Editorial: Verbal Behavior and Motivating Operations

Abstract

Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior is inextricably linked to a behavioral analysis of motivation. One of the most noteworthy features of the elementary verbal operants that are introduced in the first few chapters of Verbal Behavior is the distinction that is drawn between the mand and other types of verbal behavior. Each of the other elementary verbal operants is controlled by public or private discriminative stimuli that are present in the speaker's physical or social environment. To the extent that training contingencies have established tight control by these stimuli, verbal behavior in the form of tacts, intraverbals, echoics, textual behavior, and so on, should be expected to accurately mirror the stimulus conditions and events that the speaker detects through his or her senses. The mand, by contrast, is occasioned by various motivational variables that affect the speaker, summarized by Skinner (p. 36) as “relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation.” As Skinner explains in detail in chapter 9 (see also Michael, Palmer, & Sundberg, 2011), most verbal behavior is in fact under the multiple control of variables that characterize more than one verbal operant. The motivational variables that define the mand frequently enter into these multiply-controlled relations, and may serve to reduce the correspondence between what the speaker sees, hears, or feels, and what the speaker actually reports. Throughout the remainder of Verbal Behavior, Skinner makes clear that the controlling variables for the mand are ubiquitous in both simple and complex verbal behavior. In other words, the behavior of a speaker cannot be analyzed solely in terms of discriminative stimuli in the speaker's environment; it is complete only when motivational variables are also taken into account.