Operant conditioning chamber
25
MENTIONS
3
EPISODES
3
PODCASTS
Search complete. 25 mentions across 3 episodes found for "Operant conditioning chamber".
Sep 28, 2026
Richard FreedGUEST
These big kids, as they get older, don't seem to go after their dads.
Richard FreedGUEST
They go after their moms who are trying to set a reasonable limit because the kids failing out of school because they're on video games all the time.
Richard FreedGUEST
So that's what you see.
Richard FreedGUEST
And, you know, my colleague next door, he found – Or like he was talking with a mom who found, let's say, 10 half filled water bottles with a yellow liquid in in the room.
Arlene PellicaneHOST
excuse me.
Arlene PellicaneHOST
It's like it's crazy.
Richard FreedGUEST
Yeah, these products are labeled as games, but they're not.
Richard FreedGUEST
If you peel back the onion, if you pull back the screen, they are sophisticated for boys and games.
Sean RameswaramHOST
Sweet.
Sean RameswaramHOST
And tell us, Vernon, what is a Skinner box?
Vernon SilverGUEST
Skinner box is a contraption developed by psychologists in the 1930s.
speaker_10SOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Here are 20 boxes, each of which contains complete equipment for studying the behavior of a pigeon or any other small animal.
Sean RameswaramHOST
Where they learned how they could get pigeons or rats to click furiously at a lever.
Vernon SilverGUEST
The apparatus is quite simple, but the principle is far-reaching, not only in explaining the behavior of pigeons, but in analyzing human behavior.
Vernon SilverGUEST
The animals knew that if they, they clicked on a signal that they might get one pellet, and one pellet, then they changed it up, and if in intermittent intervals, the machine dispensed a ton of food pellets or none, uh, or just one, the clicking by these animals, uh, would become much more furious and repetitive.
Vernon SilverGUEST
In essence, if you have, if you have a game on your phone, chances are you have a form of a Skinner box in your pocket right now.
Hank GreenHOST
And the most well-known champion of operant conditioning is American behaviorist B.F. Skinner.
Hank GreenHOST
He designed the famous operant chamber, or Skinner box, a confined space containing a lever or button that an animal could touch to get some kind of reward, typically food, along with a device that keeps track of its responses.
Hank GreenHOST
Okay, time for a debunking break.
Hank GreenHOST
Other than maybe Freud, no other figure in psychology seems to be as shrouded in lore and misinformation as B.F. Skinner.
Hank GreenHOST
Deborah Skinner is alive and well, and she loved her dad plenty.
Hank GreenHOST
Skinner did, however, invent something called an air crib, a climate-controlled box with a window on the front that was meant to keep babies warm and safe while their moms ran around doing their 1950s lady thang.
Hank GreenHOST
It's not exactly where I'd like to spend the night, but it wasn't remotely the same as the Skinner box.
Hank GreenHOST
No one knows where all these myths came from, but being a somewhat controversial guy, Skinner had a lot of haters, some of whom were probably happy to perpetuate misinformation.