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. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 19
  It is easy to understand the primitive view that behavior is inside the organism before it comes out. Perhaps there is a touch of the primitive in saying that behavior is “emitted,” but we speak of the emission of light, from a hot filament though the light is not in the filament. (p. 497)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 18
  As we would put it today, autoclitics have evolved as instructions to the listener that help him behave in ways more likely to have reinforcing consequences and hence more likely to promote reciprocally reinforcing consequences for the speaker. (p. 497)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 17
  The possibility of recombining the elements of vocal responses … accounts for much of the power and scope of verbal behavior. (p. 496)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 16
  The crucial question is what happens when a person says something he or she has never said before. Novel behavior occurs on novel occasions, and an occasion is novel in the sense that its features have not appeared together before in the same arrangement. (p. 495)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 15
  There are two types of mand. Pull is an action-mand, reinforced when the listener does something . . . An object-mand is more likely to occur in the presence of the object, because it has more often been reinforced in the presence of that object. We are much more likely to ask for the tings… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 15
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 14
  When tacts are taught as “the names of things,” teachers use a generalized reinforcer—such as “Good!” or some other social reinforcer. (p. 495)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 13
  We do not say that fish means or refers to fish when it is an echoic, textual, or intraverbal response. If we tend to say so when it is a tact, it is not because there is a different kind of controlling relation between the stimulus and response, but rather because the listener responds in… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 13
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 12
  . . . if we are to call Uh either a mand or a tact: The consequences must be generalized. (p. 494)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 11
  . . . the evolution of operant conditioning appears to have been accompanied by the evolution of a pool of behavior that played no other part in natural selection and was therefore more readily subject to operant reinforcement . . . An obvious vocal example is the babbling of small children—essentially random sounds that became… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 11
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 10
  One learns to gesture through movement duplication but to speak through product duplication, which is more precise. (p. 491)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 9
  Vocal behavior must have had several advantages in natural selection. Sounds are effective in the dark, around corners, and when listeners are not looking, and they can be made when the hands are busy with other things. (p. 491)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 8
  The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change. (pp. 490-491)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 7
  It is often said that bees have a language, that they “tell each other where good forage is to be found,” that the dance “conveys information,” and so on. Such expressions, useful enough in casual discourse, add nothing to an explanation in terms of natural selection and may obscure the processes at issue. (p. 489)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 6
  It was only after a tendency to imitate had evolved that contingencies existed for the evolution of the reciprocal process of modeling. (p. 489)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 5
  The plausibility of a reconstruction [of evolution] depends in part upon the size of the variations that are assumed to have occurred. The smaller the variations, the more plausible the explanation. (pp. 487-488)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 4
  Because a verbal environment is composed of listeners, it is understandable that linguists emphasize the listener. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 3
  Strictly speaking, verbal behavior does not evolve. It is the product of a verbal environment, or what linguists call a language, and it is the verbal environment that evolves. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 2
  Verbal behavior left no artifacts until the appearance of writing, and that was at a very late stage. We shall probably never know precisely what happened, but we ought to be able to say what might have happened—that is, what kinds of variations and what kinds of contingencies of selection could have brought verbal behavior… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 2
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: The Evolution of Verbal Behavior. Quote 1
  Evolutionary theory has always been plagued by scantiness of evidence. We see the products of evolution but not much of the process. (p. 487)
• Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 19
  And now my labor is over. I have had my lecture. I have no sense of fatherhood. If my genetic and personal histories had been different, I should have come into possession of a different lecture. If I deserve any credit at all, it is simply for having served as a place in which certain… Read more: Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition. Supplemental Material: A Lecture on “Having” a Poem. Quote 19

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