B. F Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was best known as BF Skinner, American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychologist. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure the rate of response as part of his influential work on schedule of reinforcement.

While F.B Skinner was at the University Of Minnesota he invented the operant conditioning chamber to measure the responses of organisms and their orderly interactions with the environment useful devices like the cumulative recorder, even in his old age he invented a thinking aid to help with writing.

Skinner showed the positive reinforcement by placing a hungry rat in the Skinner box. This box contained a lever with food as the rat moved inside the box the lever would drop the food to a container next to it. The consequence was that the rat would repeat the behavior again and again.

A good example to picture this would be thinking of a daily basis situation every time you do something good you get a reward, so then the same action becomes a daily thing so you can get rewarded more often. The negative side is that if one day you don’t do the right thing then you won’t get reward and then the habit might be broken.

The opposite of reinforcement is punishment this can also work directly by doing something unpleasant stimulus. For example if the children don’t behave then they get put in time out and they won’t get to do something they enjoy.

Superstitious behavior arises when the delivery of reinforcement and punisher occurs close together in time with an independent behavior. For example bad luck you do something and then something bad happens.

After many years of contribution to psychology F. B Skinner died in 1990 at the age of eighty six years old. In 2002 he was the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.