Chapter 12
Verbal Behavior
Synopsis:
Verbal behavior focuses on the function of speaking, writing, reading, signing, and other
forms of communication. Unlike many approaches that emphasize the structure of language,
including grammar and syntax, the verbal-behavior approach views language as a product of
contingencies of reinforcement in the environment and mediated by the behavior of other
organisms. That is, verbal behavior only works through its effects on other people. The
capacity for verbal behavior is a product of natural selection operating on the vocal and
neural systems (including larynx, tongue, and neuromuscular systems) allowing for the
production of speech sounds, which come under operant control. In humans, the FOXP2
FoxP2 transcription factor (encoded by the FOXP2 FoxP2 gene) is implicated in enhanced
motor control and learning of speech. The contingencies that regulate verbal behavior arise
from the practices of people in the verbal community and determine the function and form of
speaking (specific language spoken). Manding and tacting are two basic classes of verbal
operant behavior. Manding is a verbal operant class regulated by establishing operations
(EOs) and maintained by specific reinforcement. Tacting is a verbal operant class regulated
by nonverbal discriminative stimuli and maintained by generalized conditioned
reinforcement. Other basic verbal operants include: (a) echoics, (b) textual relations, (c)
intraverbals, and (d) autoclitics. The basic units of verbal behavior are combined to form
higher-order classes, allowing for the greater novelty and spontaneity in a child’s language
production, including higher-order verbal classes like naming. Through multiple- exemplar
instruction (MEI) the child learns that listener and speaker responses go together,
establishing the generalized verbal class of naming. As verbal repertoires increase across the
lifespan, verbal behavior becomes more symbolic as shown by research on learning of
stimulus equivalence and formation of the stimulus classes denoted as reflexivity, symmetry,
and transitivity—basic logical relations of mathematics. Complex symbolic human behavior
is built on the equivalence relation and other derived stimulus relations, and the neural basis
of derived relations is an ongoing area of behavioral neuroscience. Stimulus equivalence
training has been helpful to those who lack reading skills and in the development of
educational curricula based on derived stimulus relations. Research shows that animals can
be trained to pass tests of stimulus equivalence, but that these relations are substantially
extended in human behavior. Analysis of three-term contingencies of mother–-child
interactions in natural speech supports the operant perspective on the early development of
verbal behavior. A detailed analysis in the advanced section of this chapter depicts the social
contingencies regulating the basic verbal relations of manding and tacting as outlined by
Skinner (1957) in his book Verbal Behavior.
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Study Questions:
[1.] What is language and verbal behavior? How does verbal behavior differ from language?
1.[2.] Identify developmental changes in the larynx and tongue of human children that
facilitate production of the vowel sounds [i], [u], and [a].
2.[3.] How did Skinner describe the differences between the behavior of listener and
speaker?
3.[4.] Describe the differences between the information-transmission view of language and
the behavior analyst view.
4.[5.] Define the following concepts: (a) manding and (b) tacting.
[6.] Describe the procedure of the blocked-response conditioned establishing operation
(CEO). How is this procedure used toin train manding relations?
5.[7.] With regards to the tacting relation, what is nonspecific reinforcement?
[8.] What did Carrol Carroll and Hesse’s (1987) research regarding the alternating training of
tacting and manding suggest about the independence of these classes of behavior?
6.[9.] What is Skinner’s functional independence hypothesis?
[10.] Define intraverbal behavior and provide a common example based on learning of
addition in school.? How does an intraverbal response differ from an echoic response
—? Ttry to use the learning of addition as an example throughout your answer?
[11.] Identify the two requirements for a response to be considered echoic behavior.? How is
textual behavior different?
7.[12.] What is an autoclitic and what are the five categories of autoclitic relations?
8.[13.] According to applied behavior analysts, how should autoclitics be trained?
9.[14.] From what basic verbal behaviors does the naming relation develop?
10.[15.] Identify and define the three basic classes or types of equivalence relations.
11.[16.] Identify five areas of the brain that neuroscientists have found to be involved in
derived stimulus relations.
12.[17.] In Frank and Wasserman’s (2005) research on equivalence in pigeons, what training
condition was necessary for pigeons to demonstrate evidence of symmetry?
