Skin ‧ ner, B.F. /ˈskɪnəʳ/ BrE AmE
(1904–90) a US ↑ psychologist (=a scientist who studies the way the human mind works) who developed the ideas of ↑ behaviourism . He did a lot of ↑ experiment s , especially with animals, to see how they behaved in certain situations and how they could be trained to change their behaviour. He also invented ‘programmed learning’, a teaching method which influenced the way that languages and other subjects were taught in the 1970s, although most teachers now think that Skinner’s method was wrong.