Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Like a good tutor, the [teaching] machine presents just that material for which the student is ready. It asks him to take only that step which he is at the…

Like a good tutor, the [teaching] machine insists that a given point be thoroughly understood, either frame by frame or set by set, before the student moves on. Lectures, textbooks,…

Unlike lectures, textbooks, and the usual audio-visual aids, the [teaching] machine induces sustained activity. The student is always alert and busy. (p. 197)

In acquiring complex behavior the student must pass through a carefully designed sequence of steps, often of considerable length. Each step must be so small that it can always be…

Another reason [why the student must compose rather than select a response from alternatives] is that effective multiple-choice material must contain plausible wrong responses, which are out of place in…

An appropriate teaching machine will have several important features. The student must compose his response rather than select it from a set of alternatives, as in a multiple-choice self-rater. One…

In education the behavior to be shaped and maintained is usually verbal, and it is to be brought under the control of both verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Fortunately, the special…

By arranging appropriate “contingencies of reinforcement,” specific forms of behavior can be set up and brought under the control of specific classes of stimuli. The resulting behavior can be maintained…

The emphasis in this research has not been on proving or disproving theories but on discovering and controlling the variables of which learning is a function. This practical orientation has…

The learning process is now much better understood. Much of what we know has come from studying the behavior of lower organisms, but the results hold surprisingly well for human…

Even in a small classroom the teacher usually knows that he is moving too slowly for some students and too fast for others. Those who could go faster are penalized,…

Audio-visual aids . . . serve one function of the teacher: they present material to the student and, when successful, make it so clear and interesting that the student learns.…

When [education has accepted the fact that a sweeping revision of educational practices is possible and inevitable], we may look forward with confidence to a school system which is aware…

We are on the threshold of an exciting and revolutionary period, in which the scientific study of man will be put to work in man’s best interests. (p. 191)

There is a simple job to be done. The task can be stated in concrete terms. The necessary techniques are known. The equipment needed can easily be provided. Nothing stands…

A country which annually produces millions of refrigerators, dish-washers, automatic washing machines, automatic clothes-driers, and automatic garbage disposers can certainly afford the equipment necessary to educate its citizens to high…

There is no reason why the schoolroom should be any less mechanized than, for example, the kitchen. (p. 191)

Marking a set of papers in arithmetic—“Yes, nine and six are fifteen; no, nine and seven are not eighteen”—is beneath the dignity of any intelligent individual. There is more important…

An advancing science continues to offer more and more convincing alternatives to traditional formulations. The behavior in terms of which human thinking must eventually be defined is worth treating in…

It is true that the techniques which are emerging from the experimental study of learning are not designed to “develop the mind” or to further some vague “understanding” of mathematical…

Mathematical behavior is usually regarded, not as a repertoire of responses involving numbers and numerical operations, but as evidences of mathematical ability or the exercise of the power of reason.…

Now, the human organism is, if anything, more sensitive to precise contingencies than the other organisms we have studied. We have every reason to expect, therefore, that the most effective…

There are certain questions which have to be answered in turning to the study of any new organism. What behavior is to be set up? What reinforcers are at hand?…

Education is perhaps the most important branch of scientific technology. It deeply affects the lives of all of us. We can no longer allow the exigencies of a practical situation…

The teacher is usually no happier about [the lack of effective teaching] than the pupil. Denied the opportunity to control via the birch rod, quite at sea as to the…

Most pupils soon claim the asylum of not being “ready” for arithmetic at a given level or, eventually, of not having a mathematical mind. Such explanations are readily seized upon…

Perhaps the most serious criticism of the current classroom is the relative infrequency of reinforcement . . . the total number of contingencies which may be arranged during, say, the…

In a typical classroom, . . . long periods of time customarily elapse . . . Many seconds or minutes intervene between the child’s response and the teacher’s reinforcement. In…

It can easily be demonstrated that, unless explicit mediating behavior has been set up, the lapse of only a few seconds between response and reinforcement destroys most of the effect.…

It was part of the reform movement known as progressive education to make the positive consequences more immediately effective, but anyone who visits the lower grades of the average school…

From this exciting prospect of an advancing science of learning, it is a great shock to turn to that branch of technology which is most directly concerned with the learning…

In spite of great phylogenetic differences, all these organisms [pigeons, rats, dogs, monkeys, humans] show amazingly similar properties of the learning process. It should be emphasized that this has been…

Comparable results have been obtained with pigeons, rats, dogs, monkeys, human children, and most recently, by the author in collaboration with Ogden R. Lindsley, human psychotic subjects. (p. 182)

In all this work, the species of the organism has made surprisingly little difference. (p. 182)

One of the most dramatic applications of these techniques has recently been made in the Harvard Psychological Laboratories by Floyd Ratliff and Donald S. Blough, who have skillfully used multiple…

In a special case, first investigated by L. B. Wyckoff, Jr., the organism responds to one stimulus where the reinforcement consists of the clarification of the stimulus controlling another response.…

When Stimulus 1 is present, the pigeon executes the performance appropriate to Schedule 1. When Stimulus 2 is present, the pigeon executes the performance appropriate to Schedule 2. And so…

. . . the performance characteristic of a given schedule can be brought under the control of a particular stimulus and that different performances can be brought under the control…

Co-operation can also be set up, perhaps more easily than competition. We have trained two pigeons to co-ordinate their behavior in a co-operative endeavor with a precision which equals that…

... it is not too difficult to arrange the complex contingencies which produce many types of social behavior. Competition is exemplified by two pigeons playing a modified game of ping-pong.…

Most important types of schedules have now been investigated, and the effects of schedules in general have been reduced to a few principles. (p. 180)

Reinforcements continue to be important, of course, long after an organism has learned how to do something, long after it has acquired behavior. They are necessary to maintain the behavior…

Extremely complex performances may be reached through successive stages in the shaping process, the contingencies of reinforcement being changed progressively in the direction of the required behavior. The results are…

Once we have arranged the particular type of consequence called a reinforcement, our techniques permit us to shape up the behavior of an organism almost at will. (p. 180)

Sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, economists, theologians, psychotherapists, and psychologists have long tried to reach an understanding of human behavior which would be useful in solving practical problems. In that technological…

Techniques are now available for a new and highly profitable exploration of the human behavior at issue in education, commerce and industry, psychotherapy, religion, and government. (p. 175)

At one time we [Ferster and I] intended—though, alas, we changed our minds—to express the point in this dedication: “To the mathematicians, statisticians, and scientific methodologists with whose help this…

Fortunately, a statistical program is unnecessary. Most of what we know about the effects of complex schedules of reinforcement has been learned in a series of discoveries no one of…

Beyond the prediction and control made possible by recent research in reinforcement lies the broader field of interpretation. And it is a kind of interpretation so closely allied with prediction…

. . . where the analyst has studied behavior in a given environment as the manifestation of hidden (even if eventually-to-be-revealed) forces, we can now interpret the same behavior and…