Author: B. F. Skinner Foundation

When we ask “Did you see it, or did someone tell you?”, we are asking for more information about controlling relations. We are essentially asking, “Was your response a tact…

The ultimate explanation of any kind of verbal behavior depends upon the action which the listener takes with respect to it. (p. 314)

Although it is possible that such “knowing” may be nonverbal, the contingencies which generate a response to one’s own verbal responses are unlikely in the absence of social reinforcement. It…

The contingencies necessary for self-descriptive behavior are arranged by the community when it has reason to ask “What did you say?,” “Did you say that?,” “Why did you say that?,”…

The speaker may acquire verbal behavior descriptive of his own behavior. Although the community can establish such a repertoire only by basing its reinforcing contingencies upon observable behavior, the speaker…

Part of the behavior of an organism becomes in turn one of the variables controlling another part. (pp. 312-313)

The verbal operants we have examined may be said to be the raw material out of which sustained verbal behavior is manufactured. But who is the manufacturer? We cannot satisfactorily…

The verbal operant is a lively unit, in contrast with the sign or symbol of the logician or the word or sentence of the linguist, but it does not fully…

If an audience can be shown to strengthen a particular subdivision of a verbal repertoire, we do not need to say that a speaker chooses words appropriate to his audience.…

If metaphorical extension can be shown to take place because a particular stimulus property has acquired control of a response, we do not need to say that a speaker has…

If we can show that a response is stronger when we deprive the individual of food, then we do not need to say that a speaker uses the response to…

... if we can show that the occurrence of a response is due to the presence of a stimulus of specified properties, then it is not necessary to say that…

As a causal agent responsible for the structure and character of verbal behavior, the speaker is threatened by the causal relations identified in the course of a scientific analysis. Whenever…

Converting the speaker into an interested bystander is certainly the direction in which an analysis of behavior will first move. (p. 311)

When the auxiliary source of strength is clear, we may say that the response is “revealing” in the Freudian sense. Thus, after a narrow escape from a serious accident, a…

Two responses are likely to be strong at the same time if they are both functions of the same variable. Many blends are mixtures of two or more tacts under…

When two operants are of approximately the same strength at the same time, their responses seem to blend or fuse into a single new, and often apparently distorted, form. (p.…

Many conundrums are not asked in order to get an answer, but simply to set the stage for the wit of the answer supplied by the asker. (p. 289)

The witty person can be aggressive or otherwise offensive by inducing the listener to laugh it off. (p. 288)

The reinforcing effect of a clever style is hard to analyze; we usually simply report our delight and prove it by returning to the same writer for more of the…

By anticipating objections (“prolepsis”) or answering imaginary objections (“anthypophora”), the speaker reduces the tendency of the listener to emit responses which might provoke disagreement or misunderstanding. (p. 280)

We learn to speak to be understood. (p. 280)

I understand, like the more casual I see, describes the strength of a verbal response with respect to the sources of that strength. (p. 279)

We understand anything which we ourselves say with respect to the same state of affairs. We do not understand what we do not say. (p. 278)

We say that we do not “get it” or do not “see what the writer is driving at” or why he says what he says. What we mean is that…

In a trivial sense “to understand” is “to be able to say the same thing.” This is the sense in which we say that we can or cannot hear over…

When, for example, the listener blushes at the mention of a social error, he can be said to have understood what was said to the extent that his reaction was…

The listener can be said to understand a speaker if he simply behaves in an appropriate fashion. (p. 277)

Creating a match between the behavior of listener and speaker is often useful for ulterior purposes... A venerable example is the fable or parable, where a story is told in…

Building similar verbal behavior in the listener or reader is often recognized as an explicit goal. When a listener “agrees” or “concurs,” he may take various practical steps which are…

The great character writers prepare the reader in such a way that a given remark seems inevitable. (p. 275)

Gordon Allport has pointed out that autobiographies seem to be especially interesting because they satisfy the reader’s own self-love. We might translate this by saying that most people possess strong…

Some forms of verbal behavior—concerned, for example, with sex or with aggressive action toward other persons-are frequently punished in everyday life, though the same forms of behavior generated by a…

In any given instance the behavior of the speaker has not yet been affected by, and does not depend upon, appropriate behavior on the part of the listener. The speaker…

Occasionally there is evidence of an intraverbal sequence not all of which has been overt. [Try to come up with an example of your own.] (p. 262)

[The verbal summator] consists of a phonograph or tape recorder which repeats a vague pattern of speech sounds at low intensity or against a noisy background as often as may…

Sound patterns which are ... deficient as echoic stimuli will sometimes serve as supplementary variables, especially if they are repeated in rhythmic fashion. Since the weakness of the echoic stimulus…

The proud parent hears many more words in the babbling of his child than the skeptical neighbor. A relevant fact in interpreting such instances is that what is heard is…

The plain mishearing of a verbal stimulus is common. But if the echoic stimulus is weak, it does not follow that the response is otherwise undetermined. Other variables are simply…

When the operator can identify the response to be evoked (for example, when the subject has forgotten a word which the operator knows), the supplementary stimulus is a “prompt.” (p.…

We add a supplementary variable to existing sources of strength when, for example, it is important that someone recall a name or a fact, or speak up at an appropriate…

The techniques of control which use multiple causation are applicable whenever we wish to evoke behavior already existing in some strength. (p. 254)

In discovering the independent variables of which verbal behavior is a function we bring the behavior under practical control. (p. 254)

The variables and controlling relations appealed to in the present analysis, however, can be applied to the problem of evoking verbal behavior. (p. 253)

The formal descriptions of logic and grammar ... leave the actual determination of verbal behavior out of account. (p. 253)

One reason for trying to improve upon an analysis of verbal behavior in terms of ideas, meanings, information, attitudes, opinions, traits, abilities, and so on, is that such variables, even…

... the logician or scientist is subject to the limitations imposed upon him by his role as a behaving organism, and even here we must take into account the possibility…

The logical and scientific community is dedicated to the elimination of ambiguities and equivocalities, but it has not altogether eliminated metaphorical or even solecistic extensions or provided safeguards against multiple…

In no case, perhaps, can we say that any one instance of alliteration or other formal similarity is due to a special process, but a general pattern may be demonstrated.…