On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
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In addition to the usual factors affecting the listener’s behavior (such as clarity of the verbal stimulus or the extent of conditioning of separate responses), successful instruction is subject to…
The notion of communication breaks down . . . when both the speaker and the listener are in possession of “the same facts,” or, more precisely, of “the same behavior.”…
It is the function of predication to facilitate the transfer of response from one term to another or from one object to another. (p. 361)
When I call your name, answer “Present” is a mand comparable to Say “Present”, except that the listener withholds the response until the condition in the When clause is satisfied.…
An amphora is a Greek vase with two handles has at least three effects upon the listener. As a result of having heard this response he may (1) say amphora…
We pick up the names of objects without autoclitic help when we observe someone manipulating objects while also naming them. Thus we may “learn the name of” a Jones-plug by…
The young child hearing someone called Jones many times does not therefore himself call him Jones, nor for this reason report that Jones was present, nor point to Jones in…
... Ali Baba might explain to a confederate To open the door, say “Open, Sesame!” or If you want to open the door, say “Open, Sesame!” This will be effective…
The verbal stimulus When I say “three”, go! may have no immediate effect classifiable as a response, but it changes the subsequent behavior of the listener with respect to the…
By piling up words which refer to periods of time and words describing things which occur in vast numbers, the verbal stimulus eternity (scarcely capable of ostensive definition) is given…
If X is someone who arouses a strong emotional reaction in us, then the remark X is going to telephone you shortly will alter our subsequent response to the sound…
By saying When you hear a bell, you will feel a shock, we construct a future response to a bell. The new stimulus here is nonverbal, as in the original…
When shock has become an effective conditioned stimulus, it may be paired with another verbal stimulus in a situation which is wholly verbal. By saying When I say “three”, you…
Parentheses have an almost pictorial character in separating one response from another, as do dashes used either as the equivalent of parentheses or as a sign of breaking off. (p.…
The colon has a sophisticated function equivalent to that of the autoclitic as follows. The apostrophe, both in the possessive’s or s’, is a relational autoclitic with no vocal parallel.…
Quotation marks are obviously associated with the autoclitic he said. The effect is carried vocally by intonation and timing. (p. 356)
The “punctuation” of written verbal behavior is perhaps the best example of compositional autoclitic behavior. It satisfies our criteria because it cannot occur until primary behavior is available to be…
Written verbal behavior can be two-dimensional or, rarely, three-dimensional. Tables, lists, charts, systems of indices, and so on, are all verbal devices in which autoclitic arrangements are carried out in…
In a rather speculative way we may reconstruct the process of composition by analyzing a segment of behavior into (1) its essential operants, (2) the intraverbals possibly arising from these…
In general we are reinforced for complete sentences and punished for broken or fragmentary expressions, and variables strengthening only a few responses tend to evoke complete sentences through multiple causation.…
Some sentences are standard responses to situations comparable to well-memorized verses or maxims or oaths. Others are nearly complete skeletal “frames” upon which an exceptional response or two may be…
Some simple sentences are generated simply by adding autoclitics to available verbal operants. (p. 345)
The ultimate explanation of autoclitic behavior lies in the effect it has upon the listener—including the speaker himself. In general the reactions of the listener at issue are those which…
The speaker not only emits verbal responses appropriate to a situation or to his own condition, he clarifies, arranges, and manipulates this behavior. His activity is autoclitic because it depends…
No one can emit a tact in response to all honest men or to all instances of saying honest. The statement [All honest men are happy] really concerns the defining…
Much rewriting consists of trying different starts, in the sense of responding to different aspects of the situation and adding different grammatical tags. (p. 338)
Something less than full-fledged relational autoclitic behavior is involved when partially conditioned autoclitic “frames” combine with responses appropriate to a specific situation. Having responded to many pairs of objects with…
In general, as verbal behavior develops in the individual speaker, larger and larger responses acquire functional unity, and we need not always speculate about autoclitic action when a response appears…
The manipulation of verbal behavior, particularly the grouping and ordering of responses, is also autoclitic. Responses cannot be grouped or ordered until they have occurred or at least are about…
Purely formal analyses of grammar and syntax (in which, for example, parts of speech are defined in terms of formal properties, including frequency or order of association with other parts…
An extension of the autoclitic formula permits us to deal with certain remaining verbal responses (for example, shall, of, but, and than) and certain fragments of responses which occur in…
Although autoclitics are set up by the verbal community because they are useful to the listener, we must not forget that the speaker is himself a listener and that he…
In the absence of any other verbal behavior whatsoever autoclitics cannot occur. We do not simply say almost or perhaps or some or the. It is only when [primary] verbal…
We sometimes add autoclitics to the verbal behavior of another speaker: we emphasize what he has said by saying True!, we qualify it by saying Maybe, and we deny it…
In a logical or linguistic analysis of the response All swans are white, it may be admissible to say that all refers to, or modifies, swans. In a scientific account…
An autoclitic affects the listener by indicating either a property of the speaker’s behavior or the circumstances responsible for that property. (329)
Another kind of autoclitic affects the reaction of the listener by indicating the kind or degree of extension of a tact. When we respond to a novel stimulus with a…
The kinship of is with Yes is apparent in the common coupling Yes, it is. Its function as a descriptive autoclitic is shown by comparing such examples as I think…
... considering three examples: (a) Jones is ill, (b) Jones is not well, (c) “Jones is well” is false. Although all three of these responses may be emitted with respect…
The response no, as an example of a qualifying autoclitic, has the force of a mand. It may be roughly translated Don’t act upon this response as an unextended tact.…
A two-year-old girl had been taught not to touch objects by parents who, instead of saying No!, merely shook their heads. The child acquired the behavior of approaching a forbidden…
By a sort of magical extension, we also emit the mand [No!] when it is too late and the object has been shattered. The response is naturally extended to verbal…
The effect of no is clear when it is emitted as a mand specifying the cessation of nonverbal behavior on the part of the listener. We observe that someone is…
Russell thinks that the reason [for negation] is always verbal. Someone asks Is it raining? and we reply No, it is not raining . . . But the stimulus which…
The traditional solution, which seems to apply [to negation], is that there must be some reason for saying It IS raining whenever we say It is NOT raining. (p. 322)
In a logical or linguistic analysis, we may perhaps say that the referent of no rain is the absence of rain, but this is clearly impossible in a causal description.…
Once verbal behavior has occurred and become one of the objects of the physical world, it can be described like any other object. We have no reason to distinguish the…
Negative autoclitics qualify or cancel the response which they accompany but imply that the response is strong for some reason—for example, that it has been made by someone else. (p.…
Another group of autoclitics describe the state of strength of a response. I guess, I estimate, I believe, I imagine, and I surmise all indicate that the response which follows…
One type of descriptive autoclitic informs the listener of the kind of verbal operant it accompanies. If the speaker is reading a newspaper and remarks I see it is going…