[7] Skinner believed that classical conditioning did not account for the behavior that many people are interested in, such as riding a bike or writing a book.
As represented in the table below, operant conditioning involves two basic actions (increasing or decreasing the probability that a specific behavior will occur in the future), which are accomplished by adding or removing stimuli.
Skinner pioneered the free operant technique, where organisms could respond at any time during a protracted experimental session.
Thus Skinner's dependent variable was usually the frequency or rate of responding, not the errors that were made or the speed of traversal of a maze.
Skinner rejected this position, conceding the importance of thinking, feelings and "inner behavior" in his analysis.
Skinner considers physiology useful, interesting, valid, etc., but not necessary for operant behavioral theory and research.
Skinner explicitly noted that private events were essential for behaviorists to understand and account for, though he also considered them beyond the limits of direct analysis.
Skinner's philosophical views have left their mark in principles adopted by a small handful of utopian communities, such as Los Horcones and Twin Oaks, and in ongoing challenges to aversive techniques in control of human and animal behavior.
Critics such as Noam Chomsky label Skinnerian or radical behaviorism as S–R (stimulus–response, or to use Skinner's term, "respondent"),[12][13] or Pavlovian psychology, and argue that this limits the approach.
scholars find his work into operant conditioning, which emphasizes the importance of consequences in modifying discriminative responses, useful when combined with current understandings about the uniqueness of evolved human thought compared to other animals.
argue that radical behaviorism maintains the position that animals (including humans) are passive receivers of conditioning, although others[who?]