Verbal Operants Research Articles

The ontogenetic evolution of verbal behavior

ABSTRACT Behavior interacts with its environment both during an organism’s lifetime and across generations through natural selection. Speech is a natural event that comes down to sounds that affect the behavior of conspecifics. Merging and enhancing Skinner’s work on selection as a cause of behavior change on the one hand and his work on verbal behavior on the other provides a theoretical basis for placing verbal behavior in an evolutionary framework. Data suggests that this interaction between behavior and the environment is best described without using the hypothetical concept of response strength. The article proposes a framework that helps us understand selection processes in conversations. After a brief introduction to the value of and the alternative to Skinner’s verbal behavior approach, the paper goes on to propose modifications to the conceptualization of verbal operants before concluding with an outline of the possible implications of these modifications for empirical investigations of verbal behavior.

What are the “isms” good for in academic and scientific debates?

The use of “isms” to denominate communities that share certain practices is a common procedure, with a long historical tradition. Philosophy, the root of all systematic forms of investigation and reflexion, is ripe with such labels, but they are also pervasive in the scientific realm. In this essay we have two goals: (1) to present a behavior-analytic interpretation of the processes that give rise to “isms”; (2) to point out positive aspects of the use of “isms”, but also to warn against the perils of such use, suggesting some ways to soften or prevent them. Regarding goal (1), we conclude that “isms” are verbal operants under the control of features of the behavior of members of certain communities, which emerge from intra-class generalization and inter-class discrimination processes. Regarding goal (2), we argue that the “isms” allow the identification of the usual practices among the members of the various verbal communities, granting an “identity” to those communities and facilitating collective work toward common objectives. The complexification and ramification of the “isms” may contribute to a more precise identification of such practices. However, the “isms” may also cause us to “forget the differences” between individuals and groups, thus treating them in a homogeneous way and simplifying complex behavioral relations. Such simplification may give rise to social prejudices and stereotypes, also promoting isolation (creating “ideological bubbles”) and harming scientific and intellectual advance. We suggest that it’s possible to soften or prevent such perils by recognizing intellectual diversity and complexity, fostering the diversity of perspectives, refraining from definitions of “isms” based on essentialism or authority, specifying which proposals of any “ism” we are criticizing when doing so, recognizing that a well-based criticism to some “ism” is a collaboration to it, promoting empathy and courtesy in academic debates and, finally, fostering collaborative interactions between the “isms”, as long as theoretical coherence remains preserved. To behavior analysis in particular, such conclusions suggest that the contributions of other behavioral sciences must be evaluated under the control of their practices, not the “isms” that they represent. Skinner insisted upon the complexity of behavior as a scientific subject matter, and although behavior analysis has made an original and maybe crucial contribution to the understanding of such complexity, there are many other behavioral sciences - biological, psychological and sociological. Clearly, we shouldn’t accept all the practices of such sciences without criticism, but we must recognize that there are many ways of producing relevant data that can help us understand behavior - and all of them, with no exceptions, has their own limitations.

Presession attention affects the acquisition of tacts and intraverbals.

This study examined the effects of presession attention on the acquisition of tacts (Experiment 1) and intraverbals (Experiment 2) in children diagnosed with autism. Each participant experienced 3 conditions. In the first 2 conditions, participants experienced a 15-min interval of either presession attention (PA) or no presession attention (NPA) followed by a teaching session. The third condition was a control condition. Across experiments, all participants acquired the verbal operants assigned to the NPA condition, whereas only 4 of the 6 participants acquired the verbal operants assigned to the PA condition. Five of the 6 participants required fewer sessions to meet the mastery criterion and a shorter duration of training for the verbal operants assigned to the NPA condition as compared to the PA condition. These outcomes suggest that antecedent manipulations traditionally reserved for mand training can positively affect the acquisition of other verbal operants. Theoretical implications are discussed.

