Oh Skinner! Need I say more??
Yes! There is so much to say about him. He is the reason ABA began!
Who was B.F. Skinner? Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher.
What did B.F Skinner do to impact the world of ABA?
Operant vs Respondent Behaviors: Skinner was able to seperate the two behaviors into categories. If you are interested in reading up on respondent behavior, check out this post!
Respondent Behavior: Behaviors that are the direct result of a stimulation and are subconscious, such as a dog salivating when food is presented, or your heart rate racing when you get startled.
Operant Behaviors: Behaviors that are not initially induced by any particular stimulus, these are taught using reinforcement/punishment by environmental conditioning over time.
As you recall, Pavlov was able to identify respondent behaviors through classical conditioning. This meant that we can learn to associate innate genetic responses with various neutral responses. What makes Skinner special is figured out the science for teaching behaviors based on neutral stimuli = ABA!
Skinner founded Radical Behaviorism (old school ABA), this means he does not take into account mental states, only observable behavior - he did all of his work in a lab on rats.
The foundation of radical behaviorism is built on Skinner's principles of reinforcement, punishment, verbal behavior and oh so much more.
Comments