ABSTRACT
Editors’ Comments: Professor Skinner’s argument constitutes an exquisitely appropriate introduction to the collection that follows. The force of coincidence, as he points out, can be considered the essential phenomenon of operant conditioning. Operant conditioners, typically utilizing single-subject designs, impress other scientists (typically utilizing group designs defended against coincidence entirely by statistical techniques) as peculiarly susceptible to being misled by coincidence precisely because of that commitment to single-subject methods. Students of child behavior, especially of child behavior observed in everyday social settings, are specially limited in their ability to defend against coincidence: in the pigeon laboratory, a potential coincidence may be replicated a dozen, or a hundred times, to demolish completely any spectator’s belief that the initial pattern observed was a coincidence; by contrast, the environments of children may be manipulated experimentally only infrequently (if at all).