ANALYZING THEMATIC STRUCTURE IN INDONESIAN FOLKTALES IN ENGLISH VERSION: A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (SFG)

This research is entitled “Analyzing Thematic Structure in Indonesian Folktales in English Version: A Systemic Functional Grammar Study (SFG)”. The objectives of this study are analyzing and describing the themes, their elements and thematic progressions of Indonesian Folktales in English Version. The collected data, in this research, were taken from the book entitled “Indonesian Folktales” published in 1981 by Pustaka Media Publisher. One data, Princess Sumur Bandung which consists of 50 paragraphs and 221 clauses was chosen to be analyzed based on the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) of Gerot and Wignell (1994). The method and technique used in this study are a descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research reveal that (1) there are two kinds of theme-rheme patterns are found; they are simple theme-rheme patterns and multiple theme-rheme patterns. In details, the simple theme-rheme patterns contain constant theme-rheme pattern, linear theme-theme rheme pattern, and derived theme-rheme pattern, while multiple ones contain a combination of constant and linear theme, a combination of linear and derived theme, and a combination of constant, linear and derived theme-rheme pattern. Besides, the combination of constant and linear theme-rheme pattern are the most frequently distributed. While the elements of themes which found are textual, interpersonal and ideational elements. Textual elements cover continuative, structural conjunction, wh-relative and conjunctive adjunct. Interpersonal elements cover modal adjunct, vocative, wh-interrogative and finite verbal operator. Ideational elements cover nominal group, noun, adverbial group, prepositional phrase, process, complement, group complex and adverb.

The Effects of Instructive Feedback and Stimulus Equivalence Procedures on Group Instructional Outcomes

The current study combined equivalence-based instruction and instructive feedback (IF) with two groups of children with autism spectrum disorder. For group 1, three sets of three targets were tested, and for group 2, two sets of three targets were tested. For each target stimulus, the following verbal operants were evaluated: (1) tact name, (2) tact feature, (3) name-feature intraverbal, and (4) feature-name intraverbal. Following individual across set probes (ASP) sessions evaluating all targets in all sets, group treatment was conducted with set 1. During group treatment, tact training was provided to each participant relating to his/her assigned target and IF relating to a feature of the target was provided. Once daily probe data indicated all targets were mastered by the assigned participant, ASP were repeated. This process was repeated across all evaluated sets in the form of a multiple probe design. Results indicated robust responding for three participants, with evidence of responding to observational targets, secondary targets (related to the IF), and emergence of intraverbal responses. A fourth participant showed moderate levels of correct responding, particularly with observational targets. Overall, results suggest that group IF and stimulus equivalence are viable interventions for some children with ASD.

Modality, Modal Commitment and Modal Responsibility of the Speeches Delivered by the President of Sri Lanka at the UNO General Assembly: A Systemic Functional Analysis

The main aim of this paper is to unpack the types of modality used, and their level of commitment and responsibility in the selected sample. Also, this study scrutinizes the frequency of occurrence of modal expressions by employing the Systemic Functional Linguistic approach. As was found out, the first case does not reflect a higher frequency of modal expressions, but in the second case, it remains in a higher percentage by showing the commitment of the speaker towards the propositions and proposal of the speeches. Apart from typical modal verbal operators, the study found a considerable number of other modal expressions such as different mood adjuncts and adjectival expressions over the two speeches which also have been used to persuade the listeners of his assembly. The speaker’s commitment to the validity of messages is obviously manifested in both cases of the present study which illustrates how important modality in political discourse.

The Effect of Joint Control Training on the Performance of Multiply Controlled Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review Relevant to Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Other Developmental Disabilities.

Skinner (1957) differentiated the roles of the speaker and the listener in a verbal encounter. Although not extensively emphasized, Skinner suggested an individual often behaves verbally even when responding as a listener. Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often display the absence of important, and basic verbal repertoires that limit their ability to engage in a variety of social skills or problem-solving skills. Joint control suggests that multiply controlled verbal responding involves functional control of two 2 or more stimuli or verbal operants. This systematic literature review provides a summary of publications specifying the relation and implications of the analysis of joint control and joint control training in the acquisition of multiply controlled, non-speaker behaviors (e.g., selection-based behavior; , sequencing behavior). The synthesis suggests that joint control training presents as a promising analytic tool in guiding interventions to teach complex, multiply controlled verbal and non-verbal repertoires to children diagnosed with autism ASD and/or other developmental disabilities. Recommendations for future research in joint control, as well as the implementation of joint control training, are provided.

