Skinner’s Quote of the Day

Skinner’s Quote of the Day is the project of the B. F. Skinner Foundation, copyright holder for Skinner’s works. On January 4, 2016, we started with Science and Human Behavior, followed by About Behaviorism, Contingencies of Reinforcement, Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior, Reflections on Behaviorism and Society, Upon Further Reflection, and Cumulative Record. Quotes are selected by renowned scientists and published every workday (Monday through Friday). The daily quote is also posted on the Facebook forum. RSS feed for “Skinner’s Quote of the Day” is available here: http://www.bfskinner.org/category/quotes/feed/. Please use the Archives function below to access previous quotes, or to search by a keyword.

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Recent Quotes:

• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 19: Thinking. Quote 6
  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 discussing the problem of thinking. (p. 433)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 19: Thinking. Quote 1
  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)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 15
  The test of scientific prediction is often, as the word implies, verbal confirmation. (p. 429)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 14
  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)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 13
  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. (p. 428)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 12
  The theory of evolution cannot be confirmed by a set of tacts to the actual events taking place in the remote past, but a single set of verbal responses which appear to be tacts to such events is made more plausible—is strengthened—by several types of construction based upon verbal responses in geology, paleontology, genetics, and… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 12
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 10
  It is useful to maintain the distinction between the confirmation of a tact and of an intraverbal. If we have put something in one of two boxes labeled A and B and as the result of looking in B we say It is not in B, we can also construct the response It is in… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 10
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 9
  Frequently we confirm a response by finding variables which control a similar form of response in some other type of operant. Thus, we confirm our guess that an animal at the zoo is a lemur by reading the sign on the cage; in doing so we add a textual response to a weak tact. (p.… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 9
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 8
  We confirm any verbal response when we generate additional variables to increase its probability. Thus, our guess that something seen at a distance is a telescope is confirmed by moving closer until the weak response I think it’s a telescope may be replaced by the strong I know it’s a telescope. (p. 425)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 7
  Although the notion of a word as something “used” by the speaker has had unfortunate results, records or traces of verbal responses can, of course, be treated as independent objects. (p. 423)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 6
  When a speaker says four in response to four men seated about a table, his response may be as directly controlled by a property of the situation as men or sitting. But if he says four after checking a dozen rooms, some of which contain men, his response is not a simple tact. It is… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 6
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 5
  Metaphorical extension may occur [in scientific practice], but either the controlling property is quickly emphasized by additional contingencies which convert the response into an abstraction or the metaphor is robbed of its metaphorical nature through the advent of additional stimulus control. (p. 419)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 4
  Generic extensions are tolerated in scientific practice, but metaphorical, metonymical, and solecistic extensions are usually extinguished or punished. (p. 419)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 3
  The scientific community encourages the precise stimulus control under which an object or property of an object is identified or characterized in such a way that practical action will be most effective. (p. 419)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 2
  … when a speaker intraverbally reconstructs directions, rules of conduct, and “laws of thought,” he increases the likelihood of successful practical, ethical, and intellectual behavior, respectively, and his success in doing so depends upon the “purity” of the controlling relations. (p. 418)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 18: Logical and Scientific Verbal Behavior. Quote 1
  … most verbal behavior has to do with effective action. (p. 418)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 17: Self-Strengthening of Verbal Behavior. Quote 21
  Brief spans of time are frequently bridged by setting up self-echoic chains, as in carrying a telephone number from the directory to the phone by repeating it until it has been dialed. (p. 417)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 17: Self-Strengthening of Verbal Behavior. Quote 20
  By memorizing a series of tacts on the spot, the speaker may later describe the scene with the intraverbal behavior he thus sets up. The bridging is accomplished by some property of the ultimate situation which sets off a verbal response evoking the intraverbal sequence. (pp. 416-417)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 17: Self-Strengthening of Verbal Behavior. Quote 19
  … distant stimuli are … weak variables, and contingencies which involve them usually reinforce “bridging” behavior. The distant stimulus may be represented in a form which survives until a response can be made. (p. 416)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Chapter 17: Self-Strengthening of Verbal Behavior. Quote 18
  The contingencies of reinforcement of verbal behavior often extend over long periods of time. Thus, an envoy is sent to observe events in a foreign country and to report upon his return. Such contingencies may be successful in developing a remote stimulus control, presumably through the automatic reinforcement of observing behavior. (p. 416)

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