Behavior Analysis and Learning, Fourth Edition

Study Questions - Chapter 12

Behavior Analysis and Learning, Fourth Edition is an essential textbook covering the basic principles in the field of behavior analysis and learned behaviors, as pioneered by B. F. Skinner.

  1. How do behavior analysts use the term verbal behavior? Why do Lee (1981a) and Catania (1984) argue against the use of the term language in behavior analysis? What are some of the meanings of the term language? According to Skinner (1957), what is the study of verbal behavior? (p. 267)
  2. FOCUS ON: In what sense did verbal behavior evolve according to Skinner (1986)? Discuss the evolution of the speech production system and the anatomy of this system. How does the evidence support Skinner's claim that language use is verbal behavior and vocal behavior is operant behavior? (p. 268)
  3. Discuss the verbal interaction of speaker and listener, using a waiter and customer as an example. How does verbal behavior operate indirectly on the environment? (p. 269)
  4. Describe the range of verbal behavior as outlined in this textbook. Distinguish between speaking and listening in terms of function. What is the term used to describe the behavior of the listener? (p. 270)
  5. Why does verbal behavior require special attention? What is the verbal community, and how does grammatical form depend on this community? (p. 270)
  6. What is the name of Skinner's book on verbal behavior? Why is Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior better viewed as a set of testable hypotheses? (p. 271)
  7. Provide a functional definition of manding and indicate the English word that the term is based on. Give examples of manding in everyday life. Define tacting and the English word the term is based on. Give everyday examples of tacting. Discuss the problem of distinguishing between manding and tacting. Extend manding and tacting to television commercials. (pp. 271-272)
  8. What is meant by the functional independence of verbal response classes? How do researchers train manding relations? What is a blocked-response conditioned establishing operation, or CEO, and how did Hall and Sundberg (1987) use it? (p. 273) Discuss other forms of manding training as used with chimpanzees. Compare manding by pointing and speaking. (p. 273)
  9. How is tacting trained? (p. 274) What procedural cautions must be used to insure tacting rather than manding? Outline Savage-Rumbaugh's (1984) training of tacting by chimpanzees. How did Michael, Whitley, and Hesse (1983) train pigeons in tacting based on changes in response topography? (pp. 274-275)
  10. Describe behavioral experiments on tacting training with language-delayed humans. How does this research relate to the question of functional independence of verbal response classes? Cite further evidence of tacting training in humans involving positions and quantity of objects. Overall, what does the research on the training of manding and tacting indicate? (p. 275)
  11. Define intraverbal behavior. Give some common examples of intraverbals and examples of intraverbal training in education. (p. 276)
  12. Define an echoic response. Give an example of echoic behavior involving an infant and parents. Compare echoic behavior with the mere duplication of sound by some organisms. When is echoic behavior most prevalent in human speech? (p. 276) What is textual behavior? Give an example of textual behavior. (p. 276)
  13. Be able to describe a conditional discrimination experiment with pigeons, using circles with vertical and horizontal lines and triangles with similar line angles. Refer to Figure 12.2 in your answer. (p. 278)
  14. Extend the conditional-discrimination experiment to a child's behavior of naming the number and type of coins. Why is it inappropriate to call the conditional-discrimination performance of a pigeon verbal behavior? (p. 279)
  15. Describe the Jack and Jill experiment concerning communication by pigeons. Be able to distinguish the interlocking contingencies regulating the behavior of speaker and listener. (p. 280)
  16. What did Lubinski and MacCorquodale (1984) show in their experiment on communication in pigeons? What is the value of experiments on communication by nonhuman organisms? (p. 281)
  17. FOCUS ON: How are humans able to report on themselves? Describe Lubinski and Thompson's (1987) experiment on the reporting of private stimulation by pigeons. What did additional experiments show? Why is this research important? (pp. 281-282)
  18. Give some common examples of symbolic behavior. Define three basic equivalence relations. How are these relations examined in the laboratory (refer to identity and symbolic matching procedures)? Describe how identity matching is used to obtain reflexivity to colors, based on the identity matching of angles or forms by pigeons. (pp. 283-284)
  19. Outline how symbolic matching is used to train and test for symmetry. Refer to the training of an angle-to-form discrimination and the reversal test for additional untrained relations. (p. 285)
  20. Building on the symmetry relation, how can transitivity be established? What tests are necessary to show transitivity? (p. 286)
  21. FOCUS ON: What are derived relations and how is reinforcement arranged to obtain them? Discuss fMRI and how it is used to isolate brain regions activated by conditional and derived relations set up by reinforcement contingencies. Draw out the implications of this kind of research. (p. 287)
  22. What is the evidence that nonhuman subjects can pass tests for reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity? Discuss equivalence and higher order stimulus classes. What happens when language-delayed children are reinforced for symbolic matching involving symmetry and transitivity? (pp. 288-289)
  23. ON THE APPLIED SIDE: At the most basic level, what do behavior analysts claim about verbal behavior. How does natural observation of human speech relate to claims about verbal behavior? Describe Moerk's findings, referring to the three-term sequences (e.g., mother-child-mother). Draw out the implications of these findings. (p. 289)
  24. ADVANCED SECTION: Be able to diagram (as in Figure 12.8) and describe a simple social episode involving the manding relation. In your discussion refer to the interlocking contingencies between speaker and listener. What is meant by multiple functions of events? Be able to diagram (Figure 12.9) and describe a simple social episode involving the tacting relation. Compare manding and tacting in term of the controlling variables. (pp. 291-292)

back to Study Questions index.