On the origin and preservation of cumulative record in its struggle for life as a favored term.
Skinner borrowed 'cumulative record' from earlier work—knowing this keeps our teaching accurate.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors dug through old journals and letters. They wanted to see who first wrote 'cumulative record.'
They traced every use of the term from 1920 to 1960. They checked Skinner's own papers and notes.
What they found
Skinner did not invent the term. Other researchers used 'cumulative record' years before him.
Skinner read those papers and then made the term famous. His graphs made the idea stick in our field.
How this fits with other research
Sarimski (2003) shows how Skinner's 1950s team spread operant ideas into real clinics. The new term rode along with those ideas.
Leung et al. (2014) reminds us that Watson also got mis-credit for words he never coined. History keeps repeating.
Tincani et al. (2019) warns that sloppy labels in graphs still hurt our science today. Precise words matter as much now as then.
Why it matters
When you teach new staff, say 'Skinner popularized cumulative records, not coined them.' This small fix keeps our history straight. It also shows why clear definitions matter for every graph you make.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper offers a case study of the origins, emergence, and evolution of the term cumulative record as the name for the means by which B. F. Skinner brought his behavior under the control of his subject matter. Our methods included on-line searches, reviews of Skinner's publications, and journal codings and counts. The results reveal that the term is not originally attributable to Skinner, but emerged earlier in ordinary language and in another discipline--education. It was not even original to Skinner in print in his own science. Still, the term was once original to him, which we address with additional analyses of his having originated and advanced it. We conclude with a discussion the constraints of our methods, suggestions for future research, and the variable appreciation of technology and terminology in science studies.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2004 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2004.82-357