Quantitative order in B. F. Skinner's early research program, 1928-1931.
Clean data beats cool gear—Skinner dropped every toy that clouded the curve.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Coleman (1987) dug into lab notebooks from 1928-1931. The goal was to see how Skinner moved from messy data to clean curves.
The paper lists every gadget Skinner built and why each one was tossed. Only the lever box and panel press gave numbers that lined up in a neat pattern.
What they found
Skinner quit building new rigs the moment the lever box produced smooth, repeatable lines.
Orderly numbers, not clever hardware, became the green light for the rest of his work.
How this fits with other research
Hilgard (1988) looks at the 1938 book that grew from the same data. Together the two papers show the path: tidy curves first, big theory second.
Parmenter (1999) picks up the same quest for better numbers. That paper offers signal-detection math to split stimulus control from reinforcement effects, extending Skinner’s push for sharper measurement.
Andery et al. (2005) tracks what came after 1931. Once the curves were reliable, Skinner felt safe to tackle verbal meaning with the same hard-nosed style.
Why it matters
When your graph wiggles, blame the measurement before you blame the kid. Strip the task down until the data stack in a straight line. Then, and only then, test new variables. This habit saves hours of confusion and keeps interventions solid.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this article is to provide a coherent story of Skinner's graduate-school (1928-1931) research projects, adding to Skinner's own accounts a different emphasis and a number of interesting details. The story is guided by the proposal that a search for quantitative order was the "unifying force" amid the variety of apparatus changes and shifts of research topic in Skinner's early development as a researcher. Archival laboratory-research records from several apparatuses which Skinner constructed between 1928 and 1931 (1) indicate that his research program was more complicated than he has implied; (2) show that he worked on three interdependent lines of investigation simultaneously; (3) suggest that change or abandonment of an apparatus or a project was markedly affected by his success (and failure) in his primary objective, which was to find quantitative orderliness in measured behavior. Frequent apparatus change in the period of 1928 to 1930 ceased when he obtained quantitative orderliness in the panel-press and lever-box preparations. In the examination of archival records, questions about the enterprise of biographical understanding are considered.
The Behavior analyst, 1987 · doi:10.1007/BF03392406