For much of his career, B. F. Skinner displayed the optimism that is often attributed to behaviorists. With time, however, he became less and less sanguine about the power of behavior science to solve the major problems facing humanity. Near the end of his life he concluded that a fair consideration of principles revealed by the scientific…

Chomsky's (1959) review of "Verbal Behavior" (Skinner, 1957) has been hailed as the most influential document in the history of psychology. Although many rejoinders to Chomsky's review have been published, their impact has been minimal. Moreover, Chomsky has not answered them in detail. To invite Chomsky to revisit a number of matters concerning…

Bloomfield's "Linguistics as a Science" (1930/1970), "Language" (1933/1961), and "Language or Ideas?" (1936a/1970), and Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957) and "Science and Human Behavior" (1953) were analyzed in regard to their respective perspectives on science and scientific method, the verbal episode, meaning, and subject matter. Similarities…

The present paper comments on and extends the citation analysis of verbal operant publications based on Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957) by Dymond, O'Hora, Whelan, and O'Donovan (2006). Variations in population parameters were evaluated for only those studies that Dymond et al. categorized as empirical. Preliminary results indicate that the…