Showing papers by "B. F. Skinner published in 1983"

Intellectual self-management in old age.

Abstract: Old age is only partly a biological condition. Environments age as well as bodies, and fortunately that process can be retarded. This article records personal techniques that have proved helpful in offsetting some of the physiological limitations of old age and particularly in making it possible to continue to engage in intellectual work. Problems dealt with include sensory and motor deficiencies, memory loss, motivational changes, mental fatigue, and the disruptive effects of the social environment of the aged. The emphasis is on constructing a world in which the behavior of old people will continue to be abundantly reinforced. A quarter of a century ago I presented a paper at the Eastern Psychological Association meeting called "A Case History in Scientific Method." In it I pointed out that my life as a behavioral scientist did not seem to conform to the picture usually painted by statisticians and scientific methodologists. The present article is also a case history but in a very different field. I have heard it said that G. Stanley Hall, one of our founding fathers, wrote a book on each of the stages of his life as he passed through it. I did not have the foresight to begin early enough to do that, but I can still talk about the last stage, and so I now present myself to you behaving verbally in old age as I once presented those pigeons playing Ping-Pong. Developmentalism is a branch of structuralism in which the form or topography of behavior is studied as a function of time. At issue is how behavior changes as one grows older. Aging should be the right word for this process, but it does not mean developing. In accepted usage, to develop is not simply to grow older but to unfold a latent structure, to realize an inner potential, to become more effective. Aging, on the other hand, usually means growing less effective. For Shakespeare the "ages of man" ranged from the infant mewling and puking, to the schoolboy "creeping like snail unwillingly to school," to lovers sighing and soldiers seeking the bubble reputation, to the justice full of wise saws and modern instances, to a stage in which the "big manly voice . . .pipes and whistles in his sound," and then at last to second childishness and mere oblivion— "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste," and in the end, of course, "sans everything." The aged are old people. Aging is growing not merely older but old. In developmentalism the horticultural metaphor is strong. There are stages of growth, and maturity is hailed as a desirable state of completion. But the metaphor then becomes less attractive, for there is a point at which we are glad to stop developing. Beyond maturity lie decay and rot. Fortunately, the developmental account is incomplete, and what is missing is particularly important if we want to do anything about aging. There is no doubt an inexorable biological process, a continuation of the growth of the embryo,, which can be hindered or helped but not stopped. In speaking of the development of an organism, growth is no metaphor, but persons develop in a different way and for different reasons, many of which are not inexorable. Much of what seems to be the unfolding of an inner potential is the product of an unfolding environment; a person's world develops. The aging of a person, as distinct from the aging of an organism, depends upon changes in the physical and social environments. We recognize the difference when we say that some young people are old for their years or when, as Shakespeare put it, old people return to childishness. Fortunately, the course of a developing environment can be changed. That kind of aging can be retarded. If the stages in our lives were due merely to the passage of time, we should have to find a fountain of youth to reverse the direction of change, but if many of the problems of old people are due to shortcomings in their environments, the environments