Pangwa Tangsa agreement markers and verbal operators

This chapter will survey agreement marking in the Pangwa group within Tangsa-Nocte (see Tangsa-Nocte Introduction). After briefly introducing the Pangwa group, I will suggest a sub-grouping within Pangwa, based on the verbal morphology in the form of examples of the markers in the ‘negative’, ‘past’ and ‘future’ for 17 Pangwa varieties and comparative information for 5 Non-Pangwa Tangsa varieties. This will be followed by an overview of the functions of the agreement markers. These markers, which can be termed agreement words (DeLancey 2015, this volume) consist of two parts, a verbal operator, generally an onset consonant that appears to be an eroded verbal auxiliary or copula, and the agreement marker. The forms and functions of the verbal operators are then treated in more detail as are the forms of the agreement markers. We conclude the chapter with some suggestions about the historical development of these agreement words within Pangwa Tangsa

The Duplic and Codic: the Importance of a Consistent Taxonomy of Verbal Behavior.

Behavior analysts operationally define relations among environmental stimuli and behavior both functionally and topographically, and an insistence on objectivity, precision, reliability, and accuracy for technical descriptions and definitions is a unique and defining characteristic of the field. However, occasionally, technical terms are inconsistently used by behavior-analytic educators, researchers, and practitioners, and these inconsistencies should be addressed. Because they can pose conceptual and practical issues if not fixed, terminological inconsistencies are not merely inconveniences. In the current paper, we identified and explained terminological inconsistencies with the usage of the term transcription in published behavior-analytic textbooks, manuals, and other reference materials. In addition, we revisited previous analyses and recommendations and restated the need for clarity in a verbal operant taxonomy, particularly for instructors, trainers, and authors of future textbooks, trainings, and manuals.

The Application of Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behavior for Teaching Communication Skills to Persons with Developmental Disabilities

The current review aims to define and discuss the potential benefits of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior as it has been applied to communication interventions for people with developmental disabilities and provide recommendations for research and practice. A growing body of research guided by Skinner’s analysis continues to show the potential benefits of a functional approach to evaluating and teaching language. Many gains have been made for communication interventions for persons with developmental disabilities by applying Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior as a framework. Skinner’s approach focuses on the analysis of functional units, verbal operants, and the controlling variables that establish a communication repertoire.

무오류 학습과 단계적 용암법을 활용한 맨드와 택트 훈련이 자폐 아동의 음성 언어 습득에 미치는 효과*

The purposes of this study were to explore what teaching strategy would be more effective in the speech acquisition for children with autism spectrum disorder, and to determine whether learned speech from the mand and tact training would be transferred to other verbal operant conditions. To investigate these research questions, 3 children with autism spectrum disorder participated in this study and alternating treatment designs were used to study the effects of independent variables including errorless learning and Systematic fading on the speech language acquisition. Results indicated that Systematic fading was more effective than Errorless learning for all participants to acquire verbal responses across the mand and tact training settings. Also, all three participants demonstrated skill transition for using target words from the trained verbal operant condition to other non trained verbal operant conditions. Discussion and implications on these findings would be addressed.

The Use of a Stimulus Control Transfer Procedure to Teach Motivation-Controlled Mands to Children With Autism

Social participation of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in natural environments can be enhanced by teaching them to communicate spontaneously, at least in situations where they have the motivation to access specific items or activities by controlling the amount of access for these stimuli. The purpose of this study was to determine if mand training, using a stimulus control transfer procedure would promote acquisition and generalization of mands for specific activities or objects evoked by motivating operations. Measurement variables included the frequency of motivation controlled (MO) versus multiply controlled mands during discrete trial training on a variety of verbal operants. Using a concurrent multiple baseline design across participants, visual analysis indicated that MO mands for out-of-view items increased substantially with generalization across targets, staff, and environments for three of the four participants. One participant did not respond to intervention to the same extent as others.

