Cumulative Recorders

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What is a cumulative recorder? Apparently, it is an important term in behavioral psychology in the tradition of B.F. Skinner.

The idea is that a cumulative recorder is a device that creates a graph over time on the paper turning on a rotating drum, as abve. The graph would in turn display the responses of the rat or pigeon or whatever to the experimental stimulus.

The functions of a cumulative recorder in the old mechanical sense have been supplanted in our age of digital computers, but one still finds references to these machines in the periodicals of this branch of psychology.

This little vocabulary lesson has been brought to you by trhe letters "C" and "R."

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