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B. F. Skinner Importance

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B. F. Skinner Importance
B.F. Skinner
“The consequences of an act affect the probability of it 's occurring again.” – B.F. Skinner. This quote relates to the ways of psychology that Skinner used to help shape it and life for the future. Famous for operant conditioning and negative reinforcement Skinner used these tools of thought to find the response and behavior of who or what he was testing. This was a form of behaviorism, which is the theory of learning based on an idea that behaviors are acquired through a way of conditioning. This is which I believe he is one of the most important psychologist of this time. By being rewarded for doing something good has been used all around the world, whether it be pets for doing a trick and later getting a treat. Or when a kid does something bad and is punished for it, he/she then learns to not repeat that action which is an example of operant conditioning. It goes to show how much of an influence this has been in our lives without use knowing.

In Skinner 's research he developed a device called the “cumulative recorder”. It was used to show the rates of a test subjects responding. The device proved other psychologists ' work to be a fluke. The behavior of others didn 't depend on preceding stimulus as John Watson and Ivan Pavlov had shown in their studies. Skinner found that it was dependent upon what happens after the action occurs. An example of this would be a kid doing good in school, getting an “A”, and later being rewarded for it by his/her parents. It has been proven or shown that operant conditioning has been in place which is the contribution Skinner has gave to Psychology. Which explains why in 1990 he was giving an award known as the “Citation for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology.

Skinner had also created an invention that influenced the things in which we use in today 's time. One of those creations being the Skinner box. It was used for the experimental analysis of behavior to study animals. It allowed himself to



Cited: http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/p/bio_skinner.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/skinner.html

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