pigeons. In a 2004 paper titled "Superstition Re-revisited: An Examination of Niche-Related Mechanisms Underlying Schedule Produced Behavior in Pigeons," he demonstrated that what Skinner had seen as "superstitious" behavior was accounted for by the natural foraging behaviors of the species he used as test subjects.[8]

see also Timberlake & Lucas 1985 [26]

Organizational Behavior Management (OBM)

Dr. Thomas F. Gilbert, one of Skinner's Ph.D. students at Harvard, went on to apply Skinnerian theory and findings to improving performance in the world of work. His seminal book is titled Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. This book shows how optimal human performance is a function of a variety of factors which can be categorized as being either: 1) within the Environment (e.g., goal setting, performance feedback, incentives, equipment, organization design and work flow); or 2) within the Individual (e.g., motivation, knowledge, and skills). He goes on to outline an approach to systematically and cost-effectively develop these employee performance support systems to optimize employee and organizational performance. This is an important extension of Professor Skinner's work.

Critics & Criticisms

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 his review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior soon after it was published.[20] The review became better known than the book it purported to review.[5] It has been credited with launching the cognitive movement in psychology and other disciplines.

Chomsky also 'reviewed' Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity utilizing the same basic motifs as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's critiques 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 method of theory testing, that Skinner had no science of behavior, and that Skinner's works were highly conducive to justifying or advancing totalitarianism.[27]

Others

Skinner has often been associated with political and social positions he never espoused and even explicitly objected to [28].

Written Works

  • The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, 1938. ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X.
  • Walden Two, 1948. ISBN 0-02-411510-X.
  • Science and Human Behavior, 1953. ISBN 0-02-929040-6.
  • Schedules of Reinforcement, with C. B. Ferster, 1957. ISBN 0-13-792309-0.
  • Verbal Behavior, 1957. ISBN 1-58390-021-7.
  • The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self Instruction, with James G. Holland, 1961. This self-instruction book is no longer in print, but the B.F. Skinner Foundation web site has an interactive version. ISBN 0-07-029565-4.
  • The Technology of Teaching, 1968.
  • Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, 1969. ISBN 0-390-81280-3.
  • Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1971. ISBN 0-394-42555-3.
  • About Behaviorism, 1974. ISBN 0-394-49201-3, ISBN 0-394-71618-3.
  • Particulars of My Life: Part One of an Autobiography, 1976. ISBN 0-394-40071-2.
  • Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, 1978. ISBN 0-13-770057-1.
  • The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part Two of an Autobiography, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50581-6.
  • Notebooks, edited by Robert Epstein, 1980. ISBN 0-13-624106-9.
  • Skinner for the Classroom, edited by R. Epstein, 1982. ISBN 0-87822-261-8.
  • Enjoy Old Age: A Program of Self-Management, with M. E. Vaughan, 1983.
  • A Matter of Consequences: Part Three of an Autobiography, 1983. ISBN 0-394-53226-0, ISBN 0-8147-7845-3.
  • Upon Further Reflection, 1987. ISBN 0-13-938986-5.
  • Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, 1989. ISBN 0-675-20674-X.
  • Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers, 1959, 1961, 1972 and 1999 as Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition. This book includes a reprint of Skinner's October 1945 Ladies' Home Journal article, "Baby in a Box," Skinner's original, personal account of the much-misrepresented "Baby in a box" device. ISBN 0-87411-969-3 (paperback)

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.
  • 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

  1. ^ a b B. F. Skinner IS JATT, (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 B. F. Skinner, (1971) Beyond Freedom & Dignity. The science of human behavior is used to help us overcome pollution, resource exhaustion, nuclear threats, and overpopulation.
  3. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1968) Technology of Teaching. The science of human behavior is offered as a systematic means to eliminate or reduce the aversiveness of education and radically democratize it for the "95% of students" instead of the current system which, he says, divides students into "those who do not need to be taught and those who cannot be taught."
  4. ^ In general, Skinner argued against the use of punishment and aversive control perhaps even to some extent underestimating the effectiveness of punishment in scientific contexts. His initial "paw slap" evaluation of punishment in The Behavior of Organisms (1938) was more or less proven wrong by Azrin & other later 1960s/1970s studies in punishment in which it was shown that under extremely precise laboratory conditions it might be "effective." However, why punishment is effective is still contested and Skinner's 1953 position has been, even recently, posited as more or less correct.[citation needed]
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/skinner.htm
  7. ^ see Verbal Behavior for research citations.
  8. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1938) The Behavior of Organisms.
  9. ^ C. B. Ferster & B. F. Skinner, (1957) Schedules of Reinforcement.
  10. ^ Review of General Psychology, July, 2002.
  11. ^ http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~allanr/biblio.html, accessed on 5-20-07.
  12. ^ For another bibliography, see [1]
  13. ^ a b Mecca Chiesa, (1994) Radical Behaviorism: the philosophy and the science. [2]
  14. ^ Philip J. Pauly, (1990) Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology. [3] Loeb might have influenced Skinner through J.B. Watson as he was Watson's advisor briefly, but more likely through Crozier who was the head of Physiology at Harvard when Skinner was there.
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1987) "A Thinking Aid," Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 20, 379–380. [4]
  17. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1974) About Behaviorism
  18. ^ B. F. Skinner, (1950) "Are Theories of Learning Necessary?"
  19. ^ 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."
  20. ^ a b A. N. Chomsky, (1957) "A Review of BF Skinner's Verbal Behavior." in the preface, 2nd paragraph
  21. ^ J. Michael, (1984) "Verbal Behavior," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 42, 363–376.
  22. ^ see Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 1974 for example
  23. ^ Picture taken from the LHJ article [5]
  24. ^ a b Snopes.com "One Man and a Baby Box", accessed on 9-26-06.
  25. ^ I was not a lab rat - Guardian, Friday March 12 2004.
  26. ^ Timberlake & Lucas, (1985) "JEAB" [6]
  27. ^ A. N. Chomsky, (1972) "The Case Against B. F. Skinner."
  28. ^ To some extent this position is supported in About Behaviorism (1971) which mentions many common misconceptions about Radical Behaviorism.

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