B.F. Skinner

Skinner’s model for behavior was “The consequences of behavior determine the probability that the behavior will occur again."

Skinner was the leading exponent of the school of psychology known as behaviorism, which explains the behavior of humans and other animals in terms of the physiological responses of the organism to external stimuli. Like other behaviorists, he rejected unobservable phenomena of the sort that other forms of psychology, particularly psychoanalysis, had studied, concerning himself only with patterns of responses to rewards and stimuli.

Skinner maintained that learning occurred as a result of the organism responding to, or operating on, its environment, and coined the term operant conditioning to describe this phenomenon. He is the founder of sequencing events in "frames" in order to give positive feedback at each stage of development. Immediate feedback is also essential, he said, in order to imprint the desired behavior on the learner.

He believed that you must "program" behavior in the learner, but also believed in self pacing of the learner. Skinner was so sure of his theories, that he implemented many of the ideas with his own children. Called a "Baby Tender," he put his own children into a specially designed learning "box" in the wall of his house to stimulate their learning about the world and themselves.