13.[18.] How do behavior analysts explain evidence that reinforcement may not be necessary
for the development of emergence of derived stimulus functions?
[19.] What did Moerk’s (1990) research on mother-–child communication suggest about the
development of language usage in humans?
[20.] What is an interlocking contingency? Show how both mand and tact relations are part
of interlocking contingencies.?
Study Questions (Answers):
[1.] Language is a poorly defined concept that can refer to linguistic habits, universal
grammar, vocabulary, syntax, and meaning of communication. Verbal behavior deals
with the performance of a speaker and the environmental conditions that establish and
maintain such performance. Verbal behavior focuses on the function of what we say.
[2.] During development, the larynx descends into the adult position in the neck (C6),
changes shape in ways that alter breathing and swallowing, and muscular control is
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extended within the larynx and pharynx. During this same time, the tongue descends into
the throat (pharynx), assumes a posterior rounded contour, and the tongue’s oral and
pharyngeal proportions become equal (1:1).
[3.] Skinner used the term rule-governed behavior to describe the behavior of the listener
and verbal behavior to describe the behavior of the speaker. Rules are complex verbal
discriminative stimuli for the listener, and the principles that govern stimulus control also
regulate the rule-following behavior of the listener. Verbal behavior is shaped by subtle
contingencies of reinforcement mediated by the behavior of the listener.
[4.] Information-transmission assumes that words refer to things in the world and have the
power to represent, communicate, and express the world as perceived by the speaker.
The behavior analysis view is that the social environment shapes the way in which we
use words. The way we talk and what we say are a function of social contingencies
involving effects or consequences arranged by members of a verbal community.
[5.] Manding is a class of verbal operants whose form is regulated by establishing operations
and maintained by specific reinforcement. Tacting is a class of verbal operants whose
form is regulated by nonverbal discriminative stimuli and maintained by generalized
conditioned reinforcement from the verbal community.
[6.] The blocked-response conditioned establishing operation (CEO) procedure involves
temporarily withholding a condition, stimulus, or event that is necessary for the
completion of a behavior pattern or chain. This procedure is often used to train manding
relations by creating an establishing operation for requesting the withheld stimulus,
event, or condition.
[7.] Nonspecific reinforcement refers to a situation where the reinforcer for the response
exerts no stimulus control over the form of the next response (e.g., seeing a picture of an
apple, saying “apple,”, and then receiving verbal praise).
[8.] Carrol Carroll and Hesse (1987) found that mand training facilitated the acquisition of
tacting. This suggests that under some conditions, manding and tacting are not
independent classes of behavior. This may be the case when parts of the response forms
are shared.
[9.] Skinner’s functional independence hypothesis states that manding and tacting are
separate response classes controlled by distinct contingencies. Due to the differences in
controlling contingencies, it should be possible to train tacting and manding
independently.
[10.] Intraverbal behavior is a class of verbal operants regulated by verbal discriminative
stimuli. A common example of the intraverbal is learning addition in school. The teacher
says “What is two plus one” and the student answers “three.”. An intraverbal does not
involve a point-to-point correspondence between the verbal stimulus (2 + 1 =) and the
response (writing the number 3). When point-to-point correspondence exists, this is
termed echoic behavior (teacher says “three” and student says “three”).
[11.] Echoic behavior requires that the response has (a) point-to-point correspondence and
(b) formal similarity, meaning that the behavior occurs in the same mode (auditory or
visual) as the stimulus. Textual behavior requires a point-to-point correspondence, but
not formal similarity.
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[12.] The autoclitic is a form of verbal behavior that modifies the consequences produced by
other verbal responses and is used in conjunction with, and controlled by, primary verbal
units (mands, tacts, and intraverbals). The five categories of autoclitic relations are
descriptive, qualifying, quantifying, manipulative, and relational.
1.[13.] Applied behavior analysts recommend that autoclitics be trained indirectly by
focusing on a wide variety of primary verbal operants such as mands, tacts, echoics, and
intraverbals to allow for “communication effectiveness” and contact with the natural
contingencies of the verbal community.
[14.] Horne and Lowe (1996) stated that the naming relation (or generalized class of naming)
arises from verbal contingencies that integrate the echoic and tacting response classes of
the child as speaker with the conditional discrimination behavior of the child as listener.
