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Opening Skinner's Box

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, ISBN 0393050955), is a book by Lauren Slater.

In this book, Slater sets out to describe some of the psychological experiments of the twentieth century. Controversially, the author also describes the urban legend that B.F. Skinner raised his child in a Skinner box in a way which many perceived as being poorly researched and lending credit to a false claim.

Experiments covered

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Controversy

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B. F. Skinner's daughter Deborah criticised the book for its claims that she had been raised in a box and committed suicide. The book, indeed, mentioned such claims, but also rebutted them with an interview with Deborah's sister, Julie Vargas. In an article for The Guardian, Deborah described the claims as "doing her family a disservice" and stated that she was a very healthy child growing up. Skinner's daughter also described the truth behind the photographs which spawned the legend, namely that her father had developed a heated crib for her, later marketed under the name "Air-Crib", which had been mistaken by the public for a Skinner box.[1]

References

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  1. ^ Buzan, Deborah Skinner (12 March 2004). "I was not a lab rat". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 May 2012.
  • Slater, Lauren. "Chapter 1." Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. 6–30.