Listening is behaving verbally

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, it may be important to reconsider the role of the listener in the verbal episode. Although by Skinner's own admission, Verbal Behavior was primarily about the behavior of the speaker, his definition of verbal behavior as "behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons" (1957, p.?2) focused on the behavior of the listener. But because many of the behaviors of the listener are fundamentally no different than other discriminated operants, they may not appropriately be termed listening. Even Skinner noted that the behavior of the listener often goes beyond simply mediating consequences for the speaker's behavior, implying that the listener engages in a repertoire of behaviors that is itself verbal. In the present article I suggest that listening involves subvocal verbal behavior. I then describe some of the forms and functions of the listener's verbal behavior (including echoic and intraverbal behavior) and conclude that there may be no functional distinction between speaking and listening.     

Partial remediation of speaker and listener behaviors in people with severe dementia

We investigated the effects of contingent reinforcement (Intervention 1) and contingent reinforcement with modeling (Intervention 2) on speaker and listener behaviors in 5 people with severe dementia. Intervention 1 generally increased listener behavior; there was no clear effect on tacting, but echoic behavior increased in the one case investigated. Given the weak baseline repertoires of these clients and the paucity of other effective interventions, even the small increases in verbal behaviors found here are important. Further gains may be achieved, for example, if reinforcement opportunity per trial type were to be increased from one to several per day or if participants were trained to echo the listener stimulus in mand compliance tasks.     

Novelty, stimulus control, and operant variability

Although behavior analysis has been criticized for failure to account for response novelty, many common behavior-analytic concepts and processes (e.g., selectionism, the operant, reinforcement, and stimulus control) assume variability both in the environment and in behavior. The importance of the relation between variability and novelty, particularly for verbal behavior, is discussed, and concepts used to account for novel behavior are examined. Experimental findings also are reviewed that suggest that variability in behavior can come under discriminative control, and these findings are applied to describe novel instances of behavior that may arise during problem solving. We conclude that variations provided and selected by the terms of the three-term contingency are powerful means for understanding novel behavior.     

Emergent verbal behavior and analogy: skinnerian and linguistic approaches

The production of verbal operants not previously taught is an important aspect of language productivity. For Skinner, new mands, tacts, and autoclitics result from the recombination of verbal operants. The relation between these mands, tacts, and autoclitics is what linguists call analogy, a grammatical pattern that serves as a foundation on which a speaker might emit new linguistic forms. Analogy appears in linguistics as a regularity principle that characterizes language and has been related to how languages change and also to creativity. The approaches of neogrammarians like Hermann Paul, as well as those of Jespersen and Bloomfield, appear to have influenced Skinner's understanding of verbal creativity. Generalization and stimulus equivalence are behavioral processes related to the generative grammatical behavior described in the analogy model. Linguistic forms and grammatical patterns described in analogy are part of the contingencies of reinforcement that produce generalization and stimulus equivalence. The analysis of verbal behavior needs linguistic analyses of the constituents of linguistic forms and their combination patterns.     

Shaping of rule-governed behaviour

Over an experimental session of 80 trials, subjects counted brief auditory stimuli ("clicks") in stimulus presentation periods and indicated the number counted by pressing a key the corresponding number of times in subsequent response periods. "Correct" answers resulted in feedback. Unknown to the subjects, the feedback criterion was based on speed of pressing rather than on the correct number of presses. Speed of pressing was modified by response consequences when feedback was made dependent on pressing faster or slower than baseline speed. Modification of speed occurred independently of rules and without the subjects' ability to describe contingency or response requirements. The results suggest that non-verbal contingencies may have a shaping effect on non-salient and non-described attributes of rule-governed behaviour, and it is argued that this may be an important control mechanism of low-level behavioural attributes that are unlikely to be guided by verbal discriminative stimuli.     

The effects of response cost in the treatment of aberrant behavior maintained by negative reinforcement

Positive reinforcement contingencies can sometimes be used to decrease problem behavior maintained by negative reinforcement (e.g., escape). In the current study, we evaluated the extent to which response cost (i.e., contingent removal of a preferred stimulus) would compete with the negative reinforcer maintaining destructive behavior. The response cost contingency reduced destructive behavior by 87% from baseline levels even though the negative reinforcement contingency (i.e., escape) remained in place.     

