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Verbal Behavior is a 1957 book by psychologist B. F. Skinner, in which he describes what he calls verbal behavior, or what was traditionally called linguistics. [1] [2] Skinner's work describes the controlling elements of verbal behavior with terminology invented for the analysis - echoics, mands, tacts, autoclitics and others - as well as carefully defined uses of ordinary terms such as audience.
Chapter five of Skinner's Verbal Behavior discusses the tact in depth. A tact is said to "make contact with" the world, and refers to behavior that is under the control of generalized reinforcement. The controlling antecedent stimulus is nonverbal, and constitutes some portion of "the whole of the physical environment." [1]
The speed may be a function of strength or of differential reinforcement. Physical interruption may arise as in the case of those who are hearing impaired, or under conditions of mechanical impairment such as ambient noise. Skinner argues [citation needed] the Ouija board may operate to mask feedback and so produce unedited verbal behavior.
Most behavior of humans cannot easily be described in terms of individual responses reinforced one by one, and Skinner devoted a great deal of effort to the problem of behavioral complexity. Some complex behavior can be seen as a sequence of relatively simple responses, and here Skinner invoked the idea of "chaining".
Mand is a term that B.F. Skinner used to describe a verbal operant in which the response is reinforced by a characteristic consequence and is therefore under the functional control of relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation. One cannot determine, based on form alone, whether a response is a mand; it is necessary to know the ...
The theory is constructed to advance from basic animal learning principles to deal with all types of human behavior, including personality, culture, and human evolution. Behaviorism was first developed by John B. Watson (1912), who coined the term "behaviorism", and then B. F. Skinner who developed what is known as "radical behaviorism". Watson ...
He identified echoic behavior as one of his basic verbal operants, postulating that verbal behavior was learned by an infant from a verbal community. Skinner's account takes verbal behavior beyond an intra-individual process to an inter-individual process. He defined verbal behavior as "behavior reinforced through the mediation of others". [60]
The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization.