Cumulative Record: Definitive Edition

by B.F. Skinner

As the title suggests, this book contains articles that Skinner first published elsewhere. The articles range widely in content, from the famous 'A Case History in Scientific Method' to 'Has Gertrude Stein a Secret?' The book is divided into the following
Part The Implications of a Science of Behavior for Human Affairs, Especially for the Concept of Freedom
Part A Method for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior Its Theory and Practice, Its History, and a Glimpse of Its Future
Part The Technology of Education
Part The Analysis and Management of Neurotic, Psychotic, and Retarded Behavior
PART For Experimental Psychologists Only
PART Creative Behavior
PART Literary and Verbal Behavior
PART Theoretical Considerations
PART A Miscellany
PART Coda (Can Psychology Be a Science of Mind?)

Published in 1959, 1961, and 1972. This expanded edition was reprinted by the Foundation in 1990. This book is from the Official B. F. Skinner Foundation Reprint Series.

Genres: Psychology

700 pages, Paperback

First published February 2, 2015

About the author

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a highly influential American psychologist, author, inventor, advocate for social reform and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. He invented the operant conditioning chamber, innovated his own philosophy of science called Radical Behaviorism, and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, which has recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings. He discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement. In a recent survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century. He was a prolific author, publishing 21 books and 180 articles.