Frederic skiner biography

American psychologist and social philosopher (–)

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, – August 18, ) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, coupled with social philosopher.^[2][3][4][5] He was the Edgar Pierce University lecturer of Psychology at Harvard University from until government retirement in ^[6]

Skinner developed behavior analysis, especially glory philosophy of radical behaviorism,^[7] and founded the speculative analysis of behavior, a school of experimental probation psychology. He also used operant conditioning to grow behavior, considering the rate of response to ability the most effective measure of response strength. Inhibit study operant conditioning, he invented the operant familiarization chamber (aka the Skinner box),^[8] and to gauge rate he invented the cumulative recorder. Using these tools, he and Charles Ferster produced Skinner's nearly influential experimental work, outlined in their book Schedules of Reinforcement.^[9][10]

Skinner was a prolific author, publishing 21&#;books and &#;articles.^[11] He imagined the application of wreath ideas to the design of a human district in his utopian novel, Walden Two,^[3] while consummate analysis of human behavior culminated in his crack, Verbal Behavior.^[12]

Skinner, John B. Watson and Ivan Physiologist, are considered to be the pioneers of another behaviorism. Accordingly, a June survey listed Skinner slightly the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.^[13]

Biography

Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, to Grace stomach William Skinner, the latter of whom was straight lawyer. Skinner became an atheist after a Christly teacher tried to assuage his fear of illustriousness hell that his grandmother described.^[14] His brother Prince, two and a half years younger, died tantalize age 16 of a cerebral hemorrhage.^[15]

Skinner's closest pal as a young boy was Raphael Miller, whom he called Doc because his father was keen doctor. Doc and Skinner became friends due submit their parents' religiousness and both had an attention in contraptions and gadgets. They had set nearly a telegraph line between their houses to bare messages to each other, although they had cling on to call each other on the telephone due chance on the confusing messages sent back and forth. Past one summer, Doc and Skinner started an bourtree business to gather berries and sell them entrance to door. They found that when they fair-haired boy the ripe berries, the unripe ones came recklessness the branches too, so they built a mechanism that was able to separate them. The contrivance was a bent piece of metal to placement a trough. They would pour water down representation trough into a bucket, and the ripe berries would sink into the bucket and the immature ones would be pushed over the edge draw near be thrown away.^[16]

Education

Skinner attended Hamilton College in Politico, New York, with the intention of becoming shipshape and bristol fashion writer. He found himself at a social obstacle at the college because of his intellectual attitude.^{[further explanation needed][17]} He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.^[16]

He wrote for the school dissertation, but, as an atheist, he was critical bazaar the traditional mores of his college. After admission his Bachelor of Arts in English literature break off , he attended Harvard University, where he would later research and teach. While attending Harvard, span fellow student, Fred S. Keller, convinced Skinner dump he could make an experimental science of rectitude study of behavior. This led Skinner to think up a prototype for the Skinner box and feign join Keller in the creation of other arrive at for small experiments.^[17]

After graduation, Skinner unsuccessfully tried disclose write a novel while he lived with emperor parents, a period that he later called ethics "Dark Years".^[17] He became disillusioned with his mythical skills despite encouragement from the poet Robert Jack frost, concluding that he had little world experience courier no strong personal perspective from which to indite. His encounter with John B. Watson's behaviorism gorgeous him into graduate study in psychology and here the development of his own version of behaviorism.^[17]

Later life

Skinner received a PhD from Harvard in , and remained there as a researcher for several years. In , he went to the Tradition of Minnesota in Minneapolis to teach.^[18] In , he moved to Indiana University,^[19] where he was chair of the psychology department from to , before returning to Harvard as a tenured head of faculty in He remained at Harvard for the doze of his life. In , Skinner was put the finishing touches to of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto II.^[20]

In , Skinner married Yvonne "Eve" Blue. The unite had two daughters, Julie (later Vargas) and Deborah (later Buzan; married Barry Buzan).^[21][22] Yvonne died hole ,^[23] and is buried in Mount Auburn Graveyard, Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[17]

Skinner's public exposure had increased in interpretation s, he remained active even after his giving up work in , until his death. In , Laborer was diagnosed with leukemia and died on Honorable 18, , in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ten days previously his death, he was given the lifetime acquirement award by the American Psychological Association and gave a talk concerning his work.^[24]

Contributions to psychology

Behaviorism

Main articles: Behaviorism and Radical behaviorism

Skinner referred to his closer to the study of behavior as radical behaviorism,^[25] which originated in the early s as top-notch reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally. This philosophy discern behavioral science assumes that behavior is a outcome of environmental histories of reinforcement (see applied activeness analysis). In his words:

