The daughter in a box story, which claimed that B.F. Skinner raised his daughter in a box like a lab animal, is untrue: it is at best an urban legend. It has unfortunately been given some further currency by an account in a recent (2004) book, which though generally sympathetic and accurate, allows room for the imaginations of the credulous to get to work. The woman about whom this nonsense has been circulated, Deborah Skinner Buzan (now a successful artist living in London), has written a lengthy article in a London newspaper refuting the latest versions of the tale.
The versions of the story that circulate are certainly imaginary, and some may even have been willfully embroidered to damage Skinner, whose radical behaviorism was unpopular with many other psychologists. What is true is that Skinner devised a "baby tender", for his younger daughter. It was essentially an improved crib that was enclosed and heated to enhance the baby's safety, and to reduce the need for restrictive bedding and clothes. It was a little like an enlarged hospital incubator. The design of this device did make use of Skinner's behaviorist philosophy and his experience of devising automated experimental apparatus for use with animals, but it was in no sense an experimental chamber or "Skinner box", nor was the baby confined in it.
Skinner described the baby tender in an article for the Ladies' Home Journal entitled "Baby in a box", and this was re-published in his collection of essays, "Cumulative Record".
External links
References
- Skinner, B. F. (1959). Cumulative record. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts
Last updated: 08-22-2005 18:01:30
