Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"For thousands of years students have studied to avoid the consequences of not studying." (p. 125)

“We discover many things in the world around us, and that is usually better than being told about them, but as individuals, we can discover only a small part of…

"At that point [when primes and prompts have been carefully “vanished” until behavior occurs without help] the reinforcing consequences of being right are most effective in building and sustaining an…

"We could double the efficiency of education with one change alone—by letting each student move at his or her own pace." (pp. 123-124)

"By emphasizing the selective action of consequences, . . . the experimental analysis of behavior deals with the creation of behavior precisely as Darwin dealt with the creation of species."…

"Creativity, incidentally, is often said to be beyond a science of behavior, and it would be if that science were a matter of stimulus and response." (p. 123)

"A Solution [to the educational crisis]          1. Be clear about what is to be taught.          2. Teach first things first.          3. Stop making all students advance at…

"More than 300 years ago, Molière wrote a famous line: “I am asked by the learned doctors for the cause and reason why opium puts one to sleep, to which…

"It is said that students should do more than what they have been taught to do. They should be creative. But does it help to say that they must acquire…

"We do not know what [intuition] is, but we can certainly say that no teacher has ever taught it directly, nor has any student ever displayed it without first learning…

"The more words you learn to spell, the easier it is to spell new words, and the more problems you solve in algebra the easier it is to solve new…

"Psychological theories come into the hands of teachers through schools of education and teachers’ colleges, and it is there, I think, that we must lay the major blame for what…

"Cognitive psychology is Old Home Week. We are back among friends speaking the language we spoke when we were growing up. We can talk about love and will and ideas…

"Cognitive psychology is frequently presented as a revolt against behaviorism, but it is not a revolt, it is a retreat." (p. 120)

"There is a sense of profundity about “cognitive deficits,” but it does not take us any deeper into the subject." (p. 118)

"The word cognitive is sprinkled through the psychological literature like salt—and, like salt, not so much for any flavor of its own as to bring out the flavor of other…

"Humanistic psychologists, for example, feel threatened by any kind of scientific analysis of human behavior, particularly if it leads to a “technology” that can be used to intervene in people’s…

"I liked the Roanoke experiment because it confirmed something I had said a few years earlier to the effect that with teaching machines and programmed instruction one could teach what…

"Let us bring behaviorism back from the Devil’s Island to which it was transported for a crime it never committed, and let psychology become once again a behavioral science." (p.…

"I accuse cognitive scientists of relaxing standards of definition and logical thinking and releasing a flood of speculation characteristic of metaphysics, literature, and daily intercourse, speculation perhaps suitable enough in…

"I accuse cognitive scientists, as I would accuse psychoanalysts, of claiming to explore the depths of human behavior, of inventing explanatory systems which are admired for a profundity which is…

"I accuse cognitive scientists of reviving a theory in which feelings and states of mind observed through introspection are taken as the causes of behavior rather than as collateral effects…

"I accuse cognitive scientists of emasculating laboratory research by substituting descriptions of settings for the settings themselves and reports of intentions and expectations for action." (p. 111)

"I accuse cognitive scientists of speculating about internal processes which they have no appropriate means of observing. Cognitive science is premature neurology." (p. 111)

"I accuse cognitive scientists of misusing the metaphor of storage. The brain is not an encyclopedia, library, or museum. People are changed by their experiences; they do not store copies…

"Cognitive scientists are enjoying an intoxicating freedom, but we must ask whether it is a productive one." (p. 111)

"Behaviorism began by asking philosophers and psychologists for definitions. What were sensations? What was consciousness? What were the dimensions of an idea? The effect was inhibiting, and people who wanted…

"There are two languages in every field of knowledge, and it would be foolish to insist that the technical version always be used. But it must be used in science,…

"We need a language of feelings and states of mind in our daily lives. Such is the language of literature and most of philosophy. Clinical psychologists use this language to…

"If what is felt are collateral products of the causes of behavior, then feelings can be a useful clue." (p. 110)

"The enthusiasm of cognitive scientists is not easily explained by looking at practical achievements. On the contrary, in reactivating the dream of the central initiating control of behavior, cognitive science…

"Many of the findings in cognitive science find a useful place in behavioral analyses." (p. 109)

"Step by step we may paraphrase the accomplishments of cognitive scientists in behavioral terms . . . Many of them have made important discoveries and no doubt deserve credit even…

"A behavioral account is incomplete, in part because it leaves a great deal to neurology ..." (p. 106)

We have no sensory nerves going to the parts of the brain that engage in “cognitive processes.” (p. 105)

"We have more information about ourselves than about other people, but it is only the same kind of information—about stimuli, responses, and consequences, some of them internal and in that…

"But radical behaviorism accepts the argument that parts of our bodies enter into the sensory control of what we do, not only in behavior such as figure skating but in…

"Kahneman and Tversky have reported that people say they would be less likely to buy a second ticket to the theater if a first had been lost than to buy…

"In a behavioral account, what one feels is one's own body, and what one feels when one is behaving or likely to behave is therefore a collateral product of the…

"To the extent that economic theory is concerned with what people say they will do, SEU [subjective expected utility] theory may be adequate, but a behavioral scientist (and, one would…

"Expectation is a current surrogate of a history of reinforcement." (p. 102)

"Cognitive psychologists need current surrogates of histories of selection in part because they pay little attention to selection as a causal principle." (p. 101)

"How organisms are changed by contingencies of reinforcement is the field of a behavioral analysis. What is happening inside is a question to be answered by neurology, with its appropriate…

"Cognitive scientists argue that the rules are in the contingencies and that a person can learn about them in either way. They have therefore felt free to take the easier…

"An unnecessary return to rules may be troublesome. When the toad asked the centipede, “Pray, which leg goes after which?” the centipede “worked her mind to such a pitch/She lay…

"When we learn to drive a car, for example, we begin with responses to verbal stimuli. Our behavior is rule-governed. We flip switches, push pedals, and turn the wheel as…

"Verbal behavior evidently came into existence when, through a critical step in the evolution of the human species, the vocal musculature became susceptible to operant conditioning." (p. 98)

"In a behavioral account [of perception] the whole organism responds, and it responds to the world around it—for reasons that an experimental analysis of behavior, with the help of neurology,…

"Ethologists study the species-specific behavior attributable to contingencies of survival in natural selection. Contingencies of operant reinforcement select the behavior of the individual in a similar way but, for course,…

"The old stimulus-response formula was an attempt to give the environment an initiating role, but it has long been abandoned. The environment selects behavior." (p. 94)