Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner Natalia Rodas

Introducution • Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform, and poet. He was the professor of psychology in Harvard University form 1958 until his retirement. Throughout his life he succeeded in various experiments and invention that we will see in the following presentation.

Biography • Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born on March 20, 1904 in the small Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a strong and intelligent housewife. Skinner was an active, out-going boy who loved the outdoors and building things, and actually enjoyed school. However, his brother died at the age of 16, due to a cerebral aneurysm, which had a strong effect on him.

Early Life • During his early life, he showed interest in music and in writing. So, he attended the Hamilton College in New York with the hope of becoming a writer or a puppeteer. He wrote for the school paper, but as an atheist, he was critical of the religious school he attended, which required daily chapel attendance.. He received his 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.

Harvard • 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. However, after reading the works of John Watson and Ivan Pavlov he became interested in behaviorist psychology. • He entered Harvard University as a graduate student in psychology in 1928 and received his degree three years later.

Influences • John Watson • Ivan Pavlov • Jacques Loeb

Skinner’s Theory • “Radical behaviorism which seeks to understand behavior as a function of environmental histories of reinforcing consequences.” • Reinforcement : processes were emphasized by Skinner, and were seen as primary in the shaping of behavior. Positive reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the application of some event, negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior by the removal or avoidance of some event. Both types of reinforcement strengthen behavior, or increase the probability of a behavior reoccurring, the difference is in whether the reinforcing event is something added or something removed. • Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behavior, or decreasing the probability of a behavior reoccurring, by the application of an aversive event or the removal of a rewarding event.

…. • Shaping: it involves first reinforcing a behavior only vaguely similar to the one desired. Once that is established, you look out for variations that come a little closer to what you want, and so on, until you have for example, an animal performing a behavior that would never show up in ordinary life. Skinner and his students have been quite successful in teaching simple animals to do some quite extraordinary things. • Behavior Modification: also referred to as b-mod. Works by extinguishing an undesirable behavior and replacing it with a desirable behavior by reinforcement. It has been used on all sorts of psychological problems such as, addictions, neuroses, shyness, autism, even schizophrenia. B-mod works particularly well with children.

Skinner Box • One of his best known experiments is known as the Skinner Box. It contains one or more levers which an animal can press, one or more stimulus lights and one or more places in which reinforcers like food can be delivered. In one of Skinners’ experiments a starved rat was introduced into the box. When the lever was pressed by the rat a small pellet of food was dropped onto a tray. The rat soon learned that when he pressed the lever he would receive some food. In this experiment the lever pressing behavior is reinforced by food. If pressing the lever is reinforced when a light is on but not when it is off, responses continue to be made in the light. The rat has formed discrimination between light and dark. When one turns on the light, a response occurs, but that is not Pavlov’s conditioned reflex response. Skinner showed how negative reinforcement worked by subjecting the rat to an unpleasant electric current which caused him some discomfort. As the rat moved about the box it would accidentally knock the lever. Immediately after it did so the electric current would be switched off. The rats quickly learned to go straight to the lever after a few times of being put in the box.

Skinner Box • In this experiment Skinner demonstrated the ideas of "operant conditioning" and "shaping behavior." Unlike Pavlov's classical conditioning, operant conditioning is the rewarding of an act that approaches a new desired behavior. Skinner Box

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 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 continued to perform these same actions. Skinner suggested that the pigeons behaved as if they were influencing the automatic mechanism with their "rituals" and that this experiment discarded light on human behavior.

Air Crib • In an effort to help his wife deal with the day to day tasks of child rearing, Skinner thought he might be able to improve upon the standard crib. He invented the air-crib to meet this challenge. An air-crib, also known as a baby tender, is an easily-cleaned, temperature and humidity-controlled box Skinner designed to assist in the raising of babies. • It was one of his most controversial inventions, and was popularly mischaracterized as cruel and experimental.It was designed to make the early childcare more simple, while encouraging the baby to be more confident, mobile, comfortable, healthy and therefore, less prone to cry. • 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 invention.

Cumulative Recorder • Skinner’s invention, the cumulative recorder is an instrument used to record behavior graphically. Initially, its graphing mechanism consisted of a rotating drum of paper equipped with a marking needle. The needle would start at the bottom of the page and the drum would turn the roll of paper horizontally. Each response would result in the marking needle moving vertically along the paper one tick. This makes it possible for the rate of response to be calculated by finding the slope of the graph at a given point.

Operant Conditioning Chamber • Skinner invented the chamber while he was in Harvard. Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure responses of organisms and their orderly interactions with the environment. This device was an example of his lifelong ability to invent useful devices, which included unusual devices in his childhood to the cumulative recorder.

Teaching Machine • The teaching machine was a mechanical device whose purpose was to administer a curriculum of programmed instruction. It set a list of questions, and a mechanism through which the learner could respond to each question. Upon delivering a correct answer, the learner would be rewarded,

Pigeon guided Missile • Project Pigeon as Skinner called it, was potentially an extremely simple and effective solution, but despite an effective demonstration it was abandoned as soon as more conventional solutions were available. The project centered around dividing the nose cone of a missile into three compartments, and encasing a pigeon in each. The compartments for each had a video image of what was in front of them, and the pigeons would peck toward the object, thereby directing the missile. However, Skinner said "our problem was no one would take us seriously."

Written Works • Walden Two: Skinner started his career as an English major, writing poems and short stories. He has, of course, written a large number of papers and books on behaviorism. But he will probably be most remembered by the general run of readers for his book Walden Two, where he describes a utopia-like community run on his operant principles. People, especially the religious right, came down hard on his book. They said that his ideas take away our freedom and dignity as human beings.

Written Works • Beyond Freedom and Dignity: However, e responded to the sea of criticism of Walden Two with another book, also one of his best called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. In this book, Skinner suggests that a technology of behavior could help to make a better society. We would, however, have to accept that an autonomous agent is not the driving force of our actions. Skinner offers alternatives to punishment and challenges his readers to use modern technology for more than just war; science can be used, he holds, to better society.

Awards • 1968 - National Medal of Science from President Lyndon B. Johnson • 1971 - Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation • 1972 - Humanist of the Year Award • 1990 - Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology National Medal of Science

Criticism • Noam Chomsky: Perhaps Skinner's best known critic, Noam Chomsky, published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior two years after it was published. The review became better known than the book itself. It has been credited with launching the cognitive movement in psychology and other disciplines. Skinner, who rarely responded directly to critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's critique. Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, utilizing the same basic motifs as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were, that Skinner's laboratory work could not be extended to humans, that when it was extended to humans it represented scientist behavior attempting to imitate science but which was not scientific, that Skinner was not a scientist because he rejected the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing, that Skinner had no science of behavior, and that Skinner's works were highly conducive to justifying or advancing totalitarianism.

Criticism • Anthony Burgess: In his novel, A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess criticizes Skinner's theories as being immoral, claiming that moral choice is a necessary part of one's humanity. The novel's protagonist, Alex, believes he can be released from prison early by participating in an Ivan Pavlov/Skinner inspired rehabilitation program referred to as the "Ludovico technique," which conditions criminals to become nauseous from the mere thought of violence. Before participating in the program the prison chaplain warns against it, declaring that an action is only good if derived from good intentions. Thus conditioning in any form is criticized for being dehumanizing and oppressive.

Skinner Box Video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl7jr9EVcjI

Bibliography • http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html • http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html • http://www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/publications/ThinkersPdf/skinnere.PDF • http://www.faqs.org/health/bios/33/Burrhus-Frederic-Skinner.html

The End

Burrhus Frederic Skinner