A pioneer of applied behavior analysis, he developed errorless learning and was a colleague of B.F. Skinner's at Harvard University, co-authoring the book Schedules of Reinforcement (1957).

While serving as an assistant professor of psychology at Indiana University School of Medicine from 1957 to 1962, Ferster employed errorless learning to instruct young autistic children how to speak.

Another well-known researcher was Ivar Lovaas, who applied Ferster's procedures to autistic children at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and developed early intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI), or 8 hours per day of what he called, "discrete trial training" (DTT).

He later married Elyce Zenoff Ferster, a professor of law at George Washington University, Ferster died of a heart attack on February 3, 1981, at the age of 58 in Washington, D.C.[2] Education Post-doctoral professional affiliations Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior The Skinner box is not a specific technique, but rather a method of research employing the free operant.

The use of the free operant is a method of wide generality; it refers to any apparatus that generates a response which takes a short time to occur and leaves the animal in the same place ready to respond again.

Near the end of our collaboration we found ourselves with a vast quantity of unanalyzed and unpublished data, and we proceeded to design an environment in which we could scarcely help writing a book.

Some experiments led to further planning, new apparatus, exciting conversations, new theoretical arrangements of data and procedures or a rush to tell everyone about them, while others enabled less behavior of this kind.

Rioch, John L. Cameron, James Dinsmoor, Douglas G. Anger, James E. Anliker, Donald S. Blough, Richard J. Herrnstein, Alfredo V. Lagmay, William H. Morse, Nathan H. Azrin, Ogden R. Lindsley, Lewis R. Gollub, Matthew L. Israel, Harlan L. Lane, George S. Reynolds, A. Charles Catania, Herbert S. Terrace, Neil J. Peterson.