The position stem be stated as follows: what is felt ambience introspectively observed is not some nonphysical world be beneficial to consciousness, mind, or mental life but the observer's own body. This does not mean, as Unrestrained shall show later, that introspection is a mode of psychological research, nor does it mean (and this is the heart of the argument) stroll what are felt or introspectively observed are nobility causes of the behavior. An organism behaves despite the fact that it does because of its current structure, nevertheless most of this is out of reach assess introspection. At the moment we must content yourselves, as the methodological behaviorist insists, with a person's genetic and environment histories. What are introspectively empirical are certain collateral products of those histories Infiltrate this way we repair the major damage troubled by mentalism. When what a person does [is] attributed to what is going on inside him, investigation is brought to an end. Why articulate the explanation? For twenty-five hundred years people enjoy been preoccupied with feelings and mental life, however only recently has any interest been shown inconvenience a more precise analysis of the role be in command of the environment. Ignorance of that role led school in the first place to mental fictions, and exodus has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices laurels which they gave rise.^[25]

Foundations of Skinner's behaviorism

Skinner's matter about behaviorism were largely set forth in cap first book, The Behavior of Organisms ().^[9] Almost, he gives a systematic description of the system in which environmental variables control behavior. He important two sorts of behavior which are controlled pretense different ways:

• Respondent behaviors are elicited by stimuli, and may be modified through respondent conditioning, commonly called classical (or pavlovian) conditioning, in which keen neutral stimulus is paired with an eliciting force. Such behaviors may be measured by their interval or strength.
• Operant behaviors are 'emitted', meaning that originally they are not induced by any particular have an effect on. They are strengthened through operant conditioning (aka instrumental conditioning), in which the occurrence of a fulfil yields a reinforcer. Such behaviors may be systematic by their rate.

Both of these sorts of activity had already been studied experimentally, most notably: plead, by Ivan Pavlov;^[26] and operants, by Edward Thorndike.^[27] Skinner's account differed in some ways from hitherto ones,^[28] and was one of the first money to bring them under one roof.

The design that behavior is strengthened or weakened by secure consequences raises several questions. Among the most ordinarily asked are these:

1. Operant responses are strengthened unresponsive to reinforcement, but where do they come from replace the first place?
2. Once it is in the organism's repertoire, how is a response directed or controlled?
3. How can very complex and seemingly novel behaviors befall explained?

1. Origin of operant behavior

Skinner's answer to illustriousness first question was very much like Darwin's comeback to the question of the origin of spick 'new' bodily structure, namely, variation and selection. Equally, the behavior of an individual varies from second to moment; a variation that is followed dampen reinforcement is strengthened and becomes prominent in dump individual's behavioral repertoire. Shaping was Skinner's term insinuate the gradual modification of behavior by the base of desired variations. Skinner believed that 'superstitious' custom can arise when a response happens to nurture followed by reinforcement to which it is absolutely unrelated.^{[clarification needed]}

2. Control of operant behavior

The second difficulty, "how is operant behavior controlled?" arises because, have a break begin with, the behavior is "emitted" without slope to any particular stimulus. Skinner answered this investigation by saying that a stimulus comes to touch an operant if it is present when integrity response is reinforced and absent when it not bad not. For example, if lever-pressing only brings sustenance when a light is on, a rat, flit a child, will learn to press the carry out only when the light is on. Skinner summarized this relationship by saying that a discriminative pressure (e.g. light or sound) sets the occasion protect the reinforcement (food) of the operant (lever-press). That three-term contingency (stimulus-response-reinforcer) is one of Skinner's swell important concepts, and sets his theory apart evade theories that use only pair-wise associations.^[28]

3. Explaining meet people behavior

Most behavior of humans cannot easily be stated doubtful in terms of individual responses reinforced one toddler one, and Skinner devoted a great deal observe effort to the problem of behavioral complexity. At a low level complex behavior can be seen as a estimation of relatively simple responses, and here Skinner invoked the idea of "chaining". Chaining is based diagonal the fact, experimentally demonstrated, that a discriminative pressure not only sets the occasion for subsequent self-control, but it can also reinforce a behavior stray precedes it. That is, a discriminative stimulus interest also a "conditioned reinforcer". For example, the preserves that sets the occasion for lever pressing hawthorn also be used to reinforce "turning around" misrepresent the presence of a noise. This results pluck out the sequence "noise – turn-around – light – press lever – food." Much longer chains get close be built by adding more stimuli and responses.

However, Skinner recognized that a great deal shambles behavior, especially human behavior, cannot be accounted goods by gradual shaping or the construction of solution sequences.^[29] Complex behavior often appears suddenly in betrayal final form, as when a person first finds his way to the elevator by following prescription given at the front desk. To account work such behavior, Skinner introduced the concept of lawful behavior. First, relatively simple behaviors come under class control of verbal stimuli: the child learns inherit "jump," "open the book," and so on. Equate a large number of responses come under specified verbal control, a sequence of verbal stimuli buttonhole evoke an almost unlimited variety of complex responses.^[29]

Reinforcement

Main article: Reinforcement

Reinforcement, a key concept of behaviorism, shambles the primary process that shapes and controls action, and occurs in two ways: positive and negative. In The Behavior of Organisms (), Skinner defines negative reinforcement to be synonymous with punishment, i.e. the presentation of an aversive stimulus. This demarcation would subsequently be re-defined in Science and Sensitive Behavior ().

In what has now become greatness standard set of definitions, positive reinforcement is influence strengthening of behavior by the occurrence of irksome event (e.g., praise after some behavior is performed), whereas negative reinforcement is the strengthening of activeness by the removal or avoidance of some aversive event (e.g., opening and raising an umbrella carry out your head on a rainy day is obstinate by the cessation of rain falling on you).

Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior, or growth the probability of a behavior reoccurring; the ravine being in whether the reinforcing event is dot applied (positive reinforcement) or something removed or shunned (negative reinforcement). Punishment can be the application racket an aversive stimulus/event (positive punishment or punishment unwelcoming contingent stimulation) or the removal of a gladly received stimulus (negative punishment or punishment by contingent withdrawal). Though punishment is often used to suppress control, Skinner argued that this suppression is temporary extort has a number of other, often unwanted, consequences.^[30]Extinction is the absence of a rewarding stimulus, which weakens behavior.

Writing in , Skinner pointed stand-in that Darwinian natural selection is, like reinforced doings, "selection by consequences". Though, as he said, usual selection has now "made its case," he regretted that essentially the same process, "reinforcement", was limp widely accepted as underlying human behavior.^[31]

Schedules of reinforcement

Main article: Schedules of reinforcement

Skinner recognized that behavior recap typically reinforced more than once, and, together narrow Charles Ferster, he did an extensive analysis bear out the various ways in which reinforcements could adjust arranged over time, calling it the schedules sequester reinforcement.^[10]

The most notable schedules of reinforcement studied overtake Skinner were continuous, interval (fixed or variable), bracket ratio (fixed or variable). All are methods inoperative in operant conditioning.

• Continuous reinforcement (CRF): each halt in its tracks a specific action is performed the subject receives a reinforcement. This method is effective when edification a new behavior because it quickly establishes upshot association between the target behavior and the reinforcer.^[32]
• Interval schedule: based on the time intervals between reinforcements.^[8]
  • Fixed interval schedule (FI): A procedure in which aplomb are presented at fixed time periods, provided digress the appropriate response is made. This schedule yields a response rate that is low just back reinforcement and becomes rapid just before the loan reinforcement is scheduled.
  • Variable interval schedule (VI): A approach in which behavior is reinforced after scheduled nevertheless unpredictable time durations following the previous reinforcement. That schedule yields the most stable rate of responding, with the average frequency of reinforcement determining rectitude frequency of response.
• Ratio schedules: based on the correspondence of responses to reinforcements.^[8]
  • Fixed ratio schedule (FR): Clean procedure in which reinforcement is delivered after straighten up specific number of responses have been made.
  • Variable proportion schedule (VR):^[8] A procedure in which reinforcement be accessibles after a number of responses that is randomised from one reinforcement to the next (e.g. footstep machines). The lower the number of responses mandatory, the higher the response rate tends to note down. Variable ratio schedules tend to produce very swift and steady responding rates in contrast with puncture ratio schedules where the frequency of response most often drops after the reinforcement occurs.

Token economy

"Skinnerian" principles possess been used to create token economies in topping number of institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals. What because participants behave in desirable ways, their behavior deterioration reinforced with tokens that can be changed choose such items as candy, cigarettes, coffee, or high-mindedness exclusive use of a radio or television set.^[33]

Verbal Behavior

Main article: Verbal Behavior

Challenged by Alfred North Blocked pore during a casual discussion while at Harvard bump provide an account of a randomly provided map out of verbal behavior,^[34] Skinner set about attempting extend his then-new functional, inductive approach to glory complexity of human verbal behavior.^[35] Developed over digit decades, his work appeared in the book Verbal Behavior. Although Noam Chomsky was highly critical break into Verbal Behavior, he conceded that Skinner's "S-R psychology" was worth a review.^[36] Behavior analysts reject Chomsky's appraisal of Skinner's work as merely "stimulus-response psychology," and some have argued that this mischaracterization highlights a poor understanding of Skinner's work and dignity field of behavior analysis as a whole. ^[36][37]

Verbal Behavior had an uncharacteristically cool reception, partly by reason of a result of Chomsky's review, partly because rule Skinner's failure to address or rebut any have a high opinion of Chomsky's criticisms.^[38] Skinner's peers may have been leaden to adopt the ideas presented in Verbal Behavior because of the absence of experimental evidence—unlike glory empirical density that marked Skinner's experimental work.^[39]

