Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"It is often said that reinforcement conveys information, but this is simply to say that it makes a response not only more probable but more probable on a specific occasion."…

"In a simple sense of the word, I have understood what a person says if I can repeat it correctly. In a somewhat more complex sense, I understand it if…

"Perceptual responses which clarify stimuli and resolve puzzlement may automatically reinforcing. “Getting the meaning” of a difficult passage is similar." (p. 155)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"The West is said to have made a fetish out of the control of nature. It is certainly not difficult to point to the unhappy consequences of many advances in…

"Knowledge which permits a person to describe contingencies is quite different from the knowledge identified with the behavior shaped by the contingencies. Neither form implies the other." (p. 153)  …

"It is often useful to speak of a repertoire of behavior which, like the repertoire of a musician or a company of players, is what a person or company is…

"Behavior exists only when it is being executed." (p.151)           Subscribe to RSS feed here

"We say that a newborn baby knows how to cry, suckle, and sneeze. We say that a child knows how to walk and how to ride a tricycle. The evidence…

"There is no way in which a verbal description of a setting can be absolutely true . . . Absolute truth can be found, if at all, only in rules…

"Certainly for thousands of years people spoke grammatically without knowing that there were rules of grammar." (p. 141)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"We do not need to describe contingencies of reinforcement in order to be affected by them. Lower organisms presumably do not do so, nor did the human species before it…

"A person who is following directions, taking advice, heeding warnings, or obeying rules or laws does not behave precisely as one who has been directly exposed to the contingencies, because…

"By attempting to move human behavior into a world of nonphysical dimensions, mentalistic or cognitive psychologists have cast the basic issues in insoluble forms." (p. 131)   Subscribe to RSS…

"Both the mind and the brain are not far from the ancient notion of a homunculus—an inner person who behaves in precisely the ways necessary to explain the behavior of…

"It may be true that there is no structure without construction, but we must look to the constructing environment, not to a constructing mind." (p. 129)   Subscribe to RSS…

"Explicit ways of making it more likely that original behavior will occur by introducing “mutations” are familiar to writers, artists, composers, mathematicians, scientists, and inventors. Either the setting or the…

". . . at first glance, there seems to be no room for chance in any completely determined system . . . Yet the biographies of writers, composers, artists, scientists,…

"As accidental traits, arising from mutations, are selected by their contribution to survival, so accidental variations in behavior are selected by their reinforcing consequences." (p.126)   Subscribe to RSS feed…

"It is said that a person has made a choice when he has taken one of two or more seemingly possible courses of action." (p. 124)   Subscribe to RSS…

"The covert case [of problem solving], to which the term “thinking” is most likely to be applied, enjoys no special advantage beyond that of speed or confidentiality." (p. 124)  …

"Techniques of recall are not concerned with searching a storehouse of memory but with increasing the probability of responses." (p. 121)   Subscribe to RSS feed here

"Abstracting and forming concepts are likely to be called cognitive, but they also involve contingencies of reinforcement. We do not need to suppose that an abstract entity or concept is…

"What is involved in attention is not a change of stimulus or of receptors but the contingencies underlying the process of discrimination . . . Discrimination is a behavioral process:…

"Covert behavior is also easily observed and by no means unimportant, and it was a mistake for methodological behaviorism and certain versions of logical positivism and structuralism to neglect it…

"Covert behavior is almost always acquired in overt form, and no one has ever shown that the covert form achieves anything which is out of reach of the overt." (p.…

"Covert behavior has the advantage that we can act without committing ourselves; we can revoke the behavior and try again if private consequences are not reinforcing." (p. 114)   Subscribe…

". . . if a behavioristic interpretation of thinking is not all we should like to have, it must be remembered that mental or cognitive explanations are not explanations at…

"In mentalistic formulations the physical environment is moved into the mind and becomes experience. Behavior is moved into the mind as purpose, intention, ideas, and acts of will." (p. 113)…

"The origin of behavior is not unlike the origin of species . . . There are many behavioral processes generating “mutations,” which are then subject to the selective action of…

"A child does seem to acquire a verbal repertoire at an amazing speed, but we should not overestimate the accomplishment or attribute it to invented linguistic capacities. A child may…

"The transformational rules which generate sentences acceptable to a listener may be of interest, but even so it is a mistake to suppose that verbal behavior is generated by them…

"A translation can best be defined as a verbal stimulus that has the same effect as the original (or as much of the same effect as possible) on a different…

"A characteristic feature of verbal behavior, directly attributable to special contingencies of reinforcement is abstraction. It is the listener, not the speaker, who takes practical action with respect to the…

"We may look for the meaning of a word in the dictionary, but dictionaries do not give meanings; at best they give other words having the same meanings." (p. 103)…

". . . meaning is not properly regarded as a property either of a response or a situation but rather of the contingencies responsible for both the topography of behavior…

"Apart from an occasional relevant audience, verbal behavior requires no environmental support. One needs a bicycle to ride a bicycle, but not to say “bicycle.” As a result, verbal behavior…

"How a person speaks depends upon the practices of the verbal community of which he is a member . . . Different verbal communities shape and maintain different languages in…

"[Verbal behavior] has a special character only because it is reinforced by the effects on people—at first other people, but eventually the speaker himself. As a result, it is free…

"The words and sentences of which a language is composed are said to be tools used to express meanings, thoughts, ideas, propositions, emotions, needs, desires, and many other things in…

"Relatively late in its history, the human species underwent a remarkable change: its vocal musculature came under operant control. Like other species, it had up to that point displayed warning…

"The thirsty man does not reach for the fantasied glass of water, but the dreamer does not know that what he is seeing is “not really there,” and he responds…

"There are many ways of getting a person to see when there is nothing to be seen, and they can all be analyzed as the arrangement of contingencies which strengthen…

"A person is changed by the contingencies of reinforcement under which he behaves; he does not store the contingencies . . . he has no “cognitive map” of the world…

"After hearing a piece of music several times, a person may hear it when it is not being played, though probably not as richly or as clearly. So far as…

". . . as a modern authority has pointed out, it is as difficult to explain how we see a picture in the occipital cortex of the brain as to…

"The brain is said to use data, make hypotheses, make choices, and so on, as the mind was once said to have done. In a behavioristic account it is the…

"In the traditional view, a person responds to the world around him in the sense of acting upon it . . . The opposing view—common, I believe to all versions…

"Happiness is a feeling, a by-product of operant reinforcement. The things which make us happy are the things which reinforce us, but it is the things, not the feelings, which…

"All gambling systems are based on variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement, although their effects are usually attributed to feelings . . . The same variable-ratio schedule affects those who explore, prospect,…

"When the ratio of responses to reinforcements is favorable, the behavior is commonly attributed to (1) diligence, industry, or ambition, (2) determination, stubbornness, staying power, or perseverance (continuing to respond…