Aging and the Combined effects of ADRA2B and CB1 deletions on Affective Working Memory

Many studies have found that memory for affective material is better than memory for neutral information and memory for positive material compared to negative material is better in older adults. Behavioral, neurophysiological as well as single polymorphism differences have been advanced to account for these effects. Here, we aimed to examine whether the combination of two polymorphisms (ADRA2B and CB1) in older adults influences active maintenance and manipulation of emotional information in aging working memory. We examined genotype data from 207 older adults (56 double deletion carriers, 116 single deletion carriers and 35 no deletion carriers) who performed a verbal operation span-like task with positive, negative and neutral words. We found that subjects carrying both ADRA2B and CB1 variants generally remembered a higher number of words. In addition, double carriers showed positivity effects while single carriers showed more general emotional enhancement effects, especially as strings lengthened. These findings are amongst the first to suggest a haplotype account of positivity effects in older adults’ memory.

Why are verbal nouns more verbal than finite verbs? New insights into the interpretation of the P200 verbal signature

Traditionally, languages are assumed to minimally manifest a distinction between nouns and verbs. This assumption has occasionally been debated in the theoretical linguistic literature, in particular in the context of challenging verbal noun constructions that simultaneously manifest nominal and verbal features. From a psycholinguistic perspective, one of the most promising diagnostic criteria for determining whether a given word belongs to the category NOUN or VERB is an event-related brain potential (ERP) component, P200, whose amplitude is larger for verbs than for nouns. So far, a challenge for the interpretation of the P200 has been whether this component reflects verbal (e.g., action) semantics, lexical category or verb-related morphological operation. In the present study we report an ERP experiment whose goal was to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the “verbal” P200 component by monitoring the comprehension of Polish morphologically related finite verbs, converbs, and verbal nouns. Thereby, we manipulated the syntactic category and morphological complexity of the critical words while keeping their semantics identical. The results show that finite verbs engender a smaller amplitude of the P200 component than less prototypical “verbs” such as verbal nouns and converbs. Based on this observation, we argue that the P200 component reflects the brain activation triggered by the demands of verb-related morphological integration processes performed on the verbal base of derived forms.

Improving oral sentence production in children with cochlear implants: effects of equivalence-based instruction and matrix training

ᅟChildren who use cochlear implants (CI) and who are readers usually produce more accurate speech in response to text than to pictures. Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) can be a route to establish functional interdependence between these verbal operants. The present study investigated whether children with CI who read would improve speech accuracy when tacting pictures of scenes after EBI that included dictated sentences, pictures of scenes, and printed sentences. This study evaluated whether teaching verbal relations to diagonal sentences from a matrix with subject-verb-object combinations promoted recombinative generalization to untrained sentences. Participants were three children with CI with a more accurate speech when reading print than when tacting pictures of scenes. They were taught to select pictures of scenes in response to dictated sentences (AB) by matching-to-sample (MTS) and to construct printed sentences in response to dictated sentences (AE) by constructed-response-matching-to-sample (CRMTS). Speech production in response to print (CD) and in response to pictures of scenes (BD) were probed for both trained and untrained sentences, using a multiple baseline design across participants. All participants learned the trained relations, showed emergence of derived relations, and improved speech accuracy when tacting pictures of scenes. They were able to recombine sentence components and tact novel pictures using untrained sentences from the matrix. These results indicate that speech accuracy and generative sentence production can be improved in children with CI from interventions that incorporate EBI and matrix training.Trial registrationCAAE#01454412.0.0000.5441 registered 01/29/2013.

The Mediating Effects of Derived Relational Responding on the Relationship Between Verbal Operant Development and IQ.