[15.] The three basic classes or types of equivalence relations are: (1) symmetry— – when
stimulus class A is shown to be interchangeable with stimulus class B;, (2) reflexivity or
identity— – the A to A relation;, and (3) transitivity— – if A = B and B = C, then A = C.
[16.] Neuroscientists using fMRI technology have found the following areas to be involved
in derived stimulus relations: frontal right-hemisphere (non-verbal areas), anterior
hippocampus in the medial temporal lobe (memory areas), the parahippocampus
(memory- encoding area), and the frontal and parietal lobe regions.
[17.] Frank and Wasserman (2005) found that symmetry was only demonstrated when the
training condition included intermixed A–-A and B–-B identity training.
[18.] Evidence suggests that stimulus–-stimulus (S–-S) correlation, the degree to which one
stimulus goes together with another, is the basic determinant of emergent relations, not
reinforcement contingencies.
[19.] Moerk (1990) found that many mother–-child–-mother verbal sequences ended with
maternal reinforcement in the form of feedback that confirmed the child’s verbal
behavior. This finding indicates that three-term contingencies characterized many of the
verbal episodes of early language imitation.
[20.] An interlocking contingency involves the intermingling of behavior chains during social
interaction in which each person’s verbal responses function as discriminative stimuli and
reinforcement for the other person’s behavior. In the mand relation, deprived of ketchup
the speaker’s mand (“Ppass the ketchup”) functions as a discriminative stimulus for the
listener’s behavior (passing the ketchup) and the listener’s response (passing the ketchup)
functions as specific reinforcement of the speaker’s manding. In tacting, the verbal
prompt (“What’s that?”) from the listener in the presence of the ketchup bottle (nonverbal
SD) sets the occasion for the speaker’s verbal response (“Ketchup.”) that is followed by
generalized reinforcement by the listener (“Thanks”).
Essay Questions (Student):
[1.] Describe the general findings of Lamarre and Holland’s (1985) and Petursdottir, Carr,
and Micahel’sMichael’s (2005) tests of Skinner’s functional independence hypothesis.
Discuss three possible reasons for the conflicting findings between these studies.
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ANS: Lamarre and Holland (1985) demonstrated the functional independence of
manding and tacting in children between 3 and 5 years old. The results clearly
supported Skinner’s functional independence hypothesis.
Petursdottir, Carr, and Michael (2005) used preschool children to systematically replicate
and extend the findings of Lamarre and Holland (1985) and found that following mand
training, 4 out of 4 children reliably emitted tact responses on probe trials, but tact
training produced unreliable effects on tests for mand responses.
One possibility is that the contingencies differed between the two studies. The
earlier study by Lamare Lamarre and Holland (1985) required the children to emit
verbal responses to an abstract stimulus property (location on the left or on the
right), whereas the more recent study by Petursdottir et al. (2005) used a concrete
stimulus (pieces of puzzles or cubes) to establish the requisite verbal behavior.
Another way to account for the differences relates to establishing operations. Lammare
Lamarre and Holland did not use an explicit establishing operation (EO) for mand
training, but the assembly-task study did—using concealed pieces of the task as a specific
EOestablishing operation.
The reinforcement histories of the children also differed between the two studies.
When children have a relevant history of manding and tacting outside the
laboratory, as would be the case for verbal responses involving objects (pieces of
puzzle), these response classes would show more cross-transfer in an experimental
setting.
[2.] What is multiple- exemplar instruction (MEI) and why is it important to the development
of the naming relation in children with language delays? How do outcomes using
multiple exemplar instructionMEI compare to the use of single example exemplar
instruction (SEI)?
ANS: A variety of research studies of children with language delays indicate
that the naming relation arises from multiple exemplar instructions (MEI), involving
rotation of the child’s listener and speaker responses during training. After training to
establish basic verbal units and listening, MEI alternates among instructions to match,
instructions to point, and instructions to tact arranged in different sequences. Results
of various studies show that MEI training increased novel unreinforced listener and
speaker components of naming, but that single exemplar instruction (SEI) failed to
show the emergence of novel naming. The data suggest that rotation of the speaker–
listener components found in MEI training is required for the acquisition of naming in
children who lack a naming repertoire. Thus, through MEI the child learns that
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listener and speaker responses go together, establishing the generalized verbal class of
naming. The speaker–listener repertoires remain independent with SEI training, and
there is no evidence of generalized naming with these procedures.
