Burrhus Frederic Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, March 20, 1904-Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, social philosopher, inventor, and author. He conducted pioneering work in experimental psychology and championed behaviorism, which views behavior as a function of reinforcing environmental histories. He wrote controversial works in which he proposed the widespread use of psychological behavior modification techniques, primarily operant conditioning, to improve society and increase human happiness, as a form of social engineering. A study by the American Psychological Association (APA), published in 2002, ranked him as the most relevant psychologist of the century XX.

Biography

Skinner was born in rural Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Grace and William Skinner, an attorney. He became an atheist after a Christian teacher tried to assuage his fear of hell, which his grandmother had described to him His brother Edward, two and a half years younger, died at sixteen from a cerebral haemorrhage. He attended the Hamilton College in New York with the intention of becoming a writer. After graduation, Skinner spent a year in Greenwich Village trying to train as a fiction writer, but soon became disillusioned with his literary abilities. He thought that he had little experience and lacked a strong personal perspective with which to write. During this period, which he later called "the dark year," he read Bertrand Russell's An Outline of Philosophy, in which Russell discussed the behaviorist philosophy of psychologists, especially John B. Watson.

After his unsuccessful attempt at writing, Skinner became interested in people's behaviors and actions, which led him to study psychology at Harvard University (which at the time was not a cutting-edge institution for psychology).), graduating and receiving his doctorate in 1931. He became part of that institution as a researcher in 1936, and later developed his teaching activity at the University of Minnesota and later at the University of Indiana, before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1948, where he would practice for the rest of his life.

In 1948, he wrote the book Walden Two.

Skinner was the recipient of many accolades throughout his life. In 1968, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Three years later, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Foundation, and in 1972, he was awarded the Humanist of the Year award from the American Humanist Association. Just eight days before his death, he received the first citation for a lifetime contribution to psychology by the American Psychological Association.

Behaviourism

The Superstition of the Dove

The superstition of the pigeon is a classic Skinner experiment that was carried out in 1948. Eight hungry pigeons participated in this experiment, which were introduced into the so-called Skinner box. In this, the pigeons had food at regular intervals regardless of the response they emitted. However, in this experiment it was observed that all the pigeons adopted obvious conditioning, which was an important aspect of this experiment. For example, one pigeon learned to circle counterclockwise around the box, another pigeon stuck its head to one of the upper corners in a very characteristic way, and a third developed the head-shaking response..

Each pigeon therefore developed its own, idiosyncratic response. So much so that it gave the impression that the pigeons behaved in that particular way because they believed that their behavior would cause the food to appear. Nothing is further from reality. It is for this reason that this behavior was called superstitious.

Skinner's explanation of this phenomenon appealed to the reinforcement received: he understood that whatever response the subject had just made just before the food was administered (the reward) would be reinforced by receiving the reward. Otherwise, of the multiple responses that the pigeons emitted before the presentation of the food, the one that happened to be contiguous to the reward would be reinforced. Hence, each pigeon made its particular response (idiosyncratic). It is important to note that this procedure is not, strictly speaking, an operant conditioning procedure. It is a classical conditioning procedure. The scientific literature offers experiments whose results invite us to question the conclusion obtained by Skinner. On the one hand, it has been found that, in a procedure such as the one used by Skinner, relatively specific patterns of behavior are generated that are a function of the proximity to the reinforcer and the animal species used in the experiment. In particular, some researchers have observed that all pigeons develop identical responses, that is, not idiosyncratic ones. However, it is also possible to find other results that support Skinner's explanation by finding that each pigeon develops its own distinctive behavior.

Be that as it may, superstition is a more or less common behavior in human behavior. The ritual of changing one's luck at cards is common. A few random accidental connections between a ritual and favorable consequences are enough to establish sustained behavior despite the fact that there is no causal reinforcement. These behaviors have no real effect on a subject's luck, just as in the case where the pigeon was fed independently of the pigeon's behavior.

Rumors

Students using a "Skynner Box" at the former Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the UNMSM Faculty of Psychology. Lima, Peru, 1999.

An oft-repeated rumor posits that Skinner ventured into human experimentation by putting his daughter Deborah in a Skinner box, which led to her permanent mental illness and a bitter resentment of her father.

However, the latter is false. In fact, the “Heir Conditioner” (play on words in English between “heir conditioner” and “air conditioning”), a term used for Skinner's crib, it was heated, cooled, had filtered air, allowed plenty of room to walk around, and was very similar to a miniature version of a modern house. It was designed to develop the baby's confidence, comfort her, make her cry less, get sick less, etc. And, what is more important, the time that the girl stayed in it was similar to the one that any other child could spend in a normal crib.

In 2005, author and psychologist Lauren Slater published a book, Opening Skinner's Box, "Cuerdos entre locos" in the Spanish translation of Concha Cardeñoso for the editorial ALBA, where he mentioned this rumor according to which Deborah, when she turned thirty-one, denounced her father for ill-treatment before a court of law, lost the case and shot herself in a bowling alley in Billings (Montana). "None of this is true," Slater continues, and yet the myth persists. "Because? What is it about Skinner that inspires us so much fear?

