Chapter 25: Verbal Behaviour

The formal properties of language involve the topography of the verbal response (form, structure). The functional properties involve the causes of the responses (antecedents, consequences).

Behavior that is reinforced through the mediation of another person's behavior. It involves a social interaction between speakers and listeners whereby speakers gain access to reinforcement and control their environment through the behavior of listeners.

The verbal operant is the unit of analysis of verbal behavior and is the functional relation between a type of responding and (a) motivating operations, (b) discriminative stimuli, and (c) consequences.

Verbal operants are classified into six different types of elementary verbal operants. They are: mand, tact, echoic, intraverbal, textual, transcription.

Punishment that occurs independently of the social mediation by others (response product serves as a punisher independent of the environment.

Anyone who functions as a S^D evoking verbal behavior. Different audiences may control different verbal behavior about the same topic because of a differential reinforcement history (teens may describe the same event in different ways when talking to peers vs. parents).

A secondary verbal operant in which some aspect of a speakers own verbal behavior functions as an S^D or an MO for additional speaker verbal behavior. The relation can be thought of as verbal behavior about verbal behavior.

Reinforcement that occurs independent of the social mediation by others (i.e. scratching the insect bite relieves the itch).

Occurs when a single verbal response is a function of more than one variable and what is said has more than one antecedent source of control.

An elementary verbal operant that is evoked by a non-vocal verbal S^D that has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the controlling response.

Occurs when a single antecedent variable affects the strength of more than one response.

An elementary verbal opernat involving a response that is evoked by a verbal S^D that has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response.

A situation that occurs when the controlling antecedent stimulus and the response or response product (a) share the same sense mode - visual, auditory, or tactile, and (b) physically resemble each other. Elementary verbal operants with formal similarity include: echoic, copying a text, and imitation.

A tact evoked by a novel stimulus that shares all the relevant or defining features associated with the original stimulus.

A verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by both an MO and a nonverbal stimulus; thus, the response is part mand and part tact.