Verbal Behavior and Language Flashcards

According to Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, a mand is a verbal operant that:

Answer: Specifies its own reinforcer and is maintained by that specific reinforcement

A mand is a verbal operant whose form specifies the reinforcer, and it is maintained by the specific reinforcer it requests (e.g., asking for water to get water).

A tact is a verbal operant that is primarily under the control of:

Answer: A non-verbal antecedent stimulus in the environment

A tact is a verbal response under the control of a non-verbal discriminative stimulus (an object, event, or property) and is maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement.

An echoic is a verbal operant that:

Answer: Repeats the verbal stimulus of a speaker with point-to-point correspondence

An echoic involves repeating another person's verbal behavior with formal similarity (sound-by-sound match) and is maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement.

What term describes a verbal operant that is controlled by verbal antecedents and has point-to-point correspondence with those antecedents?

Answer: Echoic

Echoics involve point-to-point correspondence between the verbal stimulus and the verbal response, distinguishing them from intraverbals which lack this correspondence.

Which verbal operant is controlled by a verbal antecedent WITHOUT point-to-point correspondence?

Answer: Intraverbal

Intraverbals are controlled by another person's verbal behavior but the response does not match the form of the antecedent (e.g., answering 'What do you eat with?' with 'Fork').

A motivating operation (MO) affects verbal behavior by:

Answer: Altering the reinforcing value of a stimulus and the frequency of behavior related to that stimulus

MOs have two effects: they alter how reinforcing a consequence is (value-altering effect) and they change the current frequency of behaviors that produce that consequence (behavior-altering effect).