Charles Bohris Ferster was an American behavioral psychologist. A pioneer in the field of applied behavior analysis, he developed errorless learning and was a colleague of B.F. Skinner's at Harvard University, co-authoring the book Schedules of Reinforcement.
Ferster was born November 1, 1922 in Freehold, New Jersey, the second son of Julius B. and Molly Madwin Ferster. He was married to Marilyn Ferster, with whom he had four children—Bill, Andrea, Sam and Warren. He later married Elyce Zenoff Ferster, a professor of law at George Washington University, Ferster died on February 3, 1981 at the age of 58 in Washington, D.C.
Timeline
Education
1940–1943 Rutgers University
1943–1946 Military Service
1946–1947 Rutgers University
1947–1950 Columbia University
Post-doctoral professional affiliations
1950–1955 Harvard University Research Fellow under B.F. Skinner
Individualized Instruction at Georgetown, American Universities
The University Learning Center at American University: this represented a radical experiment in undergraduate, interdisciplinary education in which the principles of operant behavior were directly applied. The center itself—an open, free-flowing physical space on campus—was conceived of as the "chamber" in which instruction and learning occurred. The environment adhered in obvious ways to such cornerstone concepts as immediate positive reinforcement, successive approximation, schedules of reinforcement, discriminative stimuli and the like. Professors of Psychology, Physics, Anthropology, Psychiatry, Sociology, Philosophy, Mathematics staffed the Learning Center, as did many graduate students in these fields.
Following is a partial list of professional colleagues and friends of Charles Ferster; those interested in behaviorism, operant conditioning, and human behavior more generally may be interested in these people and their work: Margaret J. Rioch, David McK. Rioch, John L. Cameron, James Dinsmoor, Douglas G. Anger, James E. Anliker, Donald S. Blough, Richard J. Herrnstein, Alfredo V. Lagmay, William H. Morse, Nathan H. Azrin, Ogden R. Lindsley, Lewis R. Gollub, Matthew L. Israel, Harlan L. Lane, George S. Reynolds, A. Charles Catania, Herbert S. Terrace, Neil J. Peterson. William N. Schoenfeld
Written works
Books
Schedules of Reinforcement, with B.F. Skinner, 1957 .
An Introduction to the Science of Human Behavior, with Nurnberger, J. I. & Brady, J. P., 1963
Behavior Principles, with Mary Carol Perott, 1968;
Articles
Arbitrary and Natural Reinforcement 1967, The Psychological Record, 22, 1-16
An Experimental Analysis of Clinical Phenomena 1972, The Psychological Record, 22, 1-16
Clinical Reinforcement 1972, Seminars in Psychiatry, 4, 110-111
A Laboratory Model of Psychotherapy 1979, In P. Sjoden, Trends in Behavior Therapy.New York, Academic Press
Psychotherapy from the standpoint of a behaviorist, 1972, In J.D. Keehn, Psychopathology in Animals: research and clinical implications. New York, Academic Press
The Autistic Child
Positive Reinforcement and Behavioral Deficits of Autistic Children, Child Development 1961, 32:437-456
The use of the free operant in the analysis of behavior, 1953 Psychological Bulletin, 50, 263-274.
The Development of Performances in Autistic Children in an Automatically Controlled Environment, Charles B. Ferster, Marian K. DeMyer, Journal of Chronic Diseases 1961 Apr; 13:312-4
A functional analysis of depression, American Psychologist 1973, 857-870.
The control of eating, In J. P. Foreyt, Behavioral treatments of obesity. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Ferster, C. B., Nurnberger, J. I. & Levitt, E. E..