Reinforcement contingencies as discriminative stimuli

A matching paradigm was used to examine the discriminative properties of two different reinforcement contingencies. Responding according to either a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate or a differential-reinforcement-of-other-behavior schedule produced a choice situation in which each of two keys was illuminated with a unique color. The correct choice response was defined by the contingency that was met to produce the choice. Eighty to 100% correct matching was obtained and recovered during two reversals of the choice stimuli. Introduction of a delay between completion of the reinforcement contingency and presentation of the choice stimuli resulted in decrements in matching performances similar to those obtained when other types of sample stimuli are used. The results provided evidence of the discriminative properties of the relation between behavior and other classes of stimuli.     

Listening and understanding

The activities involved in mediating reinforcement for a speaker's behavior constitute only one phase of a listener's reaction to verbal stimulation. Other phases include listening and understanding what a speaker has said. It is argued that the relative subtlety of these activities is reason for their careful scrutiny, not their complete neglect. Listening is conceptualized as a functional relation obtaining between the responding of an organism and the stimulating of an object. A current instance of listening is regarded as a point in the evolution of similar instances, whereby one's history of perceptual activity may be regarded as existing in one's current interbehavior. Understanding reactions are similarly analyzed; however, they are considerably more complex than listening reactions due to the preponderance of implicit responding involved in reactions of this type. Implicit responding occurs by way of substitute stimulation, and an analysis of the serviceability of verbal stimuli in this regard is made. Understanding is conceptualized as seeing, hearing, or otherwise reacting to actual things in the presence of their "names" alone. The value of an inferential analysis of listening and understanding is also discussed, with the conclusion that unless some attempt is made to elaborate on the nature and operation of these activities, the more apparent reinforcement mediational activities of a listener are merely asserted without an explanation for their occurrence.     

Developing and demonstrating inhibitory stimulus control over repetitive behavior

Developing inhibitory stimulus control over repetitive behavior minimizes the social and learning disruptions caused by this behavior while allowing individuals to continue to access this source of reinforcement at nonproblematic times. These procedures involve allowing repetitive behaviors to occur in some stimulus conditions (S+) and blocking the repetitive behavior in order to disrupt the response–reinforcer relation in other stimulus conditions (S‐) such that the onset of the S‐ period results in rapid and sustained reductions in repetitive behavior. However, the demonstration of stimulus control exerted by the S‐ has often been confounded with participants' exposure to programmed reductive contingencies (i.e., behavior is reduced due to direct contact with contingencies rather than the programmed antecedent stimuli). The current study both developed and demonstrated the suppressive effects of S‐ presentation upon repetitive behavior with two children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. These demonstration techniques involved (a) introducing the S‐ into novel environments without the programmed contingencies that we used to establish discriminative control, (b) evaluating the reductive effects of programmed contingencies with and without the associated discriminative stimuli, and (c) evaluating latencies to the onset of repetitive behavior given S+ and S‐ presentations.     

Differential effects of omission contingencies on various components of Pavlovian appetitive conditioned responding in rats

Five experiments with rat subjects investigated the effects of omission and partial reinforcement contingencies on five individual behaviors evoked by visual and auditory conditioned stimuli paired with a food unconditioned stimulus. The effects of omission depended on the behavior on which that contingency was placed: One behavior was eliminated, one was unaffected, and three were reduced relative to the performance of yoked controls. Partial reinforcement resulted in lower frequencies of three behaviors and higher frequencies of two behaviors, compared with performance under consistent reinforcement. A partial reinforcement extinction effect was noted with one behavior but not with the others. These results are related to the possible role of instrumental conditioning contingencies in generating conditioned behavior in this appetitive conditioning preparation and to the independence of individual components of a complex conditioned response.     

Competition between stimulus-reinforcer contingencies and anticipatory contrast.

Procedures used to study anticipatory contrast are conceptually similar to those used to study autoshaping, in that two target stimuli signal either higher or lower rates of reinforcement in the following components of the schedule. Despite this signal contingency, anticipatory contrast entails response rates that are higher to the target stimulus followed by the lower rate of reinforcement. To determine the relation between such effects and autoshaping, different variations of the procedure were used in which the signal contingency was presented in the absence of reinforcement in the target components themselves and in which the reinforcement schedules in the different following components were signaled by the same stimulus. Autoshaping effects of this signal contingency were demonstrated when no reinforcement was available during the target-component signals themselves. Intermediate patterns of behavior occurred when reinforcement was available during the target-component signals and when their different following schedules were correlated with the same stimulus. Attempts to isolate these signal and contrast effects functionally by using the signal-key procedure were unsuccessful. The results demonstrate that Pavlovian stimulus contingencies are in competition with the dynamics of anticipatory contrast, thus reducing its occurrence under some circumstances.     

