A common language: Using B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior for assessment and treatment of communication disabilities in SLP-ABA.

Abstract

Introduction During the last decade there has been a growing trend for direct collaboration between the fields of speech-language pathology (SLP) and applied analysis (ABA). A common overlap between the focus of the two fields is in the area of communication assessment and intervention for the purposes of enhanced interaction skills and management of inappropriate behaviors resulting from inadequate communication skills (Koenig and Gerenser, 2006). Disagreements among professionals from both fields often can be a result of a difference in terminology. Take for example, the definition of the term A definition adopted by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association was developed by the National Joint Committee for the Communicative needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities (1991, p. 2). Any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes. This definition emphasizes the shared meaning established between a speaker and a listener. The Joint Committee concluded, Thus, all persons do communicate in some way. Additionally, the success of a communicative exchange could depend on the listener happening to witness the speaker's and interpreting that as communicative. The 1957 publication of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior provided the field of ABA with a definition of communication. Skinner refers to behavior as reinforced through the mediation of other people (p.2) and specified that the 'listener' must be responding in ways which have been conditioned precisely in order to reinforce the of the speaker [by the verbal community] ... In other words, a speaker acts in a manner that is under the stimulus control of an audience (a listener) and the listener then provides the reinforcing consequence. It is through reinforcement of a specific verbal community (the French, the English, the Spanish) that a child learns the grammar and vocabulary of a particular community. The definitions from both fields emphasize that communication can occur in many modalities, just the spoken modality. A source of confusion in the field of SLP has been in defining the terms speech, communication, and verbal. Reports of a student including phrases such as not verbal, or non-verbal, can lead to erroneous conclusions. A speech pathologist might assume that this means that the student is yet speaking. A person using Skinner's definition would conclude that the student has no communication skills at all in any modality. The less ambiguous terminology to describe the student who is speaking would be non-speaking or non-vocal. This could mean that the student has a sophisticated language system in a non-speech modality such as pictures, sign language, or writing. Skinner's definition also helps us to identify behaviors of a student that are verbal behavior. Behaviors that lead to direct access to reinforcing consequences are communicative because access to those consequences is dependent upon another person. For example if a student goes to a table and picks up a we would say that this is communicative as the action was aimed directly at the book. On the other hand, if the student says to the teacher sitting at the table, I want that book, and the teacher hands it to the student, we would say that this is verbal behavior. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of Skinner's analysis of verbal and its application to assessment and remediation of communication deficits. A description of Skinner's primary verbal operants will be provided. …