David C. Palmer

Essentialism and Selectionism in Cognitive Science and Behavior Analysis

Contingencies of selection, be they phylogenetic or ontogenetic, merely set boundaries on units; they do not provide blueprints. Thus, variability is fundamental to all products of selection. Skinner, by characterizing the units of analysis in behavior as generic in nature, established his science squarely within the selectionist paradigm, thereby avoiding the tendency, common throughout psychology, to slip into essentialist analyses. The distinction between essentialism and selectionism is refined in this article, and prominent examples of essentialism in linguistics, theories of memory, theories of representation, associationism, and even in behavior analysis are identified. Recent trends in cognitive science--specifically, research on adaptive networks--is amenable to a selectionist interpretation, suggesting the possibility of future fruitful interactions with behavior analysis.

The Multiple Control of Verbal Behavior.

Amid the novel terms and original analyses in Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, the importance of his discussion of multiple control is easily missed, but multiple control of verbal responses is the rule rather than the exception. In this paper we summarize and illustrate Skinner’s analysis of multiple control and introduce the terms convergent multiple control and divergent multiple control. We point out some implications for applied work and discuss examples of the role of multiple control in humor, poetry, problem solving, and recall. Joint control and conditional discrimination are discussed as special cases of multiple control. We suggest that multiple control is a useful analytic tool for interpreting virtually all complex behavior, and we consider the concepts of derived relations and naming as cases in point.

The Speaker as Listener: The Interpretation of Structural Regularities in Verbal Behavior

Regularities in word order not specifically addressed by Skinner require behavioral interpretation if our field is to become more influential among students of language. Three such phenomena are briefly described in traditional structural terms and are offered as test cases: subtle differences in dative verbs, transformational traces, and the formation of compound nouns. It is argued that the variables that control such regularities derive from the speaker’s repertoire as listener. Intraverbal frames are established as verbal responses in the listener through reinforcement by parity. Transitions from element to element in such frames are controlled, moment to moment in time, partly by the speaker’s responses as a listener to his or her own verbal behavior. Although this account offers only a tentative interpretation of grammar and syntax in a limited domain, it suggests that the conceptual tools of behavior analysis are adequate to the task of explaining even the most subtle of grammatical rules.

On Chomsky's Appraisal of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: A Half Century of Misunderstanding.

The history of the writing of Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957), Chomsky’s review (1959), and MacCorquodale’s rebuttal (1970) are briefly summarized. Chomsky’s recent reflections on his review are analyzed: Chomsky’s refusal to acknowledge the review’s errors or its aggressive tone is consistent with his polemical style but comes at a minor cost in consistency and plausibility. However, his remarks about the place of Skinner’s work in science reveal misunderstandings so great that they undercut the credibility of the review substantially. The gradual growth in the influence of Skinner’s book suggests that its legacy will endure.

Behavior Under the Microscope: Increasing the Resolution of Our Experimental Procedures

Behavior analysis has exploited conceptual tools whose experimental validity has been amply demonstrated, but their relevance to large-scale and fine-grained behavioral phenomena remains uncertain, because the experimental analysis of these domains faces formidable obstacles of measurement and control. In this essay I suggest that, at least at the fine-grained end of the behavioral spectrum, we have not taken sufficient advantage of all available procedures. Specifically, I propose that an examination of eye movements, joint control, and response latency in intraverbal tasks might help us to formulate more complete accounts of complex human behavior.

Joint control: a discussion of recent research.

The discrimination of the onset of joint control is an important interpretive tool in explaining matching behavior and other complex phenomena, but the difficulty of getting experimental control of all relevant variables stands in the way of a definitive experiment. The studies in the present issue of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior illustrate how modest experiments can take their place in a web of interpretation to make a strong case that joint control is a necessary element of such phenomena.

The role of atomic repertoires in complex behavior

Evolution and reinforcement shape adaptive forms and adaptive behavior through many cycles of blind variation and selection, and therein lie their parsimony and power. Human behavior is distinctive in that this shaping process is commonly “short circuited”: Critical variations are induced in a single trial. The processes by which this economy is accomplished have a common feature: They all exploit one or more atomic repertoires, elementary units of behavior each under control of a distinctive stimulus. By appropriate arrangements of these discriminative stimuli, an indefinite number of permutations of atomic units can be evoked. When such a permutation satisfies a second contingency, it can come under control of the relevant context, and the explicit arrangement of discriminative stimuli will no longer be required. Consequently, innovations in adaptive behavior can spread rapidly through the population. A consideration of atomic repertoires informs our interpretation of generalized operants and other phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. Observational learning is discussed as a case in point.

Response Strength and the Concept of the Repertoire

The concept of response probability is central to the task of predicting behavior, whereas the closely related concept of response strength is commonly applied to ongoing overt or covert behavior, as indexed by a variety of typically correlated measures. Consideration of certain behavioral phenomena suggests that the latter concept applies equally to latent behavior. The apparent unity of emitted behavior masks a bedlam of concurrent fluctuations in strength of responses in the repertoire but below the threshold of emission. In problem solving and recall tasks, latent target responses are differentially strengthened by successive probe stimuli until such responses become stronger than myriad competing responses. It appears then that an understanding of seemingly elementary cognitive phenomena requires a consideration of the dynamics of latent responses in the repertoire. Some speculations are advanced about how the strongest of various latent responses can be emitted without blending with competing responses.

Verbal Behavior: What is the Function of Structure?

How can structural phenomena in verbal behavior be subsumed by a functional account? There are functional segments of behavior longer than the fundamental verbal operants identified by Skinner, segments that “hang together” but are seldom repeated. Verbal behavior conditions the behavior of the listener with respect to an object, condition, or state of affairs, and an utterance is functionally complete when it has done so. Using the effect on the listener as a defining criterion, a behavioral analysis identifies units of analysis that embrace the functional properties of the everyday concept of the sentence, but such units are more flexible and sensitive to context. They can be understood, in part, as autoclitic frames and the variable terms that are interwoven with such frames. Some speculations are offered on how autoclitic frames are acquired and how they are interwoven with other verbal operants.

Dialogue on Private Events

In the fall of 2003, the authors corresponded on the topic of private events on the listserv of the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group. Extracts from that correspondence raised questions about the role of response amplitude in determining units of analysis, whether private events can be investigated directly, and whether covert behavior differs from other behavior except in amplitude. Most participants took a cautious stance, noting not only conceptual pitfalls and empirical difficulties in the study of private events, but doubting the value of interpretive exercises about them. Others argued that despite such obstacles, in domains where experimental analyses cannot be done, interpretation of private events in the light of laboratory principles is the best that science can offer. One participant suggested that the notion that private events can be behavioral in nature be abandoned entirely; as an alternative, the phenomena should be reinterpreted only as physiological events.