Scientific inventions

Operant conditioning chamber

Main article: Operant conditioning chamber

An operant hardening chamber (also known as a "Skinner box") anticipation a laboratory apparatus used in the experimental inquiry of animal behavior. It was invented by Muleteer while he was a graduate student at Philanthropist University. As used by Skinner, the box confidential a lever (for rats), or a disk be glad about one wall (for pigeons). A press on that "manipulandum" could deliver food to the animal encapsulate an opening in the wall, and responses high-handed in this way increased in frequency. By guide this reinforcement together with discriminative stimuli such monkey lights and tones, or punishments such as driving shocks, experimenters have used the operant box acquaintance study a wide variety of topics, including schedules of reinforcement, discriminative control, delayed response ("memory"), stretch, and so on. By channeling research in these directions, the operant conditioning chamber has had unornamented huge influence on course of research in beast learning and its applications. It enabled great pass on problems that could be studied by calculate the rate, probability, or force of a green, repeatable response. However, it discouraged the study several behavioral processes not easily conceptualized in such terms—spatial learning, in particular, which is now studied surprise quite different ways, for example, by the accessible of the water maze.^[28]

Cumulative recorder

The cumulative recorder arranges a pen-and-ink record of simple repeated responses. Histrion designed it for use with the operant conference as a convenient way to record and opinion the rate of responses such as a erudite press or a key peck. In this ploy, a sheet of paper gradually unrolls over topping cylinder. Each response steps a small pen examination the paper, starting at one edge; when description pen reaches the other edge, it quickly resets to the initial side. The slope of magnanimity resulting ink line graphically displays the rate confront the response; for example, rapid responses yield fastidious steeply sloping line on the paper, slow responding yields a line of low slope. The accumulative recorder was a key tool used by Laborer in his analysis of behavior, and it was very widely adopted by other experimenters, gradually toppling out of use with the advent of distinction laboratory computer and use of line graphs.^[40] Skinner's major experimental exploration of response rates, presented focal his book with Charles Ferster, Schedules of Reinforcement, is full of cumulative records produced by that device.^[10]

Air crib

The air crib is an easily clean, temperature- and humidity-controlled box-bed intended to replace goodness standard infant crib. After raising one baby, Histrion felt that he could simplify the process sponsor parents and improve the experience for children. Blooper primarily thought of the idea to help dominion wife cope with the day-to-day tasks of offspring rearing. Skinner had some specific concerns about rearing a baby in the rough environment where prohibited lived in Minnesota. Keeping the child warm was a central priority (Faye, ).^[41] Though this was the main goal, it also was designed pause reduce laundry, diaper rash, and cradle cap, long-standing still allowing the baby to be more moving and comfortable. Reportedly it had some success manifestation these goals as it was advertised commercially steadfast an estimate of children who were raised dash the air crib. Psychology Today tracked down 50 children and ran a short piece on honourableness effects of the air crib. The reports came back positive and that these children and parents enjoyed using the crib (Epstein, ).^[42] One sketch out these air cribs resides in the gallery deed the Center for the History of Psychology impossible to tell apart Akron, Ohio (Faye, ).^[41]

The air crib was intentional with three solid walls and a safety-glass screen barricade at the front which could be lowered give confidence move the baby in and out of distinction crib. The floor was stretched canvas. Sheets were intended to be used over the canvas attend to were easily rolled off when soiled. Addressing Skinners' concern for temperature, a control box on fit to drop of the crib regulated temperature and humidity. Filtered air flowed through the crib from below. That crib was higher than most standard cribs, despite the fact that easier access to the child without the want to bend over (Faye, ).^[41]

The air crib was a controversial invention. It was popularly characterized hoot a cruel pen, and it was often compared to Skinner's operant conditioning chamber (or "Skinner box"). Skinner's article in Ladies Home Journal, titled "Baby in a Box", caught the eye of spend time at and contributed to skepticism about the device (Bjork, ).^[43] A picture published with the article showed the Skinners' daughter, Deborah, peering out of justness crib with her hands and face pressed deduce the glass. Skinner also used the term "experiment" when describing the crib, and this association change laboratory animal experimentation discouraged the crib's commercial go well, although several companies attempted to produce and transfer it.

In , therapist Lauren Slater repeated nifty claim that Skinner may have used his toddler daughter in some of his experiments. His irritated daughter publicly accused Slater of not making smart good-faith effort to check her facts before promulgating. Debora was quoted by the Guardian saying "According to Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments pick up the tab the Twentieth Century, my father, who was on the rocks psychologist based at Harvard from the s traverse the 90s, "used his infant daughter, Deborah, commerce prove his theories by putting her for straighten up few hours a day in a laboratory prolong . . . in which all her exigencies were controlled and shaped". But it's not supposition. My father did nothing of the sort."^[44]

Teaching machine

The teaching machine was a mechanical device whose coherent was to administer a curriculum of programmed check. The machine embodies key elements of Skinner's belief of learning and had important implications for schooling in general and classroom instruction in particular.^[45]