Dixon, Belisle, and Stanley, (2018) demonstrated a strong, significant relationship between derived relational responding and intelligence in individuals with autism. We extended these results by evaluating the degree to which participant results on the PEAK Equivalence Pre-assessment (PEAK-E-PA, a direct assessment of derived relational responding) mediated the relationship between the PEAK Direct Training Assessment (PEAK-DT-A, a Skinnerian-based assessment of verbal development) and intelligence. Results support strong, positive correlations between both assessments (PEAK-DT-A and PEAK-E-PA) and IQ; however, the relationship between PEAK-DT-A and IQ could be explained in terms of participant results on the PEAK-E-PA alone. This finding corresponds with Relational Frame Theory, suggesting that derived responding can provide a behavioral interpretation of intelligent behavior, as well as Skinner's elementary operants.

Interação terapêutica e comportamento verbal em uma compreensão analítico-comportamental

A interação terapêutica dentro da análise do comportamento (AC) é compreendida como um meio que auxilia no processo de mudança nas relações. Compreender os aspectos que constituem essa interação contribui para a terapia, aumentando a precisão da análise, sua efetividade e minimizando as rupturas e insucessos. Este artigo apresenta a interação terapêutica como recurso de modificação de comportamento a partir da AC e sua relação com o comportamento verbal. É definida e apresentada uma definição de interação terapêutica e discutido como o comportamento verbal está relacionado. Os principais operantes verbais que podem agir
 alterando o comportamento a partir da interação terapêutica são tato, mando, intraverbal e os autoclíticos. A alteração do comportamento verbal é uma das finalidades da interação terapêutica, alterando também comportamentos em ambiente natural. Há, portanto, uma relação íntima entre o comportamento verbal e a interação terapêutica, e a análise dessa interação permite estabelecer alterações efetivas no comportamento do cliente.

Teaching Children with Autism Extended Verbal Utterances Under Audience Control in the Context of Show-and-Tell.

The present study evaluated the efficacy of a discrete-trial-training procedure to bring extended verbal behavior under the convergent control of audience and contextual variables during a show-and-tell activity. Three children with autism were exposed initially to a baseline condition in which they were presented with a preferred item and asked to tell the class about it. Following low rates of responding, a differential reinforcement procedure was implemented that reinforced extending the verbal utterance word length beyond baseline levels allowing for an appropriate display of "show-and-tell" behavior. The results show that the procedures were efficacious in application with three children with autism, providing a method that can be conducted in classroom settings to teach a complex form of verbal operant behavior.

An investigation of the effects of a parent delivered stimulus-stimulus pairing intervention on vocalizations of two children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Communication deficits in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can manifest in a myriad of lifelong social and educational challenges. Many children with ASD fail to learn vocal verbal behavior and may require intensive individualized intervention to learn early verbal operants. The current research aimed to evaluate the effects of a parent delivered stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) procedure on target vocalizations of two young children with ASD who did not present with vocal verbal behavior. Results indicated the intervention was successful in increasing the frequency of the target vocalizations for both participants. Social validity results indicated that parents were satisfied with the intervention and their own implementation of these procedures. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for parent delivered interventions.

An Evaluation of the Performance Diagnostic Checklist—Human Services (PDC–HS) Across Domains

The Performance Diagnostic Checklist-Human Services (PDC-HS) is an informant-based tool designed to assess the environmental variables that contribute to poor employee performance in human service settings. Although the PDC-HS has been shown to effectively identify variables contributing to problematic performance, interventions based on only two of the four PDC-HS domains have been evaluated to date. In addition, the extent to which PDC-HS-indicated interventions are more effective than nonindicated interventions for two domains remains unclear. In the current study, we administered the PDC-HS to supervisors to assess the variables contributing to infrequent teaching of verbal operants and use of a timer by therapists at a center-based autism treatment program. Each of the four PDC-HS domains was identified as contributing to poor performance for at least one therapist. We then evaluated PDC-HS-indicated interventions for each domain. In addition, to assess the predictive validity of the tool, we evaluated various nonindicated interventions prior to implementing a PDC-HS-indicated intervention for two of the four domains. Results suggest that the PDC-HS-indicated interventions were effective across all four domains and were more effective than the nonindicated interventions for the two domains for which they were evaluated. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of the PDC-HS to identify appropriate interventions to manage therapist performance in human service settings.