Experimental Analysis of Behavior

The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individual organisms across a variety of species, built substantially on the work of B. F. Skinner, who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers and secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination and generalization. Its central method is the direct examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, rather than the hypothetico-deductive learning theories that had developed within comparative psychology between the 1920s and 1950s. The approach is characterized by observing measurable behavior that can be predicted and controlled, and it owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's operant conditioning procedures, applied both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.