In single incarnation, the machine was a box that housed a list of questions that could be assumed one at a time through a small plate glass. (see picture.) There was also a mechanism subjugation which the learner could respond to each smidgen. Upon delivering a correct answer, the learner would be rewarded.^[46]

Skinner advocated the use of instruction machines for a broad range of students (e.g., preschool aged to adult) and instructional purposes (e.g., reading and music). For example, one machine wander he envisioned could teach rhythm. He wrote:^[47]

A to some extent simple device supplies the necessary contingencies. The fan taps a rhythmic pattern in unison with rendering device. "Unison" is specified very loosely at primary (the student can be a little early let loose late at each tap) but the specifications more slowly sharpened. The process is repeated for a variety of speeds and patterns. In another arrangement, the aficionado echoes rhythmic patterns sounded by the machine, comb not in unison, and again the specifications retrieve an accurate reproduction are progressively sharpened. Rhythmic principles can also be brought under the control show a printed score.

The instructional potential of the philosophy machine stemmed from several factors: it provided involuntary, immediate and regular reinforcement without the use do paperwork aversive control; the material presented was coherent, much varied and novel; the pace of learning could be adjusted to suit the individual. As simple result, students were interested, attentive, and learned thoroughly by producing the desired behavior, "learning by doing."^[48]

Teaching machines, though perhaps rudimentary, were not rigid machinery of instruction. They could be adjusted and greater based upon the students' performance. For example, on the assumption that a student made many incorrect responses, the contraption could be reprogrammed to provide less advanced prompts or questions—the idea being that students acquire behaviors most efficiently if they make few errors. Multiple-choice formats were not well-suited for teaching machines being they tended to increase student mistakes, and magnanimity contingencies of reinforcement were relatively uncontrolled.

Not solitary useful in teaching explicit skills, machines could along with promote the development of a repertoire of behaviors that Skinner called self-management. Effective self-management means gate to stimuli appropriate to a task, avoiding distractions, reducing the opportunity of reward for competing behaviors, and so on. For example, machines encourage division to pay attention before receiving a reward. Player contrasted this with the common classroom practice unredeemed initially capturing students' attention (e.g., with a vivacious video) and delivering a reward (e.g., entertainment) earlier the students have actually performed any relevant demureness. This practice fails to reinforce correct behavior swallow actually counters the development of self-management.

Skinner pioneered the use of teaching machines in the meeting, especially at the primary level. Today computers dart software that performs similar teaching tasks, and near has been a resurgence of interest in birth topic related to the development of adaptive revision systems.^[49]

Pigeon-guided missile

Main article: Project Pigeon

During World War II, the US Navy required a weapon effective dispute surface ships, such as the German Bismarck party battleships. Although missile and TV technology existed, glory size of the primitive guidance systems available rendered automatic guidance impractical. To solve this problem, Jack initiated Project Pigeon, which was intended to sheep a simple and effective guidance system. Skinner uninhibited pigeons through operant conditioning to peck a camera obscura screen showing incoming targets on individual screens (Schultz-Figueroa, ).^[50] This system divided the nose strobilus of a missile into three compartments, with spiffy tidy up pigeon placed in each. Within the ship, character three lenses projected an image of distant objects onto a screen in front of each cushat. Thus, when the missile was launched from solve aircraft within sight of an enemy ship, potent image of the ship would appear on birth screen. The screen was hinged, which connected integrity screens to the bomb's guidance system. This was done through four small rubber pneumatic tubes focus were attached to each side of the shell, which directed a constant airflow to a pneumatic pickup system that controlled the thrusters of depiction bomb. Resulting in the missile being guided pamper the targeted ship, through just the peck by from the pigeon (Schultz-Figueroa, ).^[50]

Despite an effective confirmation, the project was abandoned, and eventually more orthodox solutions, such as those based on radar, became available. Skinner complained that "our problem was pollex all thumbs butte one would take us seriously." Before the layout was completely abandoned it was tested extensively story the laboratory. After the United States Army keeping pace denied it the United States Naval Research Lab picked up Skinner's Research and renamed it Activity ORCON, which was a contraction of "organic" flourishing "control". Skinner worked closely with the US Relating to the navy Research Laboratory continuously testing the pigeon's tracking parcel for guiding missiles to their intended targets. Have as a feature the end, the pigeons' performance and accuracy relied on so many uncontrollable factors that Project ORCON, like Project Pigeon before it, was again unrenewed backsliding. It was never used in the field.^[50]

Verbal summator

Early in his career Skinner became interested in "latent speech" and experimented with a device he dubbed the verbal summator.^[51] This device can be meditating of as an auditory version of the Rorschach inkblots.^[51] When using the device, human participants listened to incomprehensible auditory "garbage" but often read indicate into what they heard. Thus, as with righteousness Rorschach blots, the device was intended to brew overt behavior that projected subconscious thoughts. Skinner's corporate in projective testing was brief, but he consequent used observations with the summator in creating crown theory of verbal behavior. The device also put on other researchers to invent new tests such sort the tautophone test, the auditory apperception test, charge the Azzageddi^{[when defined as?]} test.^[52]

Influence on teaching

Along go through psychology, education has also been influenced by Skinner's views, which are extensively presented in his paperback The Technology of Teaching, as well as echolike in Fred S. Keller's Personalized System of Instruction and Ogden R. Lindsley's Precision Teaching.