While writing Opening Skinner's Box, Slater interviewed, first by phone and then in person, Deborah's sister, Julie Skinner Vargas. She this she spoke of her father: «she had a very good hand with the children, she adored them...he made us kites, kites with boxes, and we would fly them to Monhegan; she took us to the circus every year, and Hunter, the dog, was a bloodhound and dad taught him to play hide-and-seek... »Asked about her sister Deborah, she answers:« She is an artist, she lives in England, she is happily married. She has taught her cat to play the piano ».

Skinner's own daughter has responded on more than one occasion to these accusations. From the Skinnerian point of view, these would be part of a whole host of inaccuracies and misunderstandings about the author and thought.

Dove Project

One of the most curious and least known projects directed by Skinner was the so-called Pigeon Project, which consisted of training pigeons to be used in World War II as suicide projectiles. Skinner noted that he could condition pigeons to follow and peck at a given shape for food, such as a square or circle. If we place before the pigeon a transparent plate in which the figure of a target is reflected, the pigeon striving to peck the figure will orient its body and head towards the target. And if we enclose the pigeon in a device capable of using the movements of the pigeon to rectify its direction, the device will remain oriented in the direction of the objective. In other words, we will have a projectile capable of pursuing a moving target. Finally, with the help of telecommunications engineers, it was possible to create a very precise device, which was called a pelican projectile because the device's beak was larger than the explosives that the pigeon carried. Pigeons' learning also progressed well as they were able to recognize shapes of ships, planes and tanks. Each pigeon followed only the figure it had learned to follow, and not others that appeared on its screen. They ignored distracting elements such as clouds or smoke. He managed to get up to three pigeons to work as a team pecking in the direction of a target, thus eliminating individual failures, being able to travel three pigeons in the same projectile. Despite the fact that at that time the US did not have any mechanism to guide projectiles and that this mechanism worked in the laboratory, the project was canceled as it was something grotesque and not being taken seriously.

Skinner's theory

Skinner called his class of behaviorism, "radical." Radical behaviorism is the philosophy of behavioral science. It seeks to understand behavior as a function of the past environment. A functional analysis of behavior makes it possible to produce behavioral technologies. Unlike other less austere forms of behaviorism, it does not accept private events such as thought, perception, or unobservable emotions in chance encounters of an organism's behavior:

The perspective can be declared as follows: what is felt or seen introspectively is not a nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life but the body of the observer. This does not mean, as I will show later, that introspection is a kind of psychological research, either means (and this is the heart of the argument) that what is felt or is introspectively observed are the causes of behavior. An organism behaves the way it does because of its present structure, but most of this is out of the scope of introspection. For now we have to be content, as the methodists who study behavior, the genetic history and the environment of a person insist. What is introspectively observed are certain collateral products of these stories. In this way we repair the great damage influenced by mentalists. When what a person does is attributed to what is happening within him, the investigation is brought to an end. Why explain the explanation? For two thousand five hundred years people have been concerned about feelings and mental life, but only recently an interest has been shown in a more accurate analysis of the role of the environment. The ignorance of that role was what began mental fictions, and has been perpetuated by the explanatory practices to which they gave rise.

Skinner believed that behavior is maintained from one condition to another through similar or identical consequences across these situations. In short, behaviors are chance factors that are influenced by consequences. His contribution to the understanding of behavior influenced many other scientists in explaining social behavior and its contingencies.Reinforcement is a central concept in behaviorism, and was seen as a central mechanism in shaping and controlling behavior. A common misconception is that negative reinforcement is synonymous with punishment. This misconception is quite strong, and is commonly found even in Skinner's scholarly concepts and contributions. To be clear, while positive reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior through the application of some event (e.g. praise after a behavior is performed), negative reinforcement is the strengthening of behavior through the removal or avoidance of some aversive event. (e.g. the act of opening and raising an umbrella over your head on a rainy day is reinforced by the cessation of the rain falling on you).

Both forms of reinforcement strengthen the behavior, or increase the likelihood that a behavior will occur again; the difference is whether the consequent event consists of adding a stimulus (positive reinforcement) or removing a stimulus (negative reinforcement). Punishment and extinction have the effect of weakening behavior, or reducing the future probability that a behavior will occur, by the application of an adverse stimulus/event (positive punishment or punishment by means of contingent stimulus), the withdrawal of a desired stimulus (negative punishment or punishment by contingent withdrawal), or the lack of reward stimulus, which causes the behavior to cease (extinction).

Skinner also sought to understand the application of his theory in the broader context of the application of behaviorism to living organisms, especially natural selection.

Reinforcement schedules

Part of Skinner's analysis of behavior involved not just the power of a single occurrence of reinforcement, but the effects of particular schedules of reinforcement over time. The most notable reinforcement schedules presented by Skinner were interval (fixed or variable) and rate (fixed or variable).

