John Dawson Skinner: Mammalogist (1932–2011)

Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942)

In 1942, the United States Supreme Court Case of Skinner v. Oklahoma ruled that states could not legally sterilize those inmates of prisons deemed habitual criminals. Skinner v. Oklahoma was about the case of Jack Skinner, an inmate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, who was subject to sterilization [3] under the Oklahoma Habitual Criminal Sterilization Act of 1935. The ...

Response to Kreuter and Skinner.

I want to commend Matt Kreuter and Celette appropriately labeled ‘targeted’ interventions. Unfortunately, although we would now never call Skinner for their Editorial entitled ‘Tailoring: Clear Horizons a tailored program, in the evolution what’s in a name?’ (Kreuter and Skinner, 2000). of terminology, the titles of our papers stand. I could not agree more with their argument that I commend the...

Looking for Skinner and finding Freud.

Sigmund Freud and B. F. Skinner are often seen as psychology's polar opposites. It seems this view is fallacious. Indeed, Freud and Skinner had many things in common, including basic assumptions shaped by positivism and determinism. More important, Skinner took a clear interest in psychoanalysis and wanted to be analyzed but was turned down. His views were influenced by Freud in many areas, suc...

Dennett, Darwin, and Skinner Crows

The central theme of this paper is the scientific viewpoint taken for understanding behavioral processes. Two classical viewpoints are formulated by Dennett (the intentional stance) and Tinbergen (Tinbergen’s four questions). In this paper we argue that the two different viewpoints are linked to the two different processes that underlie complex behavior, namely, the instruction process and the ...

Dawson Mental Tests—Forms A and B