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In speaking about colors projected on the key or the fact that a key is on the right or left, we are, of course, talking about stimuli. Moreover, they are…

In our study of different kinds of schedules of reinforcement, Ferster and I found that it was possible to set up several performances in a single pigeon by bringing each…

By differentially reinforcing high rates of responding, pigeons have been made to respond as rapidly as 10 to 15 responses per second. Here technical problems become crucial . . .…

In Schedules of Reinforcement Charles B. Ferster and I checked this explanation [in terms of conditions at the moment of reinforcement] of the effect of schedules by controlling conditions more…

Interval and ratio schedules have different effects for several reasons. When a reinforcement is scheduled by a timer, the probability of reinforcement increases during any pause, and the first responses…

After certain schedules, the rate may decline in a smoothly accelerated extinction curve. After other schedules, when the rate itself enters prominently into the experimental conditions, it may oscillate widely.…

A variable-ratio schedule programmed by a counter corresponds to the variable interval schedule programmed by a timer. Reinforcement is contingent on a given average number of responses but the numbers…

Anyone who has seen workers paid on such a schedule is familiar with some features of the performance generated: a high rate is sustained for long periods of time. For…

Reinforcements may be scheduled with a counter instead of a timer. For example, we may maintain a fixed ratio between responses and reinforcements. In industry this schedule is referred to…

If the length of interval is varied essentially at random [on a “variable-interval” schedule], responding occurs at a single rate represented by a constant slope in the cumulative record. (p.…

The over-all pattern of performance on a “fixed-interval” schedule is a fairly smoothly accelerating scallop in each interval, the acceleration being more rapid the longer the initial pause. Local effects…

More interesting phenomena are generated when responses are merely intermittently reinforced. It is characteristic of everyday life that few of the things we do always “pay off.” (p. 135)

A single presentation of food, following immediately upon a response, increases the rate with which responses to the key are subsequently emitted so long as the pigeon remains hungry. (p.…

Any consequence of behavior which is rewarding or, more technically, reinforcing increases the probability of further responding. Unfortunately, a consequence which is punishing has a much more complex result. (p.…

Among the conditions which alter rate of responding are some of the consequences of behavior. Operant behavior usually affects the environment and generates stimuli which “feed back” to the organism.…

Probability of responding is a difficult datum. We may avoid controversial issues by turning at once to a practical measure, the frequency with which a response is emitted. (p. 134)

In studying such [operant] behavior we must make certain preliminary decisions. We begin by choosing an organism—one which we hope will be representative but which is first merely convenient. We…

The behavior through which the individual deals with the surrounding environment and gets from it the things it needs for its existence and for the propagation of the species cannot…

Not so long ago the expression “a science of behavior” would have been regarded as a contradiction in terms. Living organisms were distinguished by the fact that they were spontaneous…

The organism whose behavior is most extensively modified and most completely controlled in research of the sort I have described is the experimenter himself. (p. 129)

When behavior shows order and consistency, we are much less likely to be concerned with physiological or mentalistic causes. A datum emerges which takes the place of theoretical fantasy. (p.…

When we have achieved a practical control over the organism, theories of behavior loose their point. (p. 127)

We are within reach of a science of the individual. This will be achieved, not by resorting to some special theory of knowledge in which intuition or understanding takes the…

There is perhaps no field in which behavior is customarily described more indirectly than psychiatry. (p. 125)

In choosing rate of responding as a basic datum and in recording this conveniently in a cumulative curve, we make important temporal aspects of behavior visible. Once this has happened,…

When you have the responsibility of making absolutely sure that a given organism will engage in a given sort of behavior at a given time, you quickly grow impatient with…

If I engaged in Experimental Design at all, it was simply to complete or extend some evidence of order already observed. (p. 119)

Of course, I was working on a basic Assumption—that there was order in behavior if I could only discover it—but such an assumption is not to be confused with the…

I never faced a Problem which was more than the eternal problem of finding order. I never attacked a problem by constructing a Hypothesis. I never deduced Theorems or submitted…

Since I do not wish to deprecate the hypothetico-deductive method, I am glad to testify to its usefulness. It led me to apply our second principle of unformalized scientific method…

I can easily recall the excitement of that first complete extinction curve. . . I had made contact with Pavlov at last! Here was a curve uncorrupted by the physiological…

Now, as soon as you begin to complicate an apparatus, you necessarily invoke a fourth principle of scientific practice: Apparatuses sometimes break down. I had only to wait for the…

Psychologists have adopted cumulative curves only very slowly, but I think it is fair to say that they have become an indispensable tool for certain purposes of analysis. (p. 116)

A third unformalized principle of scientific practice: Some people are lucky. (p. 115)

... a second unformalized principle of scientific practice: Some ways of doing research are easier than others. I got tired of carrying the rat back to the other end of…

... a first principle not formally recognized by scientific methodologists: When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it. (p. 112)

I had the clue from Pavlov: Control your conditions and you will see order.

So far as I can see, I began simply by looking for lawful processes in the behavior of the intact organism. Pavlov had shown the way; but I could not…

It had been said of Loeb, and might have been said of Crozier, that he “resented the nervous system.” Whether this was true or not, the fact was that both…

When I arrived at Harvard for graduate study, the air was not exactly full of behavior, but Walter Hunter was coming in once a week from Clark University to give…

I had had no psychology as an undergraduate but I had had a lot of biology, and two of the books which my biology professor had put into my hands…

... it is a mistake to identify scientific practice with the formalized constructions of statistics and scientific method. These disciplines have their place, but it does not coincide with the…

An experimental situation is required in which frequency may be studied. When this is arranged, important processes in behavior are revealed in a continuous, orderly, and reproducible fashion. Concepts and…

Complex activities are not always “responses” in the sense of repeated or repeatable events. They are composed of responses, however, which are repeatable and capable of being studied in terms…

What we transfer from our experiments to a casual world in which satisfactory quantification is impossible is the knowledge that certain basic processes exist, that they are lawful, and that…

For example, we determine the shape of the cooling curve with the aid of the physical laboratory. We have little doubt that the same process is going on as our…

Laboratory experimentation is designed to make a process as obvious as possible, to separate processes one from the other, and to obtain quantitative measures. These are indeed the very heart…

Frequency of response is also a useful datum when two responses are being considered at the same time. We can investigate “choice” and follow the development of a preference for…

... frequency of response is a valuable datum just because it provides a substantial basis for the concept of probability of response—a concept toward which a science of behavior seems…