Essay Questions (Instructor):
1. Describe how echoic relations developed at an early age may serve as the foundation of
more complex verbal behavior.
ANS: Echoic behavior occurs at an early age in an infant’s acquisition of speech.
The child who repeats “dada” or “mama” to the same words uttered by a parent is
showing echoic operant behavior. In this situation, any product of behavior (sound
pattern of child) that closely replicates the verbal stimulus (modeled sound pattern)
is reinforced. The contingencies of echoic behavior are probably based on the
matching of phonetic units. Catania indicates that the learning of echoic behavior
begins with the basic units of speech called phonemes. Coordinated movements of
the child’s larynx, tongue, and lips result in phonemes (e.g., “ma”), which replicate
parts of adult speech (“ma . . .… ma”). When articulations by the child correspond
to those of the adult, the acoustical patterns also overlap. Adults who hear speech-
relevant sounds (“ma”) often provide social consequences (e.g., tickling, tummy
poking, or smiling) that are paired with these acoustical patterns. On this basis, the
duplication of speech sounds itself comes to function as automatic reinforcement for
speech-relevant articulations by the child. These units begin as phonemes (i.e., the
smallest sound units to which listeners react), expand to words, and eventually may
include full phrases and sentences.
[2.] Define the following elements of stimulus equivalence and give an example of each
based on a child learning to read: identity, reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. Give
an example of each. Describe the components of a complete experiment testing for
stimulus equivalence relations.
ANS: Identity occurs when an organism selects stimulus class A when presented
with stimulus class A (A = A; B = B). The child is shown a picture of a dog and
points to the dog among animals in the book. Symmetry occurs when stimulus class
A is shown to be interchangeable with stimulus class B (if A = B then B = A). The
child points to a dog when shown the photograph of a dog and when asked to find
“the dog” in the book. In this case, the picture and the word have an equivalent
equivalence in function. Transitivity occurs when it the child is shown that if stimulus
class A = stimulus class B and stimulus class B = stimulus class C, then stimulus
class A = stimulus class C. The child points to a dog when shown the photo of a dog,
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points to the dog among animals in the book when asked to find “the dog,” and
points to the dog in a group of animals when hearing a “barking” sound. The
picture, word, and sound are shown to be equivalent in function (Picture of Dog =
Word Dog = Sound of Dog).
A complete experiment for stimulus equivalence consists of both identity and
symbolic matching procedures. In identity matching, the researcher presents a
sample stimulus and two options. The procedure is repeated over multiple examples
of sample and comparison options. The organism is reinforced for choosing the
option that corresponds to the sample, establishing generalized matching-to-sample
or generalized identity matching. Symbolic matching involves presenting one class
of stimuli as the samples and another set of stimuli as the options. After the
reinforced relations are trained, tests are made for each kind of equivalence
relation. The question is whether reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity occur
without further training.
Videos:
B. F. Skinner— – Focus on vVerbal bBehavior
[Link]
Manding— - Training
[Link]
Tacting— - Training
[Link]
Echoic relations
[Link]
Intraverbal relations
[Link]
Not as scary as you think: Sstimulus equivalence
[Link]
Verbal bBehavior pPanel dDiscussion (complex verbal behavior is analyzed by several
members of the panel)
[Link]
Study Tips:
Verbal behavior is about the function of speaking, writing, signing, and other forms of
communication. The goal is to analyze the environmental contingencies that shape and
control verbal behavior of the speaker.
Manding is verbal behavior under the control of an establishing operation (EO) and
specific reinforcement. Tacting is verbal behavior controlled by nonverbal discriminative
stimuli and generalized conditioned reinforcement or nonspecific reinforcement.
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Echoic behavior involves both a point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity.
Textual relations involve a point-to-point correspondence, but not formal similarity.
Stimulus equivalence involves: reflexivity or identity matching (A = A, B = B),
symmetry (A = B and B = A), and transitivity (A = B and B = C, then A = C).
Most human verbal interactions involve interlocking contingencies built on reciprocal
exchanges of the basic verbal operants (manding, tacting, echoics, textual relations,
autoclitics, and intraverbals).
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