Jack Michael

The Benefits of Skinner’s Analysis of Verbal Behavior for Children with Autism

Behavior analysis has already contributed substantially to the treatment of children with autism, and further gains can result from more use of Skinners analysis of language in Verbal Behavior (1957) and in the resulting conceptual and experimental work. The approach emphasizes a unit of analysis consisting of the relations between behavior, motivative and discriminative variables, and consequences. Skinner identifies seven types of verbal operants—echoic, mand, tact, intraverbal, textual, transcriptive, and copying a text—which function as components of more advanced forms of language. This approach focuses on the development of each verbal operant (rather than onwords and their meanings) and on the independent training of speaker and listener repertoires. Five more specific contributions are described that relate to the importance of (a) an effective language assessment, (b) mand training in early intervention, (c) establishing operations, (d) an intraverbal repertoire, and (e) automatic reinforcement.

Establishing operations and the mand

In Verbal Behavior Skinner identifies a small number of elementary verbal relations, one of which is the mand. Because its introduction is at first in terms of unlearned motivative variables, and because the mand’s relation to prior controlling events is quite complex, its general significance has probably been underestimated. An extensive treatment of establishing operations, including the warning and the blocked-response conditioned establishing operations is provided, followed by a description of the mand in terms of such operations. The importance of the mand for language training programs is suggested, as well as the reasons why it is typically neglected in such programs.

Two Kinds of Verbal Behavior Plus a Possible Third

Speaking, writing, and signing (American Sign Language) are types of verbal behavior where each different verbal relation involves a different topography. It is also possible to behave verbally by pointing at or in some way indicating the relevant verbal stimuli, where response topographies do not differ from one verbal relation to another. There are a number of potentially important differences between topography-based and stimulus-selection-based verbal behavior, although the two are often treated as equivalent from a behavioral as well as from a traditional perspective. Selection-based verbal behavior involves a conditional discrimination whereas topography-based verbal behavior does not. In topography-based, but not in selection-based verbal behavior, there is point-to-point correspondence between response form and relevant response product. Also, effective selection-based verbal behavior requires a good scanning repertoire whereas in topography-based verbal behavior the correct response simply becomes stronger under appropriate conditions. What is traditionally referred to as receptive language training is described as quite similar from a behavioral perspective to training in selection-based verbal behavior. Given the differences between topography- and selection-based verbal behavior, the wisdom of the current rather extensive reliance on selection-based verbal behavior in language instruction for developmentally disabled clients is seriously questioned.

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 effects of a stimulus—stimulus pairing procedure on the vocal behavior of children diagnosed with autism

Recent research suggests that the sound produced by a child’s vocalization can become a conditioned reinforcer via the temporal pairing of an experimenter’s vocal model with a preferred stimulus delivered to the child. The current study replicated and extended the findings of previous studies in this area. A multiple baseline design across vocal behaviors (combined with a reversal to baseline) was used to evaluate the effects of a stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure on one-syllable utterances of 3 boys who had been diagnosed with autism. Data were collected during presession and postsession observations across four conditions: baseline, control, pairing, and reversal. During baseline, the free-operant levels of target sounds were recorded in the absence of experimenter interaction. During the control condition, the experimenter presented a vocal model and, after a 20-s delay, presented a preferred stimulus to the child. During the pairing condition, the experimenter’s vocal model was paired with the delivery of the preferred item. Results from postsession observations during the pairing condition showed an increase in target sounds for 2 participants. This outcome may suggest that the children’s vocalizations were automatically reinforced, albeit only temporarily. Practical and theoretical implications of the results are discussed along with the specific methods employed in this literature.

Automatic reinforcement and automatic punishment in infant vocal behavior

Two female infants, aged 11 and 14 months, were exposed to a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with an established form of reinforcement (positive condition). One of the subjects was also exposed to a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with a neutral stimulus (neutral condition), and a procedure in which an experimenter-emitted vocal response was paired with a mild aversive stimulus (negative condition). An AB design was used with pre- and post-pairing measures. The results showed that after the positive pairing the targeted responses increased in frequency in 75% of the sessions. Responding remained constant during the neutral condition, but dropped sharply in the negative condition. These data suggest that a critical variable related to an infant’s native language acquisition is the stimulus-stimulus pairing process that occurs when parents or caretakers speak to their infants.

