Skinner’s Quote of the Day

"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…

"The behavior of the homesick, forlorn, lovelorn, or lonely is commonly attributed to the feelings experienced rather than to the absence of a familiar environment." (p. 65)   Subscribe to…

". . . a person is said to be unable to go to work because he is discouraged or depressed, although his not going, together with what he feels, is…

"People can usually say what they are looking for and why they are looking in a given place, but like other species they also may not be able to do…

"Seeking or looking for something seems to have a particularly strong orientation toward the future. We learn to look for an object when we acquire behavior which commonly has the…

"​Purpose" was once commonly used as a verb, as we now use "propose."  " I propose to go" is similar to "I intend to go." If instead we speak of…

"​Possibly no charge is more often leveled against behaviorism or a science of behavior than that it cannot deal with purpose or intention. A stimulus—response formula has no answer, but…

"​The critical condition for the apparent exercise of free will is positive reinforcement as the result of which a person feels free and calls himself free and says he does…

"​The conspicuousness of the causes is at issue when reflex behavior is called involuntary—one is not free to sneeze or not to sneeze; the initiating cause is the pepper. Operant…

"​Freedom" usually means the absence of restraint or coercion, but more comprehensively it means a lack of any prior determination: "All things that come to be, except acts of will,…

"​The spontaneous generation of behavior has reached the same stage as the spontaneous generation of maggots and micro organisms in Pasteur’s day. " (p. 59)   Subscribe to RSS feed…

"The apparent lack of immediate cause in operant behavior has led to the invention of an initiating event. Behavior is said to be put into play when a person wills…

"To distinguish an operant from an elicited reflex, we say that the operant response is “emitted.” (It might be better to say simply that it appears, since emission may imply…

"The process of operant conditioning . . . is simple enough. When a bit of behavior has the kind of consequence called reinforcing, it is more likely to occur again…

"Contingencies of reinforcement have the edge with respect to prediction and control. The conditions under which a person acquires behavior are relatively accessible and can often be manipulated; the conditions…

"The question is not whether the human species has a genetic endowment but how it is to be analyzed. It begins and remains a biological system, and the behavioristic position…

"In an important sense all behavior is inherited, since the organism that behaves is the product of natural selection. Operant conditioning is as much a part of the genetic endowment…

"Universal features of language do not imply a universal innate endowment, because the contingencies of reinforcement arranged by verbal communities have universal features." (p. 48) Subscribe to RSS feed here

"When we have reviewed the contingencies which generate new forms of behavior in the individual, we shall be in a better position to evaluate those which generate innate behavior in…

"There are certain remarkable similarities between contingencies of survival and contingencies of reinforcement. Both exemplify, as I have noted, a kind of causality which was discovered very late in the…

". . . verbal behavior could arise only when the necessary ingredients had already evolved for other reasons." (p. 42) Subscribe to RSS feed here

". . . plausible conditions of selection are hard to find in support of such an assertion as that “principles of grammar are present in the mind at birth,” since…