B. F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner’s theory can also be applied to technology. For example, I strongly support the use of educational software. In fact, I usually use the software that comes along with textbooks. When I was a freshman, I took Psychology 101. The software that accompanied the book had many tests and quizzes on it and it also helped me understand the chapters better. Every time I got a correct answer, the program would cheer and a cartoon character would pop on the screen and do a dance. Even though I was 23, I took the quizzes seriously because I enjoyed watching the dancing cartoon. Similar programs are available for students studying for the ACT and SAT tests. The cartoon reinforces correct answers which effects my future behavior

B.F. Skinner, the man who set the gold standard for shaping in behavioral anyalisis, known for his animal experiments using boxes built his way into becoming America’s leading neo-behaviorist. Skinner entered into the experimental world almost unintentionally, starting out life to become a novelist then completely switching gears on a whim of curiosity. Skinner didn’t start with a plan, he just had a question, he wanted to understand the behavior of living things. Thus, forming his infamous boxes, not knowing where it would lead him, but wanting to see it something was going to come from it.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born and raised in Susquehanna, a little town in Pennsylvania on March 20,1904 (B.F. Skinner Foundation, 2014;Biography.com Editors, n.d.). He was an imaginative and inventive child that built different mechanism which included, a cart that steered backwards, a perpetual motion machine, and a flotation device that separated ripe from unripe fruit (B.F. Skinner Foundation, 2014). As he grew older, he also showed an interest in writing, and the ideas of Francis Bacon, whose ideas of inductive reasoning influenced Skinner (B.F. Skinner Foundation, 2014). According to the B.F. Skinner Foundation (2014) once in college Skinner chose to be a writer, he attended Hamilton and after graduating returned home and wrote a few articles which brought him little to no success. He later moved to New York and worked as a bookstore clerk where he stumbled upon the works of Pavlov and Watson, they held an impression on him and he strived to learn more (B.F. Skinner Foundation, 2014).

Do you remember how you learned how to ride a bike, read a book, or read a book? These and many more activities you are allowed to do are all cause of procedural memory. Procedural memory are the motor skills that you have developed from repeated times. These things, such as walking, talking, eating, start when you are born. You do these motor skills and actions so much that they become more of a habit and you do not notice that you are actually do them. People do not stop and say to their selves “Remember to breath, in, then out” or “to walk, you put your right foot out first, then your left”. That would make life a little more difficult than it already is. Humans and animals can learn with feedback. For example, when we start driving, we will learn the amount of pressure we have to put on the peddle for the car not to go to fast or too slow. “Perceptual learning training with feedback is not formally different from that experienced by a rat required to choose between a triangle and circle, say, when one of these is followed by a given outcome (e.g., access to food) and one is not. Contemporary associative theories of animal discrimination learning (e.g., that proposed by Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) provide an explanation of such learning” (Mitchell & Hall, 2014). Another habit we have as humans are is superstitious learning. Superstitious learning is “actions performed even when there is no causal relationship between the action and its consequences” (Eichenbaum, 2008). For

Chapter 16: “Many people with Asperger’s have an affinity for machines. Sometimes I think I can relate better to a good machine than any kind of person.”(pg.151) Machines are the one thing john feels he has control over, people have emotions, and they carry judgment, where as a machine can’t voice its opinion, it just does exactly what you direct it to do; unlike humans

Jeffrey Skinner wrote the poem, “The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space”. One curious result of researching this poem and author was that the poem wasn’t brought up by the author and public much. Jeffrey Skinner’s writing is a mix of physics, poetry, and theology, and has won many awards. He has been a playwright, but is now the President for Sarabande Books, a publishing company, and a English teacher at The University of Louisville (Jeffrey Skinner). “The Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space” by Jeffrey Skinner mixes his ideas of theology and English together. The poem was intriguing, as Jeffrey mixes the “Infinite Library” with God, while maintaining a personal effect on readers. The text mentions detailed second person and makes

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a famous American psychologist, born on March 20th, 1904 to the parents of Grace and William Skinner. His father was a lawyer and his mother a homemaker, raised him and his younger brother Edward in the little town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His brother whom was two and half years younger than him died at the age of sixteen due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Despite this though, Frederic described his youth as stable and warm.

