Human Behavior and Psychology

Do you agree or disagree with the article and why.

EMBATTLED GIANT OF PSYCHOLOGY SPEAKS HIS MIND
Daniel Goleman
Special to The New York Times
CAMBRIDGE, Mass,-B.F. Skinner is a creature of carefully shaped habit. At the age of 83, he has fashioned a schedule and environment for himself that is in perfect keeping with his theories of behavioral reinforcement.
Dr. Skinner's personal Skinner box-his own self-contained environment of positive reinforcement - is his basement office in his home here, a 1950's flat-top set among charming New England -style saltboxes.
"I spent a lot of time creating the environment where I work." Dr. Skinner said as he recently had a visitor through the home where he and his wife Yvonne live. "I believe people should design a world where they will be as happy as possible in old age."
Burrhus Frederic Skinner: the chief architect of behaviorism, uses the office to marshal a crusade against what he sees as grave mistakes in psychology that have left his own once pre-eminent theories in decline.
Behaviorism holds that people act as they do because of the rewards and punishments - positive and negative reinforcements - they have received. The mind and such things as memory and perception cannot be directly observed, and so, in Dr. Skinner's view, are unworthy of scientific study.
Much of Dr. Skinner's efforts now aim at meeting two major challenges to
behaviorism: brain science, the study of links between brain and behavior and cognitive psychology, the study of how the mind perceives, thinks and remembers and how goals and plans influence behavior.
During the recent visit, Dr. Skinner, known to colleagues as Fred was in the midst of preparing a talk week at psychology's major annual convention.
It is to maximize his productivity in such writing and to conserve energy in his later years that Dr,. Skinner has designed this environment. He sleeps in the office in a bright yellow plastic tank just large enough for the mattress it contains a small television and some narrow shelves and controls the bed unit, which bears some resemblance to a sleeper on a train, is one of those
B.F. Skinner, the architect of behaviorism, battles 'grave mistakes' in rival approaches.
Used by the Japanese in stacks in tiny hotel rooms. Dr. Skinner explains.
The office-bedroom suits Dr. Skinner's habits well: he goes to bed each night at 10:PM, he sleeps three hours then rolls out the bed to his nearby desk, where he works for one hour. Then he goes back to bed for another three hours, getting up to begin his day at 5 A.M.