Emergence of Mands and Tacts of Novel Objects among Preschool Children

According to Skinner’s (1957) analysis of verbal behavior, the mand and the tact are functionally independent verbal operants, each of which is acquired through a unique history of reinforcement. The present study attempted to replicate the findings of Lamarre and Holland (1985), who empirically demonstrated functional independence of mands and tacts in typically developing preschool children. Five children participated. All were initially trained to complete two 4-piece assembly tasks. Four children were then trained to tact the four pieces that comprised one of the assembly tasks, and to mand for the four pieces that comprised the other task, using arbitrary vocal response forms. The remaining child received tact training only, and only on one task. The effects of training on the untrained operant were evaluated in a multipleprobe design across tasks. Following mand training, 4 out of 4 children reliably emitted tacts under testing conditions, while the effects of tact training differed across participants. The results differ from those of Lamarre and Holland, but are not necessarily surprising from the point of view of either Skinner’s analysis or more recent behavioral accounts of language. Future research should attempt to identify variables that affect transfer between mand and tact relations.

A Behavioral Perspective on College Teaching

Much of the subject matter learned in college, particularly during the first two years, is taught in relatively large classes with text and lecture as the primary source of the information being learned. If students make effective and prolonged contact with these sources, they can acquire extensive verbal repertoires in many areas of knowledge. Unfortunately there are many other activities that compete for the typical student’s study time. Several factors are often cited as variables that will support study behavior in competition with other activities, but the only powerful one available to the teacher is the exam grade, as it is related to the course grade. However, unless exams are clearly related to appropriate study behavior, require thorough and extensive coverage of the subject matter, occur frequently (preferably no less often than once a week), and are also clearly related to the course grade, even this factor will not generate prolonged and effective study behavior. Effective college teaching is essentially a form of aversive control, but if done properly the aversiveness is quite mild, and such aversive control can be responsible for the development of large and valuable intellectual repertoires.

Topography-based and selection-based verbal behavior: A further comparison.

Michael (1985) identified two types of verbal behavior, topography-based (e.g., speaking or using sign language) and selection-based (e.g., using a symbol board). Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) and Wraikat (1990) compared these systems in terms of the ease of learning object naming (tact) and giving the correct sign or pointing to the correct symbol on hearing the object name (intraverbal). Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) also compared them for the spontaneous development of a new relation, identifying the object when hearing its name (stimulus class formation or equivalence). The results of both studies favored the topography-based system, but in each case some subjects were not verbally skillful enough to learn either system and some learned both too easily to permit a useful comparison. The current study replicated the two previous ones by teaching the same two verbal relations and testing for the emergence of new relations, but adjusted the task to the subject’s level of functioning during the experiment. This was accomplished by varying the number of object relations being learned, and by interspersing already learned tasks with the training of new tasks. As with the earlier studies, topography-based verbal behavior was easier to learn, and led to more new stimulus-class relations than selection-based verbal behavior. These data confirm the relevant theoretical analysis, and have practical implications for a change in current language training practices.

Skinner's elementary verbal relations: Some new categories.

In Verbal Behavior (1957) B. F. Skinner identified and named five elementary verbal relations: mand, tact, intraverbal, textual and echoic. Because of their etymological commitment to visual and auditory stimuli respectively, the last two categories do not function well as general categories. Adding two more general categories, codic and duplic, to the first three results in a set of five mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groupings. Textual behavior and other relations involving point-to-point correspondence but no formal similarity fall into the codic category. Echoic behavior and other relations with formal similarity fall into the duplic category. This arrangement results in useful category names for all elementary forms and prevents potentially confusing extensions, such as referring to Braille reading as textual behavior, or sign imitation as echoic behavior.