• Continuous reinforcement - constant effort delivery for an action; whenever an action was carried out the subject immediately and always received a reinforcer. This method is not practical to use, and reinforced behavior is soon led to extinction.

• Interval strengthening program (fix/variable) - fixed - the reinforcer follows the first response after a specified duration. Variable - the time you have to spend before a response can produce a booster is not determined, but varies around an average value.

• Reason strengthening program (fix/variable) - fixed - a certain number of responses should occur before the reinforcer is present. Variable - the number of responses that as a mean are necessary for the reinforcer to present.

Inventions

Air Cradle

In an effort to help his wife cope with the day-to-day tasks of raising a child, Skinner - an accomplished inventor - thought he could improve on the standard crib. He invented the 'air cradle' to meet this challenge. An 'air cradle' is a Skinner-designed crib that is easy to clean, whose temperature and humidity can be controlled, and was created to help raise babies.

Skinner designed this air crib for his first child because he thought it would help parents who were woken by their children crying in the night due to cold temperatures, and the need for special clothing or sheets. He thought that creating the cradle would help avoid "troublesome" of the environment.

It was one of his most controversial inventions and was popularly mischaracterized as cruel and experimental. The cradle was often compared to his operant conditioning chamber, known as "Skinner's box." This association with a food-reinforcement and experimentation system negated any success. It was designed to make caring for a baby simpler (reducing dirty laundry, irritation, etc.), while helping the baby to be freer, healthier, reducing the probability of crying. He supposedly had some success with these achievements. Later, air cribs were marketed by various companies.

A 2004 book by Lauren Slater, titled Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, caused much controversy by mentioning rumors that Skinner had used his daughter Deborah in one of his experiments and had consequently committed suicide. Although Slater's book immediately after says that the rumors were false, Slater also allows the reader to believe that Deborah was missing, and so she did little to invalidate these rumors. A reviewer in The Observer in March 2004 misquoted Slater's book in support of the rumours. This critique was read by Deborah Skinner (now Deborah Buzan, a London-based artist and writer) who later wrote a vehement reply in The Guardian in response.

Works

• The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, 1938. ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X.

Agency behavior: an experimental analysis.

• Walden Two, 1948. ISBN 0-02-411510-X.

Walden two.

• Science and Human Behavior, 1953. ISBN 0-02-929040-6.

Science and human conduct.

• Schedules of Reinforcement, with C. B. Ferster, 1957. ISBN 0-13-792309-0.

Strengthening programmesWith C. B. Fersrer.

• Verbal Behavior, 1957. ISBN 1-58390-021-7.

Oral conduct.

• The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self Instruction, with James G. Holland, 1961.

Conduct Analysis: A program for self-trainingJames G. Holland, 1961. This self-instruction book is no longer printed, but the B.F. Skinner Foundation website has an interactive version.

• The Technology of Teaching, 1968.

Teaching technology.

• Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, 1969. ISBN 0-390-81280-3.

Reinforcement Contigences: A Theortic Analysis.

• Beyond freedom and dignity (Beyond Freedom and Dignity) 1971. ISBN 0-394-42555-3.
• About Behaviorism, 1974. ISBN 0-394-49201-3

About behavior.

• Particulars of My Life: Part One of an Autobiography, 1976. ISBN 0-394-40071-2.

My Life Details: The first part of an autobiography.

• Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, 1978. ISBN 0-13-770057-1.

Reflections on conductism and society.

• The Shaping of a Behaviorist: Part Two of an Autobiography, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50581-6.

The formation of a conductist: the second part of an autobiography.

• Notebooks, edited by Robert Epstein, 1980. ISBN 0-13-624106-9.

Notes books, edited Robert Eptein.

• Skinner for the Classroom, edited R. Epstein, 1982. ISBN 0-87822-261-8.

Skinner for the classroom, edited R. Eptein.

• Enjoy Old Age: A Program of Self-Management, with M. E. Vaughan, 1983.

Enjoy the mature age: A self-management programwith M. E. Vaughan

• A Matter of Consequences: Part Three of an Autobiography, 1983. ISBN 0-394-53226-0, ISBN 0-8147-7845-3.

A topic of consequences: the third part of an autobiography.

• Upon Further Reflection, 1987. ISBN 0-13-938986-5.

On further reflection.

• Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, 1989. ISBN 0-675-20674-X.

Recent issues in the conduct analysis.

• Cumulative Record: A Selection of Papers, 1959, 1961, 1972 and 1999 as Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition. ISBN 0-87411-969-3 (paperback)

Cumulative record: A selection of documents, 1959, 1961, and 1969 compiled as a compulsive archive: final edition. This book includes the reprint of the article by Skinner published in October 1945 in the academic journal "Ladies" Home» House of Damascuswith the title, «The baby in a box», is the original and personal report of Skinner on the controversy and negative publicity or representation that this device received, known as the box or cradle of Skinner.