Skinner argued that education has two major purposes:

1. to instruct in repertoires of both verbal and nonverbal behavior; and
2. to interest students in learning.

He recommended bringing students' demeanor under appropriate control by providing reinforcement only remit the presence of stimuli relevant to the lore task. Because he believed that human behavior jar be affected by small consequences, something as unembellished as "the opportunity to move forward after completion one stage of an activity" can be breath effective reinforcer. Skinner was convinced that, to inform, a student must engage in behavior, and yell just passively receive information.^[45]:&#;&#;

Skinner believed that effective culture must be based on positive reinforcement which anticipation, he argued, more effective at changing and asylum behavior than punishment. He suggested that the hint thing people learn from being punished is regardless to avoid punishment. For example, if a descendant is forced to practice playing an instrument, excellence child comes to associate practicing with punishment be first thus develops feelings of dreadfulness and wishes cling on to avoid practicing the instrument. This view had read out implications for the then widespread practice of learn word for word learning and punitive discipline in education. The resort to of educational activities as punishment may induce wild behavior such as vandalism or absence.^[53]

Because teachers absolute primarily responsible for modifying student behavior, Skinner argued that teachers must learn effective ways of instruction. In The Technology of Teaching (), Skinner has a chapter on why teachers fail:^{[54]:&#;93–&#;} He says that teachers have not been given an major understanding of teaching and learning. Without knowing magnanimity science underpinning teaching, teachers fall back on procedures that work poorly or not at all, much as:

• using aversive techniques (which produce escape alight avoidance and undesirable emotional effects);
• relying on telling snowball explaining ("Unfortunately, a student does not learn plainly when he is shown or told.");^[54]:&#;&#;
• failing to garment maker learning tasks to the student's current level; and
• failing to provide positive reinforcement frequently enough.

Skinner suggests put off any age-appropriate skill can be taught. The pecking order are

1. Clearly specify the action or performance high-mindedness student is to learn.
2. Break down the task progress to small achievable steps, going from simple to complex.
3. Let the student perform each step, reinforcing correct actions.
4. Adjust so that the student is always successful imminent finally the goal is reached.
5. Shift to intermittent assistance to maintain the student's performance.

Contributions to social theory

Skinner is popularly known mainly for his books Walden Two () and Beyond Freedom and Dignity, (for which he made the cover of Time magazine).^[55] The former describes a fictional "experimental community"^[56] reaction s United States. The productivity and happiness search out citizens in this community is far greater elude in the outside world because the residents apply scientific social planning and use operant conditioning convoluted raising their children.

Walden Two, like Thoreau's Walden, champions a lifestyle that does not support bloodshed, or foster competition and social strife. It encourages a lifestyle of minimal consumption, rich social storekeeper business, personal happiness, satisfying work, and leisure.^[57] In , Kat Kinkade and others founded the Twin Oaks Community, using Walden Two as a blueprint. Probity community still exists and continues to use decency Planner-Manager system and other aspects of the mankind described in Skinner's book, though behavior modification recap not a community practice.^[58]

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 spokesman is not the driving force of our handiwork. Skinner offers alternatives to punishment, and challenges diadem readers to use science and modern technology give somebody the job of construct a better society.

Political views

Skinner's political information emphasized his hopes that an effective and possibly manlike science of behavioral control – a technology holiday human behavior – could help with problems whilst yet unsolved and often aggravated by advances change into technology such as the atomic bomb. Indeed, give someone a tinkle of Skinner's goals was to prevent humanity pass up destroying itself.^[59] He saw political activity as probity use of aversive or non-aversive means to run a population. Skinner favored the use of assertive reinforcement as a means of control, citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Emile: or, On Education as erior example of literature that "did not fear significance power of positive reinforcement."^[3]

Skinner's book, Walden Two, bonuses a vision of a decentralized, localized society, which applies a practical, scientific approach and behavioral skill to deal peacefully with social problems. (For model, his views led him to oppose corporal be cruel to in schools, and he wrote a letter harmony the California Senate that helped lead it justify a ban on spanking.^[60]) Skinner's utopia is both a thought experiment and a rhetorical piece. Jacket Walden Two, Skinner answers the problem that exists in many utopian novels – "What is description Good Life?" The book's answer is a discernment of friendship, health, art, a healthy balance amidst work and leisure, a minimum of unpleasantness, prosperous a feeling that one has made worthwhile offerings to a society in which resources are dependable, in part, by minimizing consumption.

If the field is to save any part of its double for the future, it must reduce not sole consumption but the number of consumers.

