Kali Burkhartzmeyer and Priya Kadel B.F Skinner Kali Burkhartzmeyer and Priya Kadel

Biography He was born on March 20th, 1904 in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania. From a young age Skinner was interested in building things. When he was studying at Hamilton College, he fell in love with writing and became a published author in 1926. But it wasn’t a big success. Since that didn’t work very well, he decided to go to Harvard and study psychology. Then later in life he taught at the University of Minnesota, then Indiana University, then Harvard. He died August 18, 1990 from Leukemia.

What made him important? He was a Behaviorist which means that he studied why humans act and behave the way they do. Skinner is most famous for his theory on what is now called operant conditioning. This is a type of learning is where someone's behavior is controlled and shaped using consequences. The four types of reinforcements that he used were positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment. Invented the operant conditioning chamber also known as the Skinner box, which was a laboratory apparatus used to study animals behavior.This chamber enables experimenters to study behavior, by teaching an animal to perform certain actions in response to a stimuli. When the animal does the behavior correctly they get rewarded if they don’t they can be punished. Using reinforcement can shape the animal's behavior.

How they impacted child development field With his theory on operant conditioning parents have learned that by rewarding or punishing their kids they are able to shape them and make them stop or continue a certain behavior. Example of parents using operant conditioning: Giving their kids money (positive reinforcement) if they do their chores.

Children and impact on them B.F. Skinner had two daughters Their names are Julie and Deborah When Skinner’s wife was pregnant with their second child, she asked her husband to make a crib for their daughter to be safe. He decided to make this to make parenting easier and improve the experience for the kids. This crib is heated and has filter clean air. Deborah slept and played in the air crib until she was two years old. This sort of experiment would not be humane in the world today because they were keeping kids in a box.

Our Rection We believe that operant conditioning is an effective way of learning especially in kids but also in adults. His invention and use of the Skinner box was a good way to research and study behavior. However we do not think the box he put his daughter in was an appropriate way to study behavior.

Citations http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/bfskinnersbehaviouraltheory.html http://www.biography.com/people/bf-skinner-9485671#synopsis https://sites.psu.edu/psych256sp16/2016/01/31/operant-conditioning-3/