I do a variation of that story in my class on shaping. I have the class discover a reinforcer that works with me, which turns out to be their attentive looking and smiling. Then I take them through the steps of shaping me to move to the side of the room and turn off a light with my nose.
--------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected] Professor Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- On 1/8/2015 10:58 AM, Rick Froman wrote:
I am preparing to teach Theories of Learning this semester and I remembered the story told during my graduate training about a professor being shaped by students to lecture toward the corner of the room. They evidently paid close attention or performed some other reinforcing stimulus whenever the professor moved in a certain direction until he was actually lecturing to the wall. It sounds like a clear urban legend (of the hoist of his own petard type) and Snopes <http://snopes.com/college/pranks/trained.asp> classifies it as a legend (of unverifiable nature) and concludes that, “Many people claim to have been in a class where such training took place (or to know someone who was); undoubtedly a few attempts have actually been made.” However, it appears from this site <http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00C0Tw> that the anecdote actually may be sourced to none other than B. F. Skinner himself. It is funny that the version I remember was the one described by Carl Rogers on that site: a behaviorist professor being manipulated by his students. In fact, according to Skinner, the classroom version of the story involved behaviorist students training a humanist professor and he also recounted a time he did the same to a speaker at a professional conference. This probably isn’t news to many of you but I thought it was quite an unexpected result to see that the story was not a pure legend or parable but was described as fact in two versions by B. F. Skinner himself. Rick Dr. Rick Froman Professor of Psychology Box 3519 John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> (479) 524-7295 http://bit.ly/DrFroman
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