Using Skinner's model of verbal behavior analysis to study aggression in psychiatric hospitals.

Abstract

Introduction Skinner's (1957) conceptualization of verbal behavior has its roots in a series of lectures first presented at the University of Minnesota in the late 1930s, and subsequently at Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. In these lectures Skinner proposed a new theory of verbal behavior, which differed from existing explanations of verbal behaviour that tended to account for language in terms of its underlying meaning. For Skinner, existing explanations were scientifically inadequate because they failed to identify measureable and controllable variables that were causally linked to observable behavior (Skinner, 1957). Skinner, therefore, rejected the traditional formulation of verbal behavior in favor of a new, behaviorally derived formulation. Skinner's new formulation accounted for verbal behavior in terms of operant conditioning. He suggested that verbal behavior (1957) could be understood (and therefore controlled) by gaining an appreciation of the antecedents and consequences of specific utterances, which was best done using functional analysis. So, like other operant behavior , verbal behavior (1957) was conceptualised as a function of the speaker's c urrent environment and their behavioral history. It is these factors that Skinner argued were central to the scientific investigation and understanding of verbal behavior (1957). Skinner's functional analysis identified four antecedents (stimuli) and two consequences (reinforcers) that function to control verbal behavior. The four antecedent variables were: (1) some state of deprivation or aversive stimulation, (2) some aspect of the environment, (3) other verbal behavior, and (4) one's own verbal behavior. The two consequences of verbal behavior were: (1) something related to the state of deprivation/aversive stimulation, and (2) social/educational consequences (Frost & Bondy, 2006). These six variables combine to form six basic functional (stimulus-response) relationships, which specify the antecedent conditions and subsequent consequences of verbal behavior. These six basic units or verbal operants are the building blocks of verbal behavior, and can either stand alone as simple forms of language or can combine to create more advanced forms of verbal behavior (Sundberg & Michael, 2001). The first verbal operant explained by Skinner (1957) was that of the mand. The term mand was used to refer to verbal behaviors that occur in response to a state of deprivation/aversive stimulation and which tends to produce some beneficial or desired outcome related to that state . In other words a mand is a verbal operant that specifies its reinforcer. A typical example is a request for water by one who is thirsty. Another verbal operant identified by Skinner (1957) is the tact. Tacts are verbal behavior evoked by an object/event or some property of an object/event (Skinner, 1957). That is, the presence of a given object (the stimulus) increases the probability of a given response (the tact), which in turn is generally reinforced (e.g. praise). For example, presenting a picture of a cat to a child may evoke the response cat, which is reinforced by praise from the parent. Additional verbal operants are the echoic, intraverbal, textual, and transcriptive. These are similar to tacts in that they are made as a response to some external stimulus. The difference, however, is that intraverbal, echoic, textual and transcriptive operants occur in response to a verbal discriminative stimulus ([S.sup.D]), whereas the tact is made in response to a non-verbal stimulus. Echoic verbal operants refer to verbal behaviors that are simple imitations of the verbal behavior of others. Intraverbal operants also occur in response to an [S.sup.D] but are not echoic in nature. Common examples of intraverbal behaviors are answering a question or filling in a blank, such as when a child says farm after hearing Old MacDonald had a . …