The Behavior of Organisms is B.F. Skinner's first book and was published in May 1938 as a volume of the Century Psychology Series.[1] It set out the parameters for the discipline that would come to be called the experimental analysis of behavior (EAB) and Behavior Analysis. This book was reviewed in 1939 by Ernest R. Hilgard.[2] Skinner looks at science behaviour and how the analysis of behaviour produces data which can be studied, rather than acquiring data through a conceptual or neural process. In the book, behaviour is classified either as respondent or operant behaviour, where respondent behaviour is caused by an observable stimuli and operant behaviour is where there is no observable stimuli for a behaviour. The behaviour is studied in depth with rats and the feeding responses they exhibit.[3]
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Further reading [edit]
- A Celebration of the Behavior of Organisms at Fifty (9 articles). Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 50(2), pp. 277–358.
- Bissell, Margaret (2001). "1938: B.F. Skinner publishes The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis". In Daniel Schugurensky (Ed.), History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century (online).
- Roche, B. & Barnes, D. (1997). "The behavior of organisms?" The Psychological Record, 47, pp. 597–618.
- Thompson, T. (1988). "Benedictus behavior analysis: B.F. Skinner's Magnum Opus at fifty". Contemporary Psychology, 33(5), 397-402.
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