Author: B. F. Skinner Foundation

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.…

Unconditioned vocal responses sometimes enter into multiply caused verbal behavior. The form of the response Ouch! is modified by a particular verbal environment, yet an actual instance may be largely…

We may refer to sources involving echoic and textual responses as “formal” contributions to strength. The important difference concerns the minimal unit relationships available in the formal case. (p. 243)

Two responses are thematically related when they are controlled by a common variable with respect to which they lack the point-to-point correspondence seen in echoic and textual behavior. (p. 243)

In many ... examples it does not matter whether a source of strength is to be classified as a tact or as an intraverbal response. It is convenient to group…

One of the uses of verbal art is to give added strength to responses which, if made for other reasons, would probably be punished. The behavior of a jilted maiden…

To “prove” that part of a literary work has been borrowed we must not only show a similar passage in a work which the author could conceivably have read but…

When a response is under the control of a single stimulus, he can usually identify the stimulus and the controlling relation in answering such a Question as Why did you…

Nonverbal behavior may, of course, have multiple sources of strength. For example, one may slam a door partly to close the door and partly to make a noise under the…

Mixed intraverbals are exemplified by a telephone number or a car registration number containing the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4. One can learn such a number more easily because of…

An example of a double tact is the proper name which is appropriate to its subject . . . If we know a man with white hair named Mr. Leblanc,…

The child is approved for being silent, and the angry man is reinforced if his silence hurts someone. These “negative strengths” enter into the combined effects of multiple variables when,…

In considering the algebraic summation of the effects of reinforcement and punishment we must not overlook the positive reinforcement of keeping silent. (p. 236)

Instances in which there is “some reason for remembering” as well as “some reason for forgetting” show the algebraic summation of variables having opposing effects. (p. 235)

Under a carefully generalized reinforcement, the type of verbal operant called the tact approaches the condition in which its form is determined by only one variable. But insofar as the…

Two scientists may stop talking shop while in a crowded elevator if they are sensitive to an additional audience which may react to their verbal behavior as gibberish. If the…

The presence of a negative audience can be detected only in combination with a positive audience, since its effect is felt as a reduction in the strength of behavior appropriate…

When we use a measure of opinion to predict behavior, we argue that because one response in a thematic group has been made, other responses in the same group are…

TWO FACTS EMERGE from our survey of the basic functional relations in verbal behavior: (1) the strength of a single response may be, and usually is, a function of more…

Verbal behavior is shaped and sustained by a verbal environment—by people who respond to behavior in certain ways because of the practices of the group of which they are members.…

A preliminary restriction would be to limit the term verbal to instances in which the responses of the “listener” have been conditioned . . . If we make the further…