B. F. Skinner

497 Words1 Page

Throughout psychology there has been a numerous amount of influences about how it should be defined. There are many people who had helped create its definition today. Just to name a few;Wilhelm Wundt, John B. Watson, Rosalie Rayner, B.F. Skinner, and Sigmund Freud. Before our most recent definition, psychology was known as, “the science of mental life.”(Myers,2014) That was until, John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner changed it to, “the study of observable behavior.”
B.F Skinner was a leading behaviorist. Although he started off with the thought that psychology is an observable behavior, he continued to dig deeper. Introspection was not a factor in Skinner’s science, he went on to study how consequences helped shape the behavior of certain beings. Skinner came up with, not only negative consequences that affected behavior, but positive consequences too.
With Skinner introducing the effects of consequences on behavior, he went onto researching operant responses, which then lead to operant conditioning. Thus introducing positive and negative reinforcements/punishments. …show more content…

Partially is only when you reinforce some times not all the time. Partial reinforcement also comes with; fixed-ratios, fixed-intervals, variable-ratio, and variable-interval schedule. Fixed-ratio is when reinforcement occurs after a fixed number of responses. Fixed-intervals are when the reinforcer occurs following the first response after a fixed interval of time. Variable- ratio is when the reinforcer is delivered after an average amount of correct responses. Variable-interval is when the reinforcer occurs following the first correct response after an average amount of time has passed. Without the studies of B.F. Skinner, none of these things would have been discovered and used in today’s

Open Document