January 2018
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 15
“… we no longer look at behavior and environment as separate things or events but at the interrelations among them. We look at the contingencies of reinforcement. We can then interpret behavior more successfully.” (p. 10) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 13
“When we recall how long it took to recognize the causal action of the environment in the simple reflex, we should perhaps not be surprised that it has taken us much longer to see contingencies of reinforcement. The traditional homocentric view of human behavior discourages us from looking at the environment in this light, and […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 12
“Suppose we ask an observer who knows nothing about the analysis of behavior to look into a typical experimental space when an experiment is in progress … The fact remains that direct observation, no matter how prolonged, tells him very little about what is going on …” (pp. 8-9) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 11
“A more active form of attention is analyzed as a sequence of contingencies; paying attention is precurrent behavior having the effect of changing stimuli. A pigeon will change the shape or color of a visual pattern if the contingencies under which it is reinforced are thereby improved.” (Footnote, p. 8) Subscribe to RSS feed […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 10
“If a conspicuous stimulus does not have an effect, it is not because the organism has not attended to it or because some central gatekeeper has screened it out, but because the stimulus plays no important role in the prevailing contingencies.1—Footnote in next quote The other cognitive processes invoked to salvage an input-output formula can […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 8
“An adequate formulation of the interaction between an organism and its environment must always specify three things: (1) the occasion upon which a response occurs, (2) the response itself, and (3) the reinforcing consequences. The interrelationships among them are the “contingencies of reinforcement.” (p. 7) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 7
“Any stimulus present when an operant is reinforced acquires control in the sense that the rate will be higher when it is present. Such a stimulus does not act as a goad; it does not elicit the response in the sense of forcing it to occur. It is simply an essential aspect of the occasion […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 6
“The class of responses upon which a reinforcer is contingent is called an operant, to suggest the action on the environment followed by reinforcement. We construct an operant by making a reinforcer contingent on a response, but the important fact about the resulting unit is not its topography but its probability of occurrence, observed as […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 5
“By using rate of responding as a dependent variable, it has been possible to formulate the interaction between an organism and its environment more adequately. The kinds of consequences which increase the rate (“reinforcers”) are positive or negative, depending upon whether they reinforce when they appear or when they disappear.” (p. 7) Subscribe to […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 4
“… by thoroughly adapting the rat to the box before the lever is made available, most of the competing behavior can be “stamped out” before the response to be learned is ever emitted. Thorndike’s learning curve, showing the gradual disappearance of unsuccessful behavior, then vanishes. In its place we are left with a conspicuous change […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 3
“… the full significance of consequences was only slowly recognized. Possibly there was some uneasiness about final causes (How could something which followed behavior have an effect on it?), but a major difficulty lay in the facts … Men sometimes act in ways which bring pain and destroy pleasure, have a questionable net utility, and […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Chapter 1: The Role of the Environment. Quote 2
“Every stimulus-response or input-output formulation of behavior suffers from a serious omission. No account of the interchange between organism and environment is complete until it includes the action of the environment upon the organism after a response has been made.” (p. 5) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Contingencies of Reinforcement. Part I: Contingencies Of Reinforcement and the Design of Cultures. Chapter 1 The Role of the Environment. Quote 1.
“[The invention of concepts such as the total stimulus situation, cues, and releasers] was patchwork, designed to salvage the stimulus-response formula, and it had the effect of moving the determination of behavior back into the organism. When external stimuli could not be found, internal had to be invented.” (p. 4) Subscribe to RSS feed […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, Preface, Quote 5
“Some of the questions to which a different kind of theory may be addressed are as follows: what aspects of behavior are significant? Of what variables are changes in these aspects a function? How are the relations among behavior and its controlling variables to be brought together in characterizing an organism as a system? What […]
Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, Preface, Quote 4
“Many physiological explanations of behavior seem at the moment to call for hypotheses, but the future lies with techniques of direct observation which will make them unnecessary (see Chapter 9)”. (p. xii) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis, Preface, Quote 2
“Behavior is one of those subject matters which do not call for hypothetico-deductive methods. Both behavior itself and most of the variables of which it is a function are usually conspicuous.” (p. xi) Subscribe to RSS feed here
Skinner’s Quote of the Day Continues in 2018
Dear Readers, Starting today, the B. F. Skinner Foundation continues its project Skinner’s Quote of the Day with Contingencies of Reinforcement, 1969. As before, the selected quotes will be published daily Monday through Friday. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here, read it and comment on the website, or join the discussion group on […]