Skinner Theory Quotes

Neurologically speaking, though, there are reasons we develop a confused sense of priorities when we’re in front of our computer screens. For one thing, email comes at unpredictable intervals, which, as B. F. Skinner famously showed with rats seeking pellets, is the most seductive and habit-forming reward pattern to the mammalian brain. (Think about it: would slot machines be half as thrilling if you knew when, and how often, you were going to get three cherries?) Jessie would later say as much to me when I asked her why she was “obsessed”—her word—with her email: “It’s like fishing. You just never know what you’re going to get.” More to the point, our nervous systems can become dysregulated when we sit in front of a screen. This, at least, is the theory of Linda Stone, formerly a researcher and senior executive at Microsoft Corporation. She notes that we often hold our breath or breathe shallowly when we’re working at our computers. She calls this phenomenon “email apnea” or “screen apnea.” “The result,” writes Stone in an email, “is a stress response. We become more agitated and impulsive than we’d ordinarily be.

Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of his world. Today he is the thing he understands least. Physics and biology have come a long way, but there has been no comparable development of anything like a science of human behavior. Greek physics and biology are now of historical interest only (no modern physicist or biologist would turn to Aristotle for help), but the dialogues of Plato are still assigned to students and cited as if they threw light on human behavior. Aristotle could not have understood a page of modern physics or biology, but Socrates and his friends would have little trouble in following most current discussions of human affairs. And as to technology, we have made immense strides in controlling the physical and biological worlds, but our practices in government, education, and much of economics, though adapted to very different conditions, have not greatly improved. We can scarcely explain this by saying that the Greeks knew all there was to know about human behavior. Certainly they knew more than they knew about the physical world, but it was still not much. Moreover, their way of thinking about human behavior must have had some fatal flaw. Whereas Greek physics and biology, no matter how crude, led eventually to modern science, Greek theories of human behavior led nowhere. If they are with us today, it is not because they possessed some kind of eternal verity, but because they did not contain the seeds of anything better.

One may take the line that metaphorical devices are inevitable in the early stages of any science and that although we may look with amusement today upon the “essences,” “forces,” “phlogistons,” and “ethers,” of the science of yesterday, these nevertheless were essential to the historical process. It would be difficult to prove or disprove this. However, if we have learned anything about the nature of scientific thinking, if mathematical and logical researches have improved our capacity to represent and analyze empirical data, it is possible that we can avoid some of the mistakes of adolescence. Whether Freud could have done so is past demonstrating, but whether we need similar constructs in the future prosecution of a science of behavior is a question worth considering.

Some people have suggested that the “theory of variable rewards” explains our obsession with the digital world. This theory, created by American psychologist and behaviorist B.F. Skinner in the 1950s, resulted from his study of lab mice that responded more aggressively to random rewards than predictable ones. When mice pressed a lever, they sometimes got a small treat, other times a large treat, and other times nothing at all. Unlike mice that received the same treat with each lever press, the mice that received variable rewards pressed the lever more often and compulsively.

An experimental analysis shifts the determination of behaviour from autonomous man to the environment - an environment responsible both for the evolution of the species and for the repertoire acquired by each member. Early versions of environmentalism were inadequate because they could not explain how the environment worked, and much seemed to be left for autonomous man to do. But environmental contingencies now take over functions once attributed to autonomous man, and certain questions arise. Is man then 'abolished'? Certainly not as a species or as an individual achiever. It is the autonomous inner man who is abolished, and that is a step forward. But does man not then become merely a victim or passive observer of what is happening to him? He is indeed controlled by his environment, but we must remember that it is an environment largely of his own making. The evolution of a culture is a gigantic exercise in self-control. It is often said that a scientific view of man leads to wounded vanity, a sense of hopelessness, and nostalgia. But no theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been. And a new theory may change what can be done with its subject matter. A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man.

But independently of their money value, his works had made him a lasting name in literature. So probably Gallio was under the impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather from Seneca that he compiled, and which for aught we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution; but the treatises are all gone and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that he expected, and for the very last reason that would have flattered his vanity. He has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different from the one which he so fondly imagined.

