About Skinner and time: behavior-analytic contributions to research on animal timing.

Lejeune et al. (2006) wrote a story-style review. They walked through decades of animal-timing work that keeps Skinner’s spirit alive.

The paper skips brain clocks and instead maps how reinforcers alone can make pigeons, rats, and people act "on time."

Methods, math models, and old data got lined up to show what still works and what still fights.

No new numbers were run. The team showed that most timing effects can live without a hidden clock.

Reinforcement history, memory traces, and choice rules can draw the same curves that older clock theories draw.

The review folds in Green et al. (1999) and Zeiler (1999). Both say timing can bloom from plain reinforcement and memory—no timer needed.

Arantes et al. (2008) offer a friendly fight. Their birds picked Learning-to-Time over Scalar Expectancy Theory, giving the clock-free side a win.

Bell (1999) and Malone (1999) add heat. They warn that no single math model catches every beat yet, so the field keeps testing.

If reinforcers—not clocks—run the show, you can shape time-based behavior by tweaking schedules, delays, and cues. Try adding brief signals before a change, as Sherwell et al. (2014) did, to sharpen discrimination. Track response patterns, not hidden brain parts, when you assess temporal control.