Report_on_Bf_Skinner

(B.F.) Burrhus Frederic Skinner | Introduction to Education | | Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist, author, inventor, and social philosopher who was born March 20, 1904. Skinner was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania to Grace and William Skinner. He died August 18, 1990. With the intention of becoming a writer, he attended Hamilton College in New York. While he was there, he joined Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity where he wrote for the school paper; however, as an atheist he was critical of the religious school he attended. Skinner also attended Harvard University after receiving his B.A. in English literature in 1926. After he graduated, Skinner spent a year at his parents' home in Scranton attempting to become a writer of fiction. He quickly became disappointed with his literary skills and decided that he had little world experience and no strong personal perspective from which to write. Skinner was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 after which he retired in 1974. Among Skinner’s inventions were the operant conditioning chamber known as the “Skinner box”, he innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His examination of human behavior reached its highest point in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings. As a dependent variable in psychological research, Skinner discovered and advanced the rate of response. To measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement he invented the cumulative recorder. Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century in a recent survey. He was a productive author who published 21 books and 180 articles.