B.F. Skinner:

Skinner's non-intuitive discovery in the 1930s that response probability can be a function of not only temporal contiguity but also past consequences sparked fifty years of reaction ranging from high praise to scathing criticism and misunderstanding. Failures to distinguish between the work of Skinner and Pavlov and Watson account for some of the misunderstandings. Other criticisms stem from basic value differences. Whereas Skinner's scientific interest is in behavior per se, other psychologist are curious about inner processes. While Skinners' truth criterion is pragmatic, other psychologists hold correspondence theories of truth. Whereas Skinner is convinced that hypothetical constructs hinder scientific discovery, other psychologists are equally certain that they are essential. Skinner's eschewal of hypothetical constructs, however, has not prevented him form addressing complex behavior, as is widely believed. To the contrary, Skinner has formulated enough unexplored theories on the origin and maintenance of verbal behavior, concept development, problem solving, and creativity to keep theoreticians and empiricists occupied for decades.     

B. F. Skinner, organism.

B. F. Skinner illustrated the power of behavior analysis by turning it upon his own behavior. This article considers parallels in the life and work of Charles Darwin and places Skinner's views on life and death in the context of his selectionist paradigm for psychology. The term organism plays a special role, and the account shows why B. F. Skinner might have regarded it as an appropriate title.     

Symposium: Recollections of B. F. Skinner

This symposium was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Pavlovian Society, Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, September 27, 1991.     

A daughter's retrospective of B. F. Skinner

This paper describes characteristic behaviors of my father, B. F. Skinner, using family documents and my own recollections. Early contingencies in his upbringing strengthened his love of building things and his independence in discovering how the world works. Those skills, combined with a lack of supervision in graduate school, set the stage for his discovery of the operant. He did not stop with laboratory research. He extended his discovery of how consequences select behavior into education and the design of cultural practices. As well as solving society's problems, my father was always concerned with improving his own behavior. Some of the contingencies he set up to maximize his own productivity are described.     

Precision teaching's unique legacy from B. F. Skinner

Precision Teaching's unique legacy from B. F. Skinner was the monitoring system of rate of response and the cumulative response recorder. This legacy is unique because the other instructional systems derived from Skinner's work do not use his monitoring method exclusively. Rate of response, cumulative recording and their extension to Precision Teaching's standard celeration charting are briefly described. In addition, Precision Teaching's nature, history, costs, distribution, inductive data-base, and academic base are briefly described. Skinner's legacy to education was a sound behavioral scientific base and his unique legacy to Precision Teaching was self-monitoring for real time decision making by learners and teachers.     

The ultimate challenge: prove B. F. Skinner wrong

For much of his career, B. F. Skinner displayed the optimism that is often attributed to behaviorists. With time, however, he became less and less sanguine about the power of behavior science to solve the major problems facing humanity. Near the end of his life he concluded that a fair consideration of principles revealed by the scientific analysis of behavior leads to pessimism about our species. In this article I discuss the case for Skinner's pessimism and suggest that the ultimate challenge for behavior analysts today is to prove Skinner wrong.     

H. G. Wells and B. F. Skinner on the superorganism

In Skinner's Walden Two, the central character Frazier refers to the superorganism and how to build it, but without elaboration. An examination of some parallels between the work of H. G. Wells and B. F. Skinner, however, casts light on that reference and other aspects of Skinner's views, such as multiple selves. Both Wells and Skinner wrote in similar ways about what the composition of such a superorganism would be and the conditions for its development. In particular, attention is directed to the ways in which their forecasts of the conditions for producing the superorganism changed over time, from determinism-based conditions to more evolutionary or selection-based conditions.     

B. F. Skinner: The Writer and His Definition of Verbal Behavior

Skinner's definition of verbal behavior, with its brief and refined versions, has recently become a point of controversy among behavior analysts. Some of the arguments presented in this controversy might be based on a misreading of Skinner's (1957a) writings. An examination of Skinner's correspondence with editors of scientific journals shows his sophisticated mastery of English and his knowledge of contemporary approaches of linguistics, and might help to settle the meaning of the passages involved in the controversy. A more precise definition of verbal behavior, deduced from Skinner's distinction between verbal and nonverbal operants, is suggested, and a possible reason why Skinner did not define verbal behavior in the terms proposed by this alternative definition is discussed. The alternative definition is more compatible with a functional approach to behavior and highlights what is specific to verbal behavior by pointing to the conventions of the verbal community. Some possible consequences of adopting this alternative definition are described.     

B. F. Skinner, 1926-1928: From literature to psychology

In the two years between graduation from college and enrolling in graduate school, B. F. Skinner tried to initiate a literary career, failed at the task, and chose psychology as a field for graduate study. In this article we examine his literary background for sources and themes specifically relevant to choosing psychology, and provide an interpretive framework of considerations that seem more generally relevant to understanding his failure as a creative writer and his subsequent career choice.     

Seven Good Reasons Why Counselling Psychologists Should Listen to B. F. Skinner

Repetition is known to be an effective procedure for helping people to remember a message. B. F. Skinner is clearly aware of this, and he has, for many years, re-described and repeated the fundamentals of a science of behaviour. I will extract some of these basics and paraphrase them here in a manner which makes their relevance clear to counselling psychologists.