Travis Thompson

This book continues to be one of the more widely read books in psychology. Skinner's magnum opus is one of a handful of books that changed the face of modern psychology. The Behavior of Organisms provided the first example of the use of the operant method to measure behavioral effects of drugs and led to the development of teaching machines, programmed instruction and community treatment programs for juvenile delinquents. The functional unit Skinner defined in his doctoral dissertation and explicated in The Behavior of Organisms remains the foundation of modern behavior analysis. The operant was defined as a class of behavior bearing characteristic probability relations with environmental events previously occurring after instances of members of that class. The Behavior of Organisms is a remarkably mature book written by the author when he was in his early 30s. The regularities and principles explicated in The Behavior of Organisms stand largely intact after half a century, and the analytic strategy has been highly effective.

A festschrift volume for Prof Kenneth MacCorquodale retired from th e University of Minnesota. MacCorquodale was one of the first graduate students to study with B.F. Skinner. Chapters are concerned with the basic units into which behavior is analyzed according to functional analysis principles. A second theme was how such units once demonstrated can be integrated to comprise more complex naturalistic behavior, animal and human. Contributors included many leaders in the experimental and applied analysis of operant behavior.