Skinner box

American  

noun

Psychology.

1. a box used in experiments in animal learning, especially in operant conditioning, equipped with a mechanism that automatically gives the animal food or other reward or permits escape, as by opening a door.

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Skinner box British  

noun

1. a device for studying the learning behaviour of animals, esp rats and pigeons, consisting of a box in which the animal can move a lever to obtain a reward, such as a food pellet, or a punishment, such as an electric shock

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Etymology

Origin of Skinner box

First recorded in 1940–45; named after B. F. Skinner

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Skinner box

Like rats in a Skinner box being conditioned to get food or stop pain, AI models hill-climb in a process similar to reinforcement learning, tweaking their parameters based on feedback.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Katie Hafner: You know what I like about this story is that it wasn't like a Skinner box.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 21, 2023

The schematic of a “trigger, action, reward, investment” sequence is curiously close to that of the Skinner box we all studied in Psych 101.

From Time ● Jul. 8, 2015

Thus was born the Skinner box, which Skinner himself likened to a slot machine.

From The Verge ● May 6, 2015

We are evolving into the situation of a Skinner pigeon in a Skinner box, peering about in all directions, trying to make connections, probing.

From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas