Bf skinner childhood biography of george

With this device, Skinner could study an animal interacting with its environment. He first studied rats in his experiments, seeing how the rodents discovered and used to a level in the box, which dispensed food at varying intervals. Later, Skinner examined what behavior patterns developed in pigeons using the box. The pigeons pecked at a disc to gain access to food.

From these studies, Skinner came to the conclusion that some form of reinforcement was crucial in learning new behaviors. After finishing his doctorate degree and working as a researcher at Harvard, Skinner published the results of his operant conditioning experiments in The Behavior of Organisms His work drew comparisons to Ivan Pavlov, but Skinner's work involved learned responses to an environment rather than involuntary responses to stimuli.

This project was canceled, but he was able to teach them how to play ping pong. Skinner turned to a more domestic endeavor during the war. In , he built a new type of crib for his second daughter Deborah at his wife's request. The couple already had a daughter named Julie. This clear box, called the "baby tender," was heated so that the baby didn't need blankets.

There were no slats in the sides either, which also prevented possible injury. In , Skinner became the chair of the psychology department at Indiana University. But he left two years later to return to Harvard as a lecturer. Skinner received a professorship there in where he remained for the rest of his career. As his children grew, he became interested in education.

Skinner developed a teaching machine to study learning in children. He later wrote The Technology of Teaching Skinner presented a fictional interpretation of some of his views in the novel Walden Two , which proposed a type of utopian society. The people in the society were led to be good citizens through behavior modification—a system of rewards and punishments.

The novel seemed to undermine Skinner's credibility with some of his academic colleagues. Slater's book indicated that this was nothing more than a rumor, but a later review of the book mistakenly stated that it supported the claims. This led to an angry and passionate rebuttal by Skinner's daughter, Deborah, who was very much alive and well.

After attending his daughter's math class in , B. Skinner also developed an interest in education and teaching. During these appearances, he noted that none of the students in the class received any type of immediate feedback on their performance. Some students struggled and were unable to complete the problems, while others finished quickly but really didn't learn anything new.

Skinner believed that the best approach would be to create a device that would shape behavior, offering incremental feedback until the desired response was achieved. Skinner created a math teaching machine that offered immediate feedback after each problem. Although the initial device did not actually teach new skills, eventually, Skinner was able to develop a machine that delivered incremental feedback and presented the material in a series of small steps until students acquired new skills, a process known as programmed instruction.

Skinner later published a collection of his writings on teaching and education titled "The Technology of Teaching. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, , and raised in the small town of Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a homemaker. He grew up with a brother who was two years his junior. Unfortunately, his younger brother Edward died at the age of 16 due to a cerebral hemorrhage.

Skinner later described his Pennsylvania childhood as "warm and stable. While known professionally as B. Skinner, his friends called him Fred. During high school, Skinner started to develop an interest in scientific reasoning, from his extensive study of the works of Francis Bacon. After earning his undergraduate degree, in a period of his life that he would later refer to as the "dark year," B.

Skinner decided to become a writer. During this time, he wrote a dozen short newspaper articles and quickly grew disillusioned with his literary talents, despite receiving some encouragement and mentorship from the famed poet Robert Frost. While working as a clerk at a bookstore, Skinner happened upon the works of Pavlov and Watson, which became a turning point in his life and career.

Inspired by these works, B. Skinner decided to abandon his career as a novelist and entered the psychology graduate program at Harvard University. After receiving his PhD from Harvard in , Skinner continued to work at the university for the next five years, thanks to a fellowship. During this time, he continued his research on operant behavior and operant conditioning.

He married Yvonne Blue in , and the couple went on to have two daughters, Julie and Deborah. Following his marriage, Skinner took a teaching position at the University of Minnesota. This was during the height of World War II, and Skinner became interested in helping with the war effort. He received funding for a project that involved training pigeons to guide bombs since no missile guidance systems existed at the time.

In "Project Pigeon," as it was called, pigeons were placed in the nose cone of a missile and trained to peck at a target that would direct the missile toward its intended target. Although Skinner had considerable success working with the pigeons, the project never came to fruition since radar development was underway. The project was eventually canceled.

However, it did lead to some interesting findings, and Skinner was even able to teach the pigeons to play ping-pong. In , he joined the psychology department at Harvard University, where he kept an office even after his retirement in Drawing on his former literary career, Skinner presented many of his theoretical ideas through fiction.

In his book "Walden Two," he described a fictional utopian society in which people were trained to become ideal citizens through operant conditioning. His book Beyond Freedom and Dignity made B. Skinner a lightning rod for controversy since his work seemed to imply that humans did not truly possess free will. His book About Behaviorism was written, in part, to dispel many of the rumors about his theories and research.

Skinner was diagnosed with leukemia in Just eight days before he died, he was given a lifetime achievement award by the American Psychological Association and delivered a minute talk to a crowded auditorium as he accepted the award. He died on August 18, Among the many recognitions that B. Skinner received were:. Skinner was a prolific author, publishing nearly articles and more than 20 books.

His research and writing quickly made him one of the leaders of the behaviorist movement in psychology. His work also contributed immensely to the development of experimental psychology. Some of Skinner's publications include:. Skinner was a powerful force in the field of psychology. He argued that private events such as thoughts, feelings and perceptions are not fitting subject matters since they cannot be directly observed or studied in an objective manner.

While Skinner agreed that observable behaviors should be the primary focus of psychology, he did not reject the role of internal events. He believed private events could also be included in a scientific study of behavior. However, such events should not be regarded as explanations for behavior, but rather, as behaviors that need explanation themselves.

