Ambiguity and the abstract tact: A signal detection analysis

Acquisition of Children's Relational Responding: The Role of the Intradimensional and Interdimensional Abstract Tact and the Autoclitic Frame

The acquisition of verbal behavior is complex and requires the analysis of myriad variables. Ernst Moerk estimated that by the time a child has reached 4 years of age they have experienced nearly 9 million language learning trials with mothers using at least 14 categories of maternal teaching interactions. The interactions provide a foundation for children learning the tact, mand, echoic, intraverbal, autoclitic, and other relations, described by Skinner in Verbal Behavior. Here we examine two relations that have been overlooked to some extent and arguably account for many of the generative features of verbal behavior and shared meaning: the abstract tact, or more precisely the interdimensional abstract tact, and the autoclitic frame. We describe Goldiamond's treatment of stimulus control in its many forms; dimensional, abstractional, and instructional, and how it can be used to understand the acquisition of both intradimensional and interdimensional abstract tacts and autoclitic frames that guide seemingly complex relational responding and meet consequential contingency requirements. We argue the development of complex relational responding in children can be explained parsimoniously without mediating variables or hypothetical constructs.

Tutorial: Understanding Concepts: Implications for Behavior Analysts and Educators

How we make sense of the world is founded on our understanding of simple and complex concepts, which form the basis for our vocabulary (Layng, 2016a). We often gain this understanding through life experience, but conceptual learning can be explicitly taught. This tutorial provides a brief introduction to concept learning and teaching that has its roots in behavior analysis and related disciplines (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956; Englemann & Carnine, 1982; Markle & Tiemann, 1969; Mechner, 1962; Tiemann & Markle, 1990). Presented here are examples drawn from a sequence designed to teach physical science to elementary school learners to illustrate how concept teaching can be used to improve instruction. These examples include both intradimensional concept teaching, where features of a physical stimulus guide behavior, and interdimensional concept teaching, where relations among different stimuli guide behavior (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956; Layng, 2014; Tiemann & Markle, 1990). Efficiencies in teaching using conceptual inheritance designs is briefly described, as well as the implications of what are referred to as conceptual hierarchies, where instances of one concept may share features inherited from a superordinate concepts. The purpose here is not to perform a literature review, but to provide an overview of how concept analysis and teaching may improve instruction.

Extended Analysis of Empirical Citations with Skinner's Verbal Behavior: 1984-2004

The present paper comments on and extends the citation analysis of verbal operant publications based on Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957) by Dymond, O'Hora, Whelan, and O'Donovan (2006). Variations in population parameters were evaluated for only those studies that Dymond et al. categorized as empirical. Preliminary results indicate that the majority of empirical research in the area of verbal behavior has been conducted with the younger developmentally disabled population and has focused on verbal operants from the introductory chapters of Skinner's book. It is clear that Verbal Behavior has influenced empirical research over the past 50 years. We believe, however, that there are many underdeveloped research areas originating from Verbal Behavior that have not yet been addressed. Suggestions for extended areas of research are provided.

Citation Analysis of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: 1984-2004

The present study undertook an updated citation analysis of Skinner's (1957)Verbal Behavior. All articles that cited Verbal Behavior between 1984 and 2004 were recorded and content analyzed into one of five categories; four empirical and one nonempirical. Of the empirical categories, studies that employed a verbal operant from Skinner's analysis were assigned to either basic, applied, or observational categories. Empirical studies that did not employ a verbal operant were categorized as other-empirical. The total number of citations remained stable across the review period and averaged just over 52 per year. Of these, 80% were from nonempirical articles, 13.7% were from other-empirical articles, 4% were from applied articles, 1.4% were from basic articles, and 0.9% were from observational articles. An "obliteration" analysis was also conducted to identify articles that employed Skinner's verbal operant terms but did not cite Verbal Behavior. This analysis identified 44 additional articles, suggesting that a degree of obliteration had occurred in the half century since the publication of Verbal Behavior. In particular, the analysis suggests that the verbal operant of manding has sufficient presence in the applied empirical literature to render citation of Verbal Behavior redundant. Overall, Verbal Behavior continues to make an important contribution to the psychological literature.

Causation and complexity: old lessons, new crusades

A body of experimental work performed by Israel Goldiamond and his colleagues over 30 years ago is used to help define the evidential problems raised for inferences concerning the causal efficacy of human thought. This work suggests that matches of public indicator responses of inferred private rules or states to experimenter score sheets may be considered only as weak evidence for causality. Further, the problems of inferring causality raised by Wittgenstein's skeptical challenge, and its implications for investigating the role of human thought in determining human behavior, are briefly described. A selectionist approach, which is currently being used by biobehavioral scientists to investigate the behavioral complexity which concerns Bandura (this issue) and others, is suggested as one way to study the role of private events in human behavior.