I think he would most likely disagree with this quote because of all of his study in the conditioning. He beliefs in behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again. This shows that he would most likely disagree because it’s way more than just reading books and passing courses. It has to do with your mind set and that if you don’t try you will suffer consequences. It’s not that simple you won’t just read and learn and then automatically pass it's a lot more than just reading books and passing. You have to understand the material. BF Skinner would 100% disagree with this quote he believes in Classical Conditions which means

I would really like to know what the relationships between our culture, ethics and technology have to do with B.F. Skinner findings. It took me by surprise that some of B.F. Skinner were misleading even the authors in this article was also saying that there are other things to consider in what B.F. Skinner had found through his work in behavior analysis. However, everything he discovered was agreeable. Reading this article had given me a lot of knowledge about B.F. Skinner and psychology as a whole. I did not know that good can also be consequences. I personally thought that good is about doing good things like following the rules and orders that were given to you. But it was not which was interesting because B.F. Skinner mentions that is about we feel during an event in our lifetime. Whether that’s positive or negative reactions. By taking it further following the rules and orders does not result in someone else happiness and progression as a person to know itself personally. That is why a cultural society needs to be balanced. Some will follow the rules and have discipline and some will not who are sometimes careless and under control. What B.F. Skinner mention about well-educated people are the ones who will build a better world I strongly agree with. Since they are the ones who applied their understanding and teach it to others. Overall, this article was worth reading. I wasn’t expecting much of this article but it made me think more about the things they have mentioned that is really important in today’s

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania in 1904. As a child he had an interest in literature and loved to construct mechanical toys and gadgets. While he was a teenager he took an interest in the literary works of Francis Bacon and Charles Darwin. He went to Hamilton College in Clinton, New York where he majored in English language and literature. After college he moved to New York City and worked in a book store this is where he discovered Behaviorism. After reading two books by John Watson, the theory of behaviorisms funder, along with Ivan Pavlvo’s Conditioned Reflexes. He then decided to pursue graduate work in Psychology. He enrolled in Harvard University in 1928 he found that his understanding of behaviorism was

Behaviorism is the branch of psychology associated today with numerous psychologists but one of the most prominent behavioral psychologists of all time, B.F. Skinner really taught people that any behavior is usually immediately affected by its consequences. I having a young child I have seen Skinners theories work in many different facets during my short stint of being a parent. Skinner is a theorist who made his reputation by studying how an individual's behavior might change by responding to his/her environment. The great Skinner wrote "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten",(Skinner, 1964) thus basically meaning that most over and over again behaviors we as

In Skinner’s view, we are resolute by causes external to us, and that free will and human dignity have no place in determining human nature (Pope, 2016). In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner explains that free will and dignity is an illusion and that human nature is based on the doctrine of determinism (Skinner, 1971). This conception corresponds to his vision of a utopian society in Walden Two, which is a “massive distortion of reality,” and, on pristinely logical grounds, the utopian society Skinner envisioned is simply not possible (Pope, 2016). Chomsky, a psycholinguist, argued against Skinner’s claim in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, particularly the claim that language was just another conditioned behavior. His critiques against Skinner

As we learn a theory from Skinner that believes children were born with blank knowledge so that they need input or stimulus to response and produce certain

After studying this unit in history and literature classes, I believe that technology hinders society and our personal lives. We've created a machine that can go beyond human knowledge. Mankind now depend a lot on technology... Skinner's in his quote, " The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. "After studying this unit in history and literature classes I believe that technology hinders society and our personal life.

This essay will explore B. F. Skinner’s view on the focus of psychology and the contrasting view of the mentalists. It will then go on to consider the benefits of Skinners way of seeing psychology and thus how he was able to turn psychology into a science with measurable outcomes and bring evidence into a subject that had become subjective and unquantifiable.