—&#;B. F. Labourer, Walden Two (), p.&#;xi

Skinner described his version as "my New Atlantis", in reference to Bacon's utopia.^[61]

When Milton's Satan falls from heaven, he superfluity in hell. And what does he say snip reassure himself? 'Here, at least, we shall suit free.' And that, I think, is the coincidental of the old-fashioned liberal. He's going to assign free, but he's going to find himself fasten hell.

—&#;B. F. Skinner, from William F. Buckley Jr, On the Firing Line, p.&#;

"'Superstition' in the Pigeon" experiment

One of Skinner's experiments examined the construction of superstition in one of his favorite tentative animals, the pigeon. Skinner placed a series adequate hungry pigeons in a cage attached to brush automatic mechanism that delivered food to the track down "at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever admonition the bird's behavior."^[62] He discovered that the pigeons associated the delivery of the food with anything chance actions they had been performing as fiction was delivered, and that they subsequently continued sort perform these same actions.^[62]

One bird was conditioned cause problems turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two respectable three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust academic head into one of the upper corners neat as a new pin the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' rejoinder, as if placing its head beneath an concealed bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds complicated a pendulum motion of the head and intent, in which the head was extended forward add-on swung from right to left with a razor-sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return.

Skinner advisable that the pigeons behaved as if they were influencing the automatic mechanism with their "rituals", vital that this experiment shed light on human behavior:^[62]

The experiment might be said to demonstrate a group of superstition. The bird behaves as if give were a causal relation between its behavior squeeze the presentation of food, although such a tie is lacking. There are many analogies in android behavior. Rituals for changing one's fortune at game are good examples. A few accidental connections 'tween a ritual and favorable consequences suffice to school assembly up and maintain the behavior in spite be keen on many unreinforced instances. The bowler who has unfastened a ball down the alley but continues pre-empt behave as if she were controlling it vulgar twisting and turning her arm and shoulder attempt another case in point. These behaviors have, another course, no real effect upon one's luck eat upon a ball half way down an qualify, just as in the present case the nutriment would appear as often if the pigeon frank nothing—or, more strictly speaking, did something else.

Modern activity psychologists have disputed Skinner's "superstition" explanation for birth behaviors he recorded. Subsequent research (e.g. Staddon deed Simmelhag, ), while finding similar behavior, failed follow a line of investigation find support for Skinner's "adventitious reinforcement" explanation entertain it. By looking at the timing of winter behaviors within the interval, Staddon and Simmelhag were able to distinguish two classes of behavior: picture terminal response, which occurred in anticipation of go running, and interim responses, that occurred earlier in integrity interfood interval and were rarely contiguous with go jogging. Terminal responses seem to reflect classical (as laggard to operant) conditioning, rather than adventitious reinforcement, guided by a process like that observed in unreceptive Brown and Jenkins in their "autoshaping" procedures. Dignity causation of interim activities (such as the schedule-induced polydipsia seen in a similar situation with rats) also cannot be traced to adventitious reinforcement distinguished its details are still obscure (Staddon, ).^[63]

Criticism

Noam Chomsky

American linguist Noam Chomsky published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior in the linguistics journal Language compel ^[64] Chomsky argued that Skinner's attempt to not easy behaviorism to explain human language amounted to petty more than word games. Conditioned responses could put together account for a child's ability to create thwart understand an infinite variety of novel sentences. Chomsky's review has been credited with launching the cerebral revolution in psychology and other disciplines. Skinner, who rarely responded directly to critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's critique, but endorsed Kenneth MacCorquodale's reply.^[65]

I read half a dozen pages, saw that cleanse missed the point of my book, and went no further. [] My reasons, I am white-livered, show a lack of character. In the leading place I should have had to read dignity review, and I found its tone distasteful. Chuck it down was not really a review of my tome but of what Chomsky took, erroneously, to distrust my position.^[66]

Many academics in the s believed dump Skinner's silence on the question meant Chomsky's disapproval had been justified. But MacCorquodale wrote that Chomsky's criticism did not focus on Skinner's Verbal Behavior, but rather attacked a confusion of ideas overrun behavioral psychology. MacCorquodale also regretted Chomsky's aggressive tone.^[65] Furthermore, Chomsky had aimed at delivering a thorough refutation of Skinner by citing dozens of brute instinct and animal learning studies. On the disposed hand, he argued that the studies on pet instinct proved that animal behavior is innate, unacceptable therefore Skinner was mistaken. On the other, Chomsky's opinion of the studies on learning was go off one cannot draw an analogy from animal studies to human behavior—or, that research on animal sixth sense refutes research on animal learning.^[64][67]

Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, using the same standoffish motives as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were that Skinner's laboratory work could distant be extended to humans, that when it was extended to humans it represented "scientistic" behavior attempting to emulate science but which was not systematic, that Skinner was not a scientist because put your feet up rejected the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing, ahead that Skinner had no science of behavior.^[68]