He pointed to the environment as the ultimate determinant of behavior, both internal and external. Another distinction between traditional and radical behaviorism relates to the importance placed on stimulus-response S-R relationships. Classical behaviorists like Watson and Pavlov felt that all behaviors occur in response to stimuli that preceded them.

Skinner disagreed.

Bf skinner childhood biography of george

While the stimulus-response theory can explain reflexive actions, he argued that it does not adequately account for more complex forms of behavior. He proposed that such behaviors are determined by the consequences they produce. This belief forms the basis of his theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which the consequences of a behavior influence the likelihood of that behavior being repeated in the future.

Skinner outlined two types of consequences - reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement refers to any consequence that increases the likelihood of a behavior recurring; punishment is any consequence that decreases it. To test his theory of operant conditioning, Skinner conducted numerous animal experiments. When pressed, the lever causes food pellets to be delivered to the rat.

If by chance the rat presses the lever and receives a food pellet, its behavior soon changes. The food acts as a reinforcer, causing the rat to deliberately press the lever more frequently. Skinner called this form of learning operant conditioning because the organism actively operates on the environment, producing a consequence. This stands in stark contrast to stimulus-response learning, in which a behavior is passively elicited by the stimulus that preceded it.

In operant conditioning, the organism actively chooses to behave in a particular way, with that behavior being influenced by the consequences that follow. Skinner further broke down each type of consequence into positive and negative forms. Reinforcement whether positive or negative always strengthens behavior; punishment whether positive or negative always weakens it.

Operant conditioning of complex behaviors often involves a process known as shaping. This involves reinforcing successive behaviors that gradually come closer to the behavior you ultimately wish to reinforce. For example, if you wish to train your dog to roll over on command, you could wait until he performs this behavior spontaneously and then reward him for it.

You would then have to wait for the dog to repeat this behavior several times since a single instance of reinforcement would not be enough for him to learn the behavior. No doubt, that would require a great deal of patience. A much faster approach would be to reinforce the dog for successive behaviors leading up to the desired response.

For example, you might start by giving the dog a treat when he sits. Once the dog learns that behavior, you might withhold reinforcement until he lies down. Later, you might present a reward only when he lies down and rolls onto his back, and finally, only when he lies down and rolls over completely. Once a behavior has been conditioned i.

This is known as stimulus generalization. For example, if a rat learns to press a lever for food when it sees a green light come on, he might also press the lever when a red light is switched on. The opposite of stimulus generalization is stimulus discrimination. This is the tendency for a conditioned response to occur in the presence of certain stimuli but not in the presence of others.

The organism learns to distinguish between stimuli that signal a reward and those that do not. If a rat receives a shock for pressing a lever when a red light is on, but receives food for performing the same behavior when a green light is on, it will quickly learn to press the lever only in the presence of a green light. Skinner also found that if a conditioned response is no longer reinforced, it will gradually diminish.

For example, if a baby no longer smiles when you make a silly face, you will eventually stop making that face. This process is known as extinction. The pace at which a conditioned behavior becomes extinct depends in large part on the schedule of reinforcement maintaining that behavior. A schedule of reinforcement is simply a pattern by which responses are reinforced.

The two broad types of schedules spoken of by Skinner are continuous and partial. In continuous reinforcement, every instance of a desired response is reinforced. For example, a child might get a bonus on his allowance every time he aces a math test. In partial reinforcement, some, but not all, instances of the desired behavior are reinforced. The occasional payout received from playing a slot machine is an example of partial reinforcement.

Behaviors that are partially reinforced tend to be more resistant to extinction than those that are continuously reinforced. By showing how behaviors could be learned through outside consequences and rewards, his theories lean to the "determinism" side of the argument. Users discuss this further in this Reddit post about Skinner's positions. It is important to note that while his theories are applied today, not everyone who cites or studies him sees the free will vs.

Behavior modification programs - these programs are designed to increase desirable behaviors and minimize or eliminate undesirable ones. Many of the techniques used in behavior modification are based on the principles of operant conditioning. In one of these techniques, known as a token economy, participants are awarded tokens for appropriate behavior.

The tokens eg. Token economies can be implemented at home, or in institutions such as schools, prisons and psychiatric hospitals. Animal training - animal trainers typically employ the technique of shaping in order to teach complex tricks. By successively rewarding responses that inch closer and closer to the target behavior, trainers have managed to teach animals complex maneuvers and stunts that might otherwise have been impossible.

Biofeedback training - Biofeedback has been used to treat conditions such as anxiety and chronic pain. Individuals are taught techniques such as deep breathing and muscle relaxation, which help to alter involuntary bodily responses such as heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tension. As they engage in these behaviors, recording devices measure bodily changes and transmit the information to them.

Positive changes eg. Superstitions - many superstitions result from accidental reinforcement. Take for example a gambler who happens to blow on his dice just before a big win. Even though his success has absolutely nothing to do with the act of blowing on the dice, he will likely keep engaging in that behavior because it has been reinforced. Addiction - Drug and alcohol addiction can be explained by the reinforcing effects of these substances.

The individual is therefore motivated to engage in repeated drug use. Operant conditioning principles also account for behavioral addictions, such as gambling. Skinner conducted numerous studies to support his view of human nature. However, most of these studies were conducted in laboratories using small animals such as rats and pigeons. Critics argue that generalizations about human behavior cannot be made on the basis of these studies since humans are much more complex.

Skinner has also been criticized for ignoring the role of cognitive and emotional factors in learning. Contrary to what Skinner believed, studies have shown that reinforcement and punishment are not necessary for learning to take place. Behaviors can also be learned through observation and insight. Skinner was a prolific writer who published scholarly papers and 21 books.