Watson used animals in research because, unlike philosophers including Descartes, Watson felt that:

The pineal gland served no useful function in the brain

Animals functioned on "instinct alone"

There was "no dividing line between man and brute"

There was no "Cartesian theater" in the mind

Skinner defined "reinforcement" as:

Anything that increases the frequency of a behavior

When one group of neurons is exhausted, another takes over the function

Repeating the same thing over and over

The result of long term potentiation between cortical neurons

Skinner noticed that in experiments designed to increase pecking on a lever, some pigeons by chance would turn in a circle before pecking. This behavior persisted, even though the only behavior that was rewarded was the pecking. Skinner called this:

Negative reinforcement

An example of how unintelligent chickens really are

Chance

Superstitious behavior

Operant conditioning techniques have been used in patients with autism and other disorders through a process of:

Behavior modification

Staircase analysis

Mind-body dissociations

One-trial learning