Skinner’s Quote of the Day

It is as unfair to ask a science of behavior to  as to ask the science of physics to account for the changes in temperature which were taking place in…

In 1934, while dining at the Harvard Society of Fellows, I found myself seated next to Professor Alfred North Whitehead. We dropped into a discussion of behaviorism . . .…

In many ways, then, this seems to me to be a better way of talking about verbal behavior, and that is why I have tried to get the reader to…

Hundreds of puzzling questions and obscure propositions about verbal behavior may be dismissed, while the new questions and propositions which arise to take their place are susceptible to experimental check…

It is my belief that something like the present analysis reduces the total vocabulary needed for a scientific account. It eliminates far more terms than it creates, and the terms…

Stating the matter in the most selfish light, I have been trying to get the reader to behave verbally as I behave. (p. 455)

I have invented a few new terms—“mand,” “tact,” “autoclitic,” and so on—which are perhaps now part of the reader’s vocabulary, though in what strength I would not undertake to say.…

It has not been my purpose to present the facts of verbal behavior as such, and that is why I have not been greatly concerned with experimental or statistical proof.…

I believe that the present book realizes an effective synthesis which represents the place of verbal behavior in the larger field of human behavior as a whole. (p. 455)

Originally it appeared that an entirely separate formulation would be required [for VB], but, as time went on, and as concurrent work in the field of general behavior proved more…

For practical purposes a special field has been set apart in terms of characteristics imparted to it by special controlling variables. It is in terms of these variables—of the contingencies…

So far as a science of behavior is concerned, Man Thinking is simply Man Behaving. (p. 452)

All behavior, verbal or otherwise, is subject to Kantian a priori’s in the sense that man as a behaving system has inescapable characteristics and limitations. (p. 451)

Tradition and expedience seem to agree in confining the analysis of human thought to operant behavior. So conceived, thought is not a mystical cause or precursor of action, or an…

The simplest and most satisfactory view is that thought is simply behavior—verbal or nonverbal, covert or overt. It is not some mysterious process responsible for behavior but the very behavior…

A verbal response makes it possible to “think about” one property of nature at a time. Since there is no practical response appropriate to all instances of red, the abstract…

A “resolution” is a sort of mand upon oneself which masquerades as a tact. I am not going to smoke for the next three months is not a response to…

The troublesome expressions ought and should can be interpreted as describing contingencies of reinforcement. (p. 443)

Verbal self-supplementation plays an important role in decision making. A man escapes from an aversive indecision by tossing a coin. (p. 442)

The self-tact has an immediate effect in helping the speaker identify or clarify the situation to which it is a response. (p. 441)

A self-mand is not as useless as it may at first appear. (p. 440)

Aside from autistic or artistic behavior, verbal responses may be automatically reinforced by practical consequences. These may follow even when the speaker is his own listener. (p. 440)

When a man talks to himself, aloud or silently, he is an excellent listener . . . He speaks the same language or languages and has had the same verbal…

We can explain the tendency to identify thinking with covert behavior by pointing out that the reinforcing effects of covert behavior must arise from self-stimulation. But self-stimulation is possible, and…

So far as we know, the events at the covert end have no special properties, observe no special laws, and can be credited with no special achievements. (p. 438)

Some [other “mental processes”] are exemplified when a speaker acquires or retains a response (the mental processes of “learning” and “memory”), responds differently to different stimuli (“discrimination”), reacts with one…

The actual precursors of speech are, as we have seen, the independent variables of which it is a function, but these are for the most part outside the organism and…

There are, then, important variables which determine whether a response will be overt or covert. But they do not greatly affect its other properties. They do not suggest that there…

Audible behavior in the child is reinforced and tolerated up to a point; then it becomes annoying, and the child is punished for speaking. Comparable aversive consequences continue into the…

In the solution of a difficult problem, mathematical or otherwise, we resort to overt responses, vocal or written. For the same reason such covert behavior as counting money or adding…

... considerable reinforcement survives in covert verbal behavior when the speaker is his own listener. One important consequence of our definition is that, when talking to oneself, it is unnecessary…

Why should a response become covert at all? Operant behavior almost always begins in a form which affects the external environment, for it would not otherwise be reinforced. (p. 435)

Physiological processes mediate the probability of covert and overt responses alike, as they undoubtedly mediate all the relations disclosed in a functional analysis of behavior, but we can talk about…

We do not need to make guesses about the muscular or neural substratum of verbal events. We account for the probability or strength of a suppressed or manipulated response as…

Covert behavior often seems to be like overt except that it occurs on a smaller scale. (p. 434)

When someone solves a problem in “mental arithmetic,” the initial statement of the problem and the final overt answer can often be related only by inferring covert events. (p. 434)

In a sense verbal behavior which cannot be observed by others is not properly part of our field. It is tempting to avoid the problems it raises by confining ourselves…

. . . as a living organism a man is behaving in some sense while “doing nothing,” even though his behavior may not be easily observed by others or possibly…

If someone who is sitting quite still is asked What are you doing?, he may reply Nothing, I’m just thinking. In the terminology of the layman (and of many specialists)…

An account of verbal behavior is not complete until its relation to the rest of the behavior of the organism has been made clear. This can be done conveniently by…

Once a speaker also becomes a listener, the stage is set for a drama in which one man plays several roles . . . This has been recognized traditionally when…

Verbal behavior must have become much more valuable, both to the group as a whole and severally to its members, when responses began to be transmitted from one man to…

Co-operative enterprises are not always for the benefit of all parties, but the interlocking contingencies necessary to sustain verbal behavior prevail even in the extremely unsymmetrical relation of master and…

Verbal behavior extends both the sensory powers of the listener, who can now respond to the behavior of others rather than directly to things and events, and the power of…

Plausible advantages are not, as such, an explanation of the origin and maintenance of verbal behavior, but they point to the reinforcing contingencies which are. (p. 432)

One of the ultimate accomplishments of a science of verbal behavior may be an empirical logic, or a descriptive and analytical scientific epistemology, the terms and practices of which will…

. . . the behavior of both logician and scientist leads at last to effective nonverbal action, and it is here that we must find the ultimate reinforcing contingencies which…

The test of scientific prediction is often, as the word implies, verbal confirmation. (p. 429)

An important part of scientific practice is the evaluation of the probability that a verbal response is “right” or “true”—that it may be acted upon successfully. (p. 428)

Empirical science is only in part concerned with the construction and confirmation of verbal behavior. In broader terms, it is a set of practices which are productive of useful behavior.…