Guest editors' comments.

Abstract

We are pleased to offer this special issue of the Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Applied Behavior Analysis on bridging the gap between the conceptual foundations of speech and language and the treatment procedures used in speech-language pathology (SLP). Our aim in putting this special issue together was to provide the practitioner with a behavioral analytic view of speech and language that is conceptually more consistent with the behavioral treatment widely used in remediating communication disorders in children and adults. Currently, most speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who routinely use the behavioral treatment methods accept the linguistic and cognitive theories in understanding language and language development. Linguistic and cognitive theorists, being mentalistic as well as nativistic, seem unable to derive their own useful treatment procedures from their theories. Treatment of communication disorders, by nature, is experimental, and experimental approaches are based on the philosophy and methods of natural science. The behavioral view of language and language development is a natural science account, as opposed to a cognitive, mentalistic, and nativistic approach. It is precisely for this reason that the behavioral approach has generated experimentally verified treatment procedures. Therefore, adopting a natural science account of verbal behavior--a preferred substitute for language--would be more consistent with experimentally based treatment procedures. Conceptual and treatment consistency is not the only advantage of adopting the verbal behavior view of language. It helps the SLPs avoid spurious, speculative, and untestable theories of language and language acquisition. The verbal behavior view eliminates the contradiction of holding a nativistic view of language while trying to modify speech-language behaviors through environmental changes. The behavioral view will help SLPs target functional (cause-effect) language units in assessment and treatment, instead of unstable or unreliable linguistic categories that are unrelated to potential independent variables. Many other advantages are likely to follow with an approach that integrates the basic analysis of language with experimental treatment procedures. This issue consists of six papers that offer a glimpse of various aspects of Skinner's Verbal Behavior. While the first four papers offer perspectives on the behavioral analysis of language and language development, the last two illustrate the applied aspects of that analysis. Hegde's paper gives a historical background to the publication of Skinner's Verbal Behavior and the linguistic criticisms that followed. The paper then goes on to summarize the various functional units of verbal behavior, an understanding of which is essential to appreciating Skinner's analysis. Dr. Hegde points out the clinical implications of functional units as opposed to linguistic structural units for the work of SLPs. The next paper by McLaughlin offers a behavioral analysis of child language development. Dr. McLaughlin points out that the behavioral view is in fact better able to account for the documented facts of language development in children. Although there has been much research to show that verbal interactions between children and their caregivers are the basis of language learning, the distorted view that only cognitive-nativistic view of language development is valid persists in many textbooks. Dr. McLaughlin counters the generally accepted but unjustified criticism that the behavioral view cannot account for language development in children. Weitzman's paper, next in the series, addresses what linguists consider a difficult issue for behavioral analysts. …