By questioning the control exercised by autonomous man and demonstrating the control exercised by the environment, a science of behavior also seems to question dignity or worth. A person is responsible for his behavior, not only in the sense that he may be justly blamed or punished when he behaves badly, but also in the sense that he is to be given credit and admired for his achievements. A scientific analysis shifts the credit as well as the blame to the environment, and traditional practices can then no longer be justified. These are sweeping changes, and those who are committed to traditional theories and practices naturally resist them.

There is a much more important reason why we have been so slow in discarding mentalistic explanations: it has been hard to find alternatives. Presumably we must look for them in the external environment, but the role of the environment is by no means clear. The history of the theory of evolution illustrates the problem. Before the nineteenth century, the environment was thought of simply as a passive setting in which many different kinds of organisms were born, reproduced themselves, and died. No one saw that the environment was responsible for the fact that there were many different kinds (and that fact, significantly enough, was attributed to a creative Mind). The trouble was that the environment acts in an inconspicuous way: it does not push or pull, it selects. For thousands of years in the history of human thought the process of natural selection went unseen in spite of its extraordinary importance. When it was eventually discovered, it became, of course, the key to evolutionary theory.

Drawing from Skinner’s behaviourism theory, transformative teaching utilizes reinforcement and effective feedback to shape students' behaviour and learning outcomes, encouraging positive engagement and progress.

Through the application of behavioural theories, transformative teaching emphasizes the importance of providing consistent reinforcement and constructive feedback to encourage desired behaviours and academic growth in students.

Özgürlüklerinin korunması için kralın iyi niyetine güvenmek zorunda bırakıldıkları ölçüde, özgür uyruklar olarak değil, tutsaklar olarak yaşamaya mahkûm olacaklar...

His early reading took him from Flavel’s Keeping the Heart to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, to Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, to Robert Owen’s A New View of Society. This last was an extreme rationalist work, maintaining, almost as B. F. Skinner would later, that since we are born empty or blank we can be taught anything at all, if given early and complete enough training. Owen claimed he could teach a tiger if he got it early enough.1 From Owen Alcott moved on to Pestalozzi, the great Swiss educator who laid the foundation for modern primary education. Fired with enthusiasm for teaching, Alcott abandoned peddling and opened the first of a series of schools. In 1828 he came to Boston to teach, heard Emerson, and married Abigail May. In 1830 he went to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where over the next three and a half years he both kept school and did his serious reading. In 1833 he discovered and was instantly converted to Platonism. He marked the day in red on his calendar, a distinction used otherwise only for his marriage, the birth of his daughters, the opening of the Civil War, and the death of Lincoln. He also read Carlyle, Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, Proclus, Plotinus (in Thomas Taylor’s edition), Herder, Swedenborg, a life of Boehme, and two books on Kant.2

Bandura’s hypothesis was that children learn aggression through observing and imitating the violent acts of adults—particularly family members. He believed that the key to the problem lies at the intersection of Skinner’s operant conditioning and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of identification, which explores how people assimilate the characteristics of others into their own personalities.

Theories—whether neural, mental, or conceptual—talk about intervening steps in these relationships. But instead of prompting us to search for and explore relevant variables, they frequently have quite the opposite effect. When we attribute behavior to a neural or mental event, real or conceptual, we are likely to forget that we still have the task of accounting for the neural or mental event. ...Research designed with respect to theory is also likely to be wasteful. That a theory generates research does not prove its value unless the research is valuable. Much useless experimentation results from theories, and much energy and skill is absorbed by them. Most theories are eventually overthrown, and the greater part of the associated research is discarded.

At the heart of Skinner’s theory is operant conditioning, which differs from Pavlov’s classical conditioning in that it focuses on the consequences of voluntary behavior.

The decay theory suggests that memories fade because the neural connections that hold them weaken over time. Essentially, if a memory isn’t refreshed,

By the time Machiavelli entered the chancery there was a well-established method of recruitment to its major offices. Besides giving evidence of diplomatic skills, aspiring officials were expected to display a high degree of competence in the so-called humane disciplines. This concept of the studia humanitatis had been derived from Roman sources, and especially from Cicero, whose pedagogic ideals were revived by the Italian humanists of the 14th century and came to exercise a powerful influence on the universities and the conduct of Italian public life. The humanists were distinguished by their commitment to a particular theory about the proper contents