B. F. Skinner

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And he had everybody on from, I saw an old one with BF Skinner and Murray Kempton and just, just it.

And William F. Buckley had this incredible sesquipedalian logo, Daedalus vocabulary.

His lexicon was probably Nagy and in Maine.

Um, so currently, when the dog is growling and screaming at the end of the leash, what is it that's changing in the environment that is maintaining that response under similar conditions in the future? And what is it that's giving the dog a signal that if you behave in these situ- if you do engage in these behaviors right now under these conditions, then that reinforcer is available.

Um, and, um, as you mentioned, it's not necessarily about beneath the skin or above the skin, uh, because as a radical behaviorist, um, we, um, what Skinner's skin is, uh, differences in terms of behaviorism was that the skin is no a barrier to the environment.

So the environment is, um, something that is influencing behavior, and that could be hormones, that could be underneath the skin and also above the skin.

So we're interested in both, a whole holistic picture.

Yeah.

That's so, so interesting.

And I think I'd love to dive in to come back to that as well in terms of the radical behaviorist perspective in a, in a little bit, because I think some people might not be familiar with that, and it'd be really interesting to kind of touch on what that means and, um, Skinner's work around that and how that fits into, um, sort of our work with animals as well.

So, um, but just going back to what you said about, um, even just the owners there was kind of making me think, you know, how the noise is coming out of their mouth, the, the, the vocalizations that, that the human is articulating can be, often be so different to actually what we might be seeing if we can look at that dog, look at that individual, and how important it is to learn about that individual, but also learn about that caregiver and their needs in that situation, what they need to be able to feel comfortable and safe and enjoy, um, taking care of their dog in a, in a way that sort of facilitates a good human-animal interaction for both ends of the lead.

He stayed really involved in teaching machines.

Of course, more famously, a few decades later, B.F. Skinner invented a teaching machine.

And, of course, B.F. Skinner became much more well-known, and teaching machines are much more associated with Skinner.

Yeah, I mean, Skinner's going to be much more familiar to most of our listeners.

But, I mean, what was he doing specifically in the mid-20th century that can be traced through to the ed tech of today?

So Skinner is such a fascinating person and fascinating slash sort of terrifying person.

I've spent the last couple of years sort of spending way too much time thinking about behaviorism, thinking about Skinner's influence.

But I think it's fascinating.

Then the behaviour of pecking could be studied in relation to how often that reward was offered.

Or in Skinner's terms, what was the schedule of reinforcement? The

main thing is what we call schedules of reinforcement.

When you have a reward, then you can schedule it.

Oh, wow.

So we just finished our fourth iteration of it and it is an absolute joy.

So, um, I'll just, I'm going to actually, let's go with a Skinner quote for this

one.

there.

Anybody knew about BF Skinner's operands.

And so, so then that's, I got, so that my start was in Chicago

and,

To understand the trap, we have to travel to a basement laboratory at Harvard University in the 1930s.

A behavioral psychologist named B.F. Skinner is running experiments on rats.

The famous Skinner boxes.

Exactly.

He trains them to press a lever, and every time they press it, a machine dispenses a food pellet.

Now, I know the traditional narrative here is that the rats learn the connection and just press it whenever they are hungry.

What changed?

Well, Skinner ran low on pellets, so he decided to alter the mechanics of the machine.

Then the behavior of pecking could be studied in relation to how often that reward was offered.

Or in Skinner's terms, what was the schedule of reinforcement.

Welcome back to the podcast.

I'm your host, Dave Brodbeck.

Right.

And I think a lot of times that, you know, I think it's important to care about ecological validity, but I think it's also important to realize that there are times when it's not that big a deal.

And I think when you take pigeons and put them in Skinner boxes, and I mean, I've done a lot of that too.

This isn't me saying anything bad about it.

Let me know how you feel about that in the comments and chat.

Do you feel that your personal liberty and freedom was impeded upon? Do you feel that there was a kind of a whispering campaign that would tantamount to BF Skinner style nudging, that you were coached, manipulated, controlled, like an authoritative force stopped you from being free, all the while telling you that it was for your health or for vulnerable people in your community.

And if you recognize that as a paradigm, do you see that imprint playing out again and again and again.

We need to protect you.