The property which makes a novel stimulus effective may be the property upon which reinforcements supplied by the community are contingent. This “generic extension” is illustrated when a speaker calls…
A given object does not remain the inevitable occasion for the reinforcement of an appropriate response, and the probability of response therefore comes to vary with the occasion. The listener…
The practical behavior of the listener with respect to the verbal stimulus produced by a tact follows the same three-term relation which has already been used in analyzing the behavior…
Theories of meaning usually consider the behaviors of both speaker and listener at the same time. The practice is encouraged by the notion of the “use of words,” which appears…
In very general terms we may say that behavior in the form of the tact works for the benefit of the listener by extending his contact with the environment, and…
Verbal behavior in which the reinforcement is thoroughly generalized, and the control of which therefore rests almost exclusively with the environment, is developed by the methods of science. The reinforcing…
A tact which is established with a completely generalized reinforcement might be called “pure” or “objective”... A truly generalized reinforcement is, however, rare ... and pure objectivity in this sense…
Roughly speaking, the mand permits the listener to infer something about the condition of the speaker regardless of external circumstances, while the tact permits him to infer something about the…
It may be tempting to say that in a tact the response “refers to,” “mentions,” “announces,” “talks about,” “names,” “denotes,” or “describes” its stimulus. But the ... only useful functional…
The invented term “tact” will be used here. The term carries a mnemonic suggestion of behavior which “makes contact with” the physical world. A tact may be defined as a…
In all verbal behavior under stimulus control there are three important events to be taken into account: a stimulus, a response, and a reinforcement. These are contingent upon each other…
All verbal behavior is, of course, borrowed in the sense of being acquired from other people. (p. 73)
Most of the “facts” of history are acquired and retained as intraverbal responses. (p. 72)
In echoic behavior and in writing from copy there is a formal correspondence between stimulus and response-product. In textual behavior and in taking dictation there is a point-to-point correspondence between…
In echoic behavior, the correspondence upon which reinforcement is based may serve as an automatic conditioned reinforcer. The speaker who is also an accomplished listener “knows when he has correctly…
Why the family, the community, and educational agencies arrange ... [reinforcement of textual behavior] is to be explained in terms of the ultimate advantages gained from having an additional literate…
Since the term “reading” usually refers to many processes at the same time, the narrower term “textual behavior” will be used here. In the textual operant, then, a vocal response…
In all kinds of self-echoic behavior we have to consider the possibility that the verbal stimulus may be covert. (p. 65)
Since a speaker usually hears himself and thus stimulates himself verbally, he can also echo himself. Such behavior is potentially self-reinforcing if it strengthens stimulation used in the control of…
The degree of accuracy insisted upon by a given reinforcing community is important. In general, the speaker does no more than is demanded of him. (p. 63)
We pick up a large part of our verbal repertoire by echoing the behavior of others under circumstances which eventually control the behavior non-echoically. (p. 62)
The first echoic operants acquired by a child tend to be fairly large integral patterns, and they are of little help in permitting him to echo novel patterns. A unit…