Museum of American History,
Washington, D.C.



During World War II, Skinner (1942) trained pigeons to navigate bombs from aircraft so they would hit their targets more accurately. The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the centre of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-centre would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb's direction by majority rule.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

B. F. Skinner (1959). Cumulative Record. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner



• He took a position at the University of Minnesota where he wrote The Behaviour of Organisms and began his novel Walden II, about a commune where behaviourist principles created a new kind of utopia.


• A later work generated considerable controversy, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).



• In the book, Skinner argued that concepts of freedom and dignity may lead to self-destruction.



• As professor of psychology at Indiana University, Bloomington (1945-48), Skinner gained some notoriety through his invention of the Air-Crib, a large, soundproof, germ-free, air-conditioned box designed to serve as a mechanical baby tender.

Operant ConditioningBehaviour Shaping



• By reinforcing responses that increasingly resemble a desired end behaviour in a step by step manner, complex behaviours can be built up from simple units.



• Using experimental equipment that he devised, Skinner trained laboratory animals to perform complex and sometimes quite exceptional actions.


• A striking example was his pigeons that learned to play table tennis.

Operant Conditioning Consequences



• Positive reinforcement increases the likelihood of a response by providing pleasant consequences (e.g. food).


• Negative reinforcement increases the likelihood of a response that removes or provides escape from unpleasant consequences (e.g. stopping an electric shock).


• Punishment decreases the likelihood of a response being repeated if it is followed by inescapable consequences e.g. an electric shock.


• Secondary reinforcers (e.g. money, tokens or parents) are those that are associated with naturally occurring primary reinforcers (e.g. food, water, warmth etc.)



Can anyone give me examples of positive reinforcement?

Operant ConditioningSchedules of reinforcement




• Continuous schedules reinforce every response made.


• Partial schedules reinforce responses in varying frequencies to affect response and extinction rates.


• Extinction- if the response is not reinforced, it will gradually die out.



• Skinner found that animals would also make responses that resembled the originally reinforced response.