Verbal Behavior Flashcards

A child sees a red ball and says 'red ball,' but only when a therapist is present and praises him for it. When alone with the ball, he says nothing. Which analysis BEST explains why this is NOT a pure tact?

Answer: Social attention is functioning as a conditioned establishing operation, making the response at least partially under mand control

A pure tact is under the exclusive control of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus with generalized conditioned reinforcement maintaining it. When a child emits a tact only in the presence of someone who praises him, social attention functions as a motivating operation (conditioned EO), adding a mand component. This is called an 'impure tact' — the response is partially controlled by an MO for attention, not solely by the nonverbal stimulus.

A therapist holds up a picture of a dog and asks, 'What animal is this?' The client responds, 'Dog.' Later, the client smells a dog nearby (without seeing it) and says, 'Dog.' Which pair of verbal operants BEST describes these two responses, respectively?

Answer: Intraverbal; tact

The first response ('Dog' in response to the question 'What animal is this?') is an INTRAVERBAL — it is controlled by a verbal antecedent (the question) with no point-to-point correspondence. The second response ('Dog' in response to the nonverbal stimulus of the dog's smell) is a TACT — it is under the control of a nonverbal stimulus (the olfactory property of the dog). The antecedent modality, not topography, determines the operant class.

Which statement MOST accurately distinguishes a qualifying autoclitic from a quantifying autoclitic?

Answer: Qualifying autoclitics specify the strength or accuracy of the speaker's response; quantifying autoclitics describe the number or amount of a referent

According to Skinner (1957), qualifying autoclitics modify the listener's response to the primary verbal operant by indicating the speaker's degree of certainty or the accuracy of their behavior (e.g., 'I think,' 'I'm not sure,' 'probably'). Quantifying autoclitics, by contrast, specify number or quantity related to the referent (e.g., 'some,' 'all,' 'three'). Both types modify the functional effect of the main verbal response on the listener.

During a session, a client with advanced verbal skills says, 'Can you open the window? It's hot in here.' Under Skinner's analysis, what verbal operant classification BEST applies to the phrase 'It's hot in here'?

Answer: A tact functioning as an autoclitic that strengthens the mand 'Can you open the window?'

The mand 'Can you open the window?' specifies the reinforcer (opening the window). 'It's hot in here' is a tact of the current nonverbal environment, but its functional role in this utterance is autoclitic — it modifies the listener's response to the mand by providing a reason (i.e., justifying the mand). Skinner described this type of supporting verbal behavior as a 'mand autoclitic' context, where a tact strengthens or augments the probability that the listener will comply with the primary mand.

A pigeon trained to peck a key labeled 'FOOD' to produce food pellets is sometimes cited in discussions of Skinner's verbal behavior. Skinner would say this behavior is NOT verbal because:

Answer: The behavior is not mediated by a trained verbal community; the reinforcement is mechanical and automatic, not provided through the behavior of another organism

Skinner defined verbal behavior as behavior that is 'reinforced through the mediation of other persons.' The critical criterion is that the reinforcement must be delivered by a listener (another organism) who has been trained by a verbal community to do so. A pigeon pecking a key that mechanically delivers food does not meet this criterion — the reinforcement is automatic and does not require a socially conditioned mediator. This is a common edge-case distinction in Skinner's definition.

A learner can label 'apple' when shown one (tact) and can request 'apple' when hungry (mand), but fails to answer 'What do you eat for a snack?' with 'apple' (intraverbal). This pattern BEST illustrates which principle?

Answer: The independence of verbal operants — stimulus control does not automatically transfer across operant classes

One of the most clinically significant principles from Skinner's verbal behavior framework is the independence of verbal operants. Each operant class (mand, tact, intraverbal, echoic) is maintained by distinct antecedents and consequences. A learner who has acquired 'apple' as a tact and mand has NOT automatically acquired it as an intraverbal, because the antecedent stimulus (a verbal question rather than the physical object or an MO) and the reinforcement context are fundamentally different. Separate training is required for each operant class.