ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the operant came to be, and then some of the phenomena that seem to pose difficulties for it. It summarizes new evidence from the physiological study of brain-damaged animals and people that suggests that it may be fruitful to look at the operant in terms of levels of integration. The time may be ripe to merge the operant and physiological methodologies in a concerted intellectual and experimental attack upon the levels of integration of the operant. All physiological experimenters share the belief that the most fruitful experimental analysis is real, not hypothetical. B. F. Skinner then devised a “microscope” to study the newly isolated “operant”—the cumulative record. Some insight into the role of the operant comes from the analysis of the stages of recovery from the aphagia and adipsia that result from bilateral lateral hypothalamic damage. Operant behavior may have a similar hierarchical structure, built up by successive levels of transformation in development.
