Autoclitics are verbal responses that modify the effect on the listener of the primary operants that comprise B.F. Skinner's classification of Verbal Behavior.Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal Behavior.
|
|
Supplementary stimulation is a discussion to practical matters of controlling verbal behavior given the context of material which has been presented thus far. Issues of multiple control, and involving many of the elementary operants stated in previous chapters are discussed.
|
|
Operant humans in the Galactic Milieu are not allowed to enter Exile, so most humans in the Pliocene are latent at most. The few who are operant are sometimes categorized using terms from the Milieu. These categories include adept (stronger and more in control of their abilities then basic operants, roughly 1 in 10 of operants) masterclass (a well above normal level of metapsychic powers roughly 1 in 10,000), the grand master class adepts (enormous amounts of metapsychic abilities in 1 or more categories, like Elizabeth. One in a million) and the Paramount Grand Masters (truely world-shaking amounts of metapsychic powers.
|
|
But many mands have no correspondence to the reinforcer. For example, a loud knock may be a mand "open the door" and a servant may be called by a hand clap as much as a child might "ask for milk." Mands differ from other verbal operants in that they primarily benefit the speaker, whereas other verbal operants function primarily for the benefit of the listener. This is not to say that mand's function exclusively in favor of the speaker, however; Skinner gives the example of the advice, "Go west!" as having the potential to yield consequences which will be reinforcing to both speaker and listener.
|
|
Though initially operant behavior is emitted without an identified reference to a particular stimulus, during operant conditioning operants come under the control of stimuli that are present when behavior is reinforced. Such stimuli are called "discriminative stimuli." A so-called "three-term contingency" is the result. That is, discriminative stimuli set the occasion for responses that produce reward or punishment.
|
|
Operants are often thought of as species of responses, where the individuals differ but the class coheres in its function-shared consequences with operants and reproductive success with species. This is a clear distinction between Skinner's theory and S–R theory. Skinner's empirical work expanded on earlier research on trial-and-error learning by researchers such as Thorndike and Guthrie with both conceptual reformulations—Thorndike's notion of a stimulus–response "association" or "connection" was abandoned; and methodological ones—the use of the "free operant", so called because the animal was now permitted to respond at its own rate rather than in a series of trials determined by the experimenter procedures. With this method, Skinner carried out substantial experimental work on the effects of different schedules and rates of reinforcement on the rates of operant responses made by rats and pigeons.
|
|
For example, a child may learn to open a box to get the sweets inside, or learn to avoid touching a hot stove; in operant terms, the box and the stove are "discriminative stimuli". Operant behavior is said to be "voluntary". The responses are under the control of the organism and are operants. For example, the child may face a choice between opening the box and petting a puppy.
|
|
For example, a child may be able to request water, but may not be able to tact water. Researchers are currently examining procedures that may facilitate the generalization across verbal operants. Some studies have indicated, for example, that after teaching a child to mand for items, they could then tact them as well without direct instruction. Multiple studies have found support for the emergence of tact responses without direct instruction.
|
|
Skinner's Verbal Behavior also introduced the autoclitic and six elementary operants: mand, tact, audience relation, echoic, textual, and intraverbal. from the forward by Jack Michael, p. ix For Skinner, the proper object of study is behavior itself, analyzed without reference to hypothetical (mental) structures, but rather with reference to the functional relationships of the behavior in the environment in which it occurs. This analysis extends Ernst Mach's pragmatic inductive position in physics, and extends even further a disinclination towards hypothesis-making and testing.
|
|
9, No. 3, 1-19 (1994) The goal of PECS is spontaneous and functional communication. The PECS teaching protocol is based on B. F. Skinner's book, Verbal Behavior, such that functional verbal operants are systematically taught using prompting and reinforcement strategies that will lead to independent communication. Verbal prompts are not used, thus building immediate initiation and avoiding prompt dependency. PECS begins with teaching a student to exchange a picture of a desired item with a communicative partner, who immediately honors the request.
|
|
In contrast, classical conditioning involves involuntary behavior based on the pairing of stimuli with biologically significant events. The responses are under the control of some stimulus because they are reflexes, automatically elicited by the appropriate stimuli. For example, sight of sweets may cause a child to salivate, or the sound of a door slam may signal an angry parent, causing a child to tremble. Salivation and trembling are not operants; they are not reinforced by their consequences, and they are not voluntarily "chosen".
|
|
According to Skinner, language learning depends on environmental variables, which can be mastered by a child through imitation, practice, and selective reinforcement including automatic reinforcement. B.F. Skinner was one of the first psychologists to take the role of imitation in verbal behavior as a serious mechanism for acquisition. 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.
|
|
Relational autoclitics are different from descriptive autoclitics in that they affect the behavior of the listener. For example, above in "the book is above the shelf" tells the listener where to find the book, thereby altering where the listener looks for the book. Another way to look at relational autoclitics is that they describe the relation between verbal operants, and modify the listener's behavior in that way. For example, in the statement "the book is black" the is tells the listener there is a relation between book and black, is specifies what is black.
|
|
Approximately 300 studies have tested RFT ideas. Supportive data exists in the areas needed to show that an action is "operant" such as the importance of multiple examples in training derived relational responding, the role of context, and the importance of consequences. Derived relational responding has also been shown to alter other behavioral processes such as classical conditioning, an empirical result that RFT theorists point to in explaining why relational operants modify existing behavioristic interpretations of complex human behavior. Empirical advances have also been made by RFT researchers in the analysis and understanding of such topics as metaphor, perspective taking, and reasoning.
|
|
Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior is not specifically a matter of "teaching children how to talk", however he does speculate on this on p. 189 in terms of mands and tacts acquisition by children. I note this because Skinner's Verbal Behavior is widely cited as a template for teaching children language skills although it does not appear to specifically be designed for this task. Skinner states: That is, classification alone does little to further the analysis—the functional relations controlling the operants outlined must be analyzed consistent with the general approach of a scientific analysis of behavior.
|
|
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 kinds of variables controlling a response in order to identify a verbal operant. A mand is sometimes said to "specify its reinforcement" although this is not always the case. Skinner introduced the mand as one of six primary verbal operants in his 1957 work, Verbal Behavior.
|
|
In 1959, Noam Chomsky published an influential critique of Verbal Behavior., Repr. in Chomsky pointed out that children acquire their first language without being explicitly or overtly "taught" in a way that would be consistent with behaviorist theory (see Language acquisition and Poverty of the stimulus), and that Skinner's theories of "operants" and behavioral reinforcements are not able to account for the fact that people can speak and understand sentences that they have never heard before. According to Frederick J. Newmeyer: > Chomsky's review has come to be regarded as one of the foundational > documents of the discipline of cognitive psychology, and even after the > passage of twenty-five years it is considered the most important refutation > of behaviorism.
|
|
Hayes has been President of Division 25 of the American Psychological Association, of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy (now known as the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies), and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. He was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the American Psychological Society (now known as the Association for Psychological Science), which he helped form. Hayes' work is somewhat controversial, particularly with his coined term "relational frame theory" to describe stimulus equivalence research in relation to an elaborate form of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (also referred to as verbal operants). An author of 38 books and 550 articles, in 1992 he was listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as the 30th "highest impact" psychologist in the world during 1986-1990 based on the citation impact of his writings during that period.
|
|