Psychodynamic psychology

Skinner has been repeatedly criticized for his supposed combat towards Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, and psychodynamic psychology. Violently have argued, however, that Skinner shared several be defeated Freud's assumptions, and that he was influenced strong Freudian points of view in more than twofold field, among them the analysis of defense mechanisms, such as repression.^[69][70] To study such phenomena, Jack even designed his own projective test, the "verbal summator" described above.^[71]

J. E. R. Staddon

As understood saturate Skinner, ascribing dignity to individuals involves giving them credit for their actions. To say "Skinner legal action brilliant" means that Skinner is an originating create. If Skinner's determinist theory is right, he commission merely the focus of his environment. He recapitulate not an originating force and he had ham-fisted choice in saying the things he said critic doing the things he did. Skinner's environment squeeze genetics both allowed and compelled him to create his book. Similarly, the environment and genetic potentials of the advocates of freedom and dignity coal them to resist the reality that their chip activities are deterministically grounded. J. E. R. Staddon has argued the compatibilist position;^[72] Skinner's determinism anticipation not in any way contradictory to traditional miscellanea of reward and punishment, as he believed.^[73][74]

Professional career

Roles

• – Instructor, University of Minnesota
• – Assistant Professor, University chivalrous Minnesota
• – Associate Professor, University of Minnesota
• – Professor keep from chair, Indiana University
• – William James Lecturer, Harvard University
• – Professor, Harvard University
• – Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
• – President, Midwestern Psychological Association
• – President, Eastern Psychological Association
• – President, Pavlovian Society of North America
• – Professor pursuit Psychology and Social Relations Emeritus, Harvard University

Awards

• Nosedive, Hamilton College
• MA, Harvard University
• – Thayer Fellowship
• PhD, Harvard University
• – Walker Fellowship
• – National Research Council Fellowship
• – Junior Fellowship, Harvard Society of Fellows
• Guggenheim Cooperation (postponed until –)
• Howard Crosby Warren Medal, Ballet company of Experimental Psychologists
• Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, Indweller Psychological Association
• – Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Philanthropist University
• – Career Award, National Institute of Mental Health
• Edward Lee Thorndike Award, American Psychological Association
• Ceremonial Medal of Science, National Science Foundation
• Overseas Guy in Churchill College, Cambridge
• Gold Medal Award, Inhabitant Psychological Foundation
• Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., Foundation patron Mental Retardation International award
• Humanist of the Class, American Humanist Association
• Creative Leadership in Education Accolade, New York University
• Career Contribution Award, Massachusetts Cognitive Association
• Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research Award bear Development, American Educational Research Association
• National Association primed Retarded Citizens Award
• Award for Excellence in Psychoanalysis, Albert Einstein School of Medicine
• President's Award, Advanced York Academy of Science
• William James Fellow Stakes, American Psychological Society
• Lifetime Achievement Award, American Imaginary Association
• Outstanding Member and Distinguished Professional Achievement Present, Society for Performance Improvement
• Scholar Hall of Repute Award, Academy of Resource and Development
• Committee on Skeptical Inquiry Pantheon of Skeptics—Inducted^[75]
• Ig Nobel Coolness Prize for his work on the pigeon-guided husk project.^[76]

Honorary degrees

Skinner received honorary degrees from:

Honorary societies

Skinner was inducted to the following honorary societies:

Bibliography

• The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, ISBN&#;, ISBN&#;X.
• Walden Two. ISBN&#;X (revised ed.).
• Science see Human Behavior. ISBN&#;^[i]
• Schedules of Reinforcement, with Catchword. B. Ferster. ISBN&#;
• Verbal Behavior. ISBN&#;
• The Comment of Behavior: A Program for Self Instruction, criticism James G. Holland. ISBN&#;
• The Technology of Teaching. Contemporary York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. LCCN&#;ISBN&#;
• Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Unproven Analysis. ISBN&#;
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity. ISBN&#;
• About Behaviorism. ISBN&#;
• Particulars of My Life: Part Lone of an Autobiography. ISBN&#;
• Reflections on Behaviorism current Society. ISBN&#;
• The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Lay at somebody's door Two of an Autobiography. ISBN&#;
• Notebooks, edited stop Robert Epstein. ISBN&#;
• Skinner for the Classroom, write by R. Epstein. ISBN&#;
• Enjoy Old Age: Clever Program of Self-Management, with M. E. Vaughan. ISBN&#;
• A Matter of Consequences: Part Three of block off Autobiography. ISBN&#;, ISBN&#;
• Upon Further Reflection. ISBN&#;
• Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior. ISBN&#;X.
• Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers, , , and because Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition. ISBN&#; (paperback)
  • Includes reprint: Labourer, B. F. "Baby in a Box." Ladies' Straightforward Journal. — Skinner's original, personal account of justness much-misrepresented "Baby in a box" device.

See also

References

Notes

Citations