Breaking Ground Of The Mental World

Chapter 1 of Opening Skinners Box portrays the life and experiments of one B.F. Skinner. The way this one man researched and spent so many years of his life dedicated to his findings is not only crazy and committed, but encouraging, motivational, and stimulating. Skinner was a neo-behaviorist well-known and notorious for his findings about the behavior animals have when using positive reinforcement and what you can teach them to do with these findings.

American psychologist and writer Lauren Slater, is the author of many books including the criticized and awarded book of Opening Skinner’s Box. This book is based on the recompilation of many psychological experiments presented as narrated as stories. Some readers have strong critics about Slater’s work because of the way she narrated every experiment. Slater added personal opinions and experiences during her researches which were printed in her book. The construction of the experiments conducted in the book is best examined by the first chapter “Opening Skinner’s Box” in this chapter, Slater is portrayed as a good narrator who tried to keep a transparency while looking for the truth about the “baby in

B.F Skinner was an American Psychologist who invented the operant conditioning chamber. The chamber he set up had rats in it and a lever, once the rats pulled the lever they were given a piece of food. After this happened the rate of bar pressing would increase dramatically and remain high until the rat was no longer hungry. He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human

Slater describes how Skinner expanded on Pavlov’s findings about classical conditioning, which showed how a reflex could be conditioned to happen in response to a different stimulus (Slater 10). Skinner felt that it wasn’t just reflexes that could be conditioned but other behaviors as well. He studied animal’s behaviors after they were given a reward or consequence. His famous box studies involved him training rats to be rewarded with food in fixed-ratio schedules,

B.F. Skinner is an American Psychologist from Pennsylvania who developed the idea of Behaviorism after studying at Harvard University (Biography.com Editors, n.d.). He is also known for his works such as, The Behavior of Organisms (1938), the novel Walden Two (1948), and later Beyond Freedom and Human Dignity (1971) which examines behaviorism in society (Biography.com Editors, n.d.).

B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two is a fictional account of a utopia set after World War II built on psychological techniques and behavioral engineering. Its creator, T. E. Frazier, is indicative of Skinner himself, who was a well-known behaviorist and psychologist in the mid-20th Century. “Give me the specifications, and I’ll give you the man!” he boasts in his novel. Although the words are really Frazier’s, they best summarize Skinner’s behaviorist model. Given enough knowledge about man’s behavior, one can manipulate him however he chooses through careful experimentation.

Just as Freud is known as the father of Psychoanalysis, B.F. Skinner is often referred to ask the “the father of operant conditioning.” B.F. Skinner is also known for major contributions to the field of psychology (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly 200 articles and more than 20 books. Skinner was most known for his work in behavior psychology. Behavioral psychology is the psychological practice that focuses on learning new behaviors and how to modify our existing behavior and how that takes place (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). One of his major contributions was his theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means roughly, the changing of behavior by the use of reinforcement, either positive or negative, and which these reinforcements are given after the desired response (About B.F. Skinner, Sept, 2012). Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behavior.

B.F. Skinner: He was one of the prominent propionates of a theory called behaviourism. He also constructed what became known as the ‘Skinner Box’.

Burrhus Frederick (B.F.) Skinner was a Psychologist who had a major influence on the field of education with his work in Operant Conditioning. I chose to do my research and project on this particular Psychologist because he is a name that I remember coming up throughout the years of school. I remember hearing about the Skinner box and experiments that he had done. When I started to research, he was one of the Theorist that continued to appear and it was interesting to read about him and his work.

They were subjected to gears or buttons and scheduled reinforcement. The experiment in this chapter deals with a box of rats he receives from one of his colleagues. He wanted to see if he could use those rats to see if he could train them using positive reinforcement. He wanted to see if hungry rats placed in a box could learn to press a lever if they were rewarded with food. The box had a lever on the side that the rats would eventually find and accidentally knock or

Skinner conducted a series of research experiments with rats and pigeons under controlled laboratory conditions using a specially designed cage. By doing so he sought to demonstrate that behaviour can be created and reinforced by external factors. The puzzle box he created for his experiments has become so widely used that it is now known as the “Skinner box”. Animals would be placed in a cage which had a bar lever mechanism used to dispense food; Skinner would measure the frequency of the bar pressing and introduce different variables into the experiments. This led to his discovery of 'partial reinforcement' and its correlation to the slower extinction of shaped behaviour. When food pellets would only be dispensed once in a while (as opposed to every pressing) Skinner noticed that it took longer for the learnt behaviour to become extinct. The powerful phenomenon of partial reinforcement can be noticed in gambling establishments; a player on a slot machine is more likely to keep up their behaviour of playing if the rewards are unpredictable and occasional. The player becomes more persistent in their gambling in the hope that the next coin will be the winner (Hunt, 1993).

One of the most prominent and influential psychologists of the twentieth century, B.F. Skinner was known as a behavioral psychologist, philosopher of science, and an educational innovator. Throughout his life he did experimental work with animals to discover how patterns of behavior are learned. His initial work was primarily conducted with animals, and later in life he started to work with humans and apply his learning from his pigeon studies to human behavior. He focused on the individual and wrote about how to restructure social systems to improve the quality of life.

     B.F. Skinner was one of the most influential theorists in modern psychology. His work was very important and has been studied by many for years. Skinner was a very straightforward man and a very educated man. His theories have helped mankind in many ways. He has studied the behavior patterns of many living organisms. Skinner was a well-published writer. His work has been published in many journals. He also has written many books on behaviorism. His most important work was the study of behaviorism.

Thereby, Skinner produced experiments whereby rats would navigate through mazes to achieve the goal of a box containing food. His interest was the behaviour of the rat, taking the right turn to achieve the desired result, food. To begin with the rats would take the wrong turn but with experience, they became more skilful. The rats learning behaviour was measured in two ways, firstly the length of time it took from start to end and secondly, the reduction in errors. This was a lengthy experiment which led Skinner to produce ‘the Skinner box’. Whereby, rats learnt to press a lever and pigeons learnt to peck a key in order to attain food, also known as behaviour shaping. This experiment lacks ecological validity as the animals are kept in a controlled environment which is dissimilar to their natural habitat. However, the results which were attained could not have been possible in natural circumstances. Skinner wanted to observe if behaviour could be learned through reaching a desired outcome such as positive reinforcement which needed to be

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and a social philosopher. Skinner is known for his discovery of the theory of operant conditioning (Wikipedia). Skinner was a graduate from Harvard University. Although he understood the importance of classical conditioning, he noted that, “principles of classical conditioning account for only a small portion of learned behaviors” (Woolfolk 250). Skinner expressed that through operant conditioning, behavior is strengthened or weakened by antecedents or consequences. Both theorists’ work have a major influence on learning/behavioral concepts.