The Influence of Learning on Development

Abstract

What Skinner says in this quote is somewhat true and, to say the least, was a useful corrective in its time to the then dominant brands of mentalistic psychology, which saw (somewhat magically) individuals largely as the instigators of behavioural reactions to the environment that had shaped them. Where else do thoughts, the supposed causes of behaviour, come from? The mind? What shapes that? Where is it to be found but in the brain? Is it a product or a cause? How could the mind be a cause if it is a non-material, non-weighable, non-dissectible ‘something’ with ghostly properties? You may be puzzled, but what are you puzzled with? Your brain has to be the logical answer (see Swaab, 2014; Ryle, 1949). But then, brains develop, they do not arrive with us fully formed. Therefore, how much of the development is inside-out and how much outside-in?

Behavior is a function of its consequences.

—B.F. Skinner (1953)