Temporal differentiation of response duration in children of different ages: developmental changes in relations between verbal and nonverbal behavior.

Children aged 4.5, 7, or 11 years received an experimental session in which a contingency was placed on button-press duration. Each discrete trial was followed by a brief verbal probe asking a question about the contingency requirement. Other groups of children received an identical task followed by a postexperimental interview. Level of adaptation to the duration contingency tended to increase with age in subjects receiving posttrial verbal probes, but not for those who were interviewed. Eleven-year-olds in the verbal probe condition showed a strong correlation between accurate temporal differentiation and number of verbalizations relating to response duration or timing. The younger subjects, with one exception, showed no association between timing-related verbalizations (which were almost totally absent) and response duration differentiation. This developmental difference occurred even though the younger subjects verbalized after almost every trial. The results suggest that although 11-year-old children apparently produce rule-governed behavior under verbal control as adults do, the behavior of younger children may be controlled directly by reinforcement contingencies even when their verbal repertoires are highly developed.     

Direct and collateral effects of positive reinforcement,response cost,and mixed contingencies for academic performance

The relative effects of positive reinforcement, response cost, and the two contingencies combined when used as contingencies for correct academic responses were compared on the dependent measures of accuracy of academic performance and level of on-task behavior. Thirty-three fourth- and fifth-grade pupils served as subjects. A combination of between-group and within-group comparisons indicated that all three contingency systems increased academic performance and on-task behavior (even though on-task behavior was never directly reinforced), but differences in effectiveness between the systems were insignificant. Most importantly, treatment effects on academic performance and on-task behavior persisted following abrupt withrawal of treatments for all three contingency systems. These results confirm earlier speculations that the reinforcement of academic behavior is (a) more likely to positively influene both academic and on-task behavior than in reinforcement of on-task behavior, and (b) is much more resistant to extinction following abrupt termination of the program.     

Run length, visit duration, and reinforcers per visit in concurrent performance

The contingencies in each alternative of concurrent procedures consist of reinforcement for staying and reinforcement for switching. For the stay contingency, behavior directed at one alternative earns and obtains reinforcers. For the switch contingency, behavior directed at one alternative earns reinforcers but behavior directed at the other alternative obtains them. In Experiment 1, responses on the main lever, in S1, incremented stay and switch schedules and obtained a stay reinforcer when it became available. Responses on the switch lever changed S1 to S2 and obtained switch reinforcers when available. In S2, neither responses on the main lever nor on the switch lever were reinforced, but a switch response changed S2 to S1. Run lengths and visit durations were a function of the ratio of the scheduled probabilities of reinforcement (staying/switching). From run lengths and visit durations, traditional concurrent performance was synthesized, and that synthesized performance was consistent with the generalized matching law. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this analysis to concurrent variable-interval schedules. The synthesized results challenge any theory of matching that requires a comparison among the alternatives.     

Invariants and Information Pickup in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems: Implications for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior

ABSTRACT

Although Gibson focused his agenda on the study of perception and Skinner on learning as contingencies of reinforcement, they shared a nonrepresentational approach. We propose that the ecological concept of invariants developed in Gibson's book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) could underlie Skinner's notion of contingencies of reinforcement as environmental opportunities for behaving. The proposal is divided in 3 parts: the concept of stimulus for perception, the role of the notion of invariants in the operant contingency, and the information for perception and behavior. We conclude that approximating contingencies of reinforcement as instances of environmental invariants can be fruitful for studying a number of phenomena within the context of operant conditioning.     

Instrumental learning as a result of omission training on wheel running

The present experiment sought to provide unequivocal evidence of instrumental learning under omission training. Hungry rats received free food reinforcement while spontaneously running in a wheel. For an omission group, running postponed or cancelled reinforcers in the presence of a discriminative stimulus (SD) requiring subjects to reduce responding to earn food. Background food presentations were then yoked to reinforcement delivered in the presence of the discriminative stimulus. For a control group, which received the same stimulus presentations, reinforcement delivery was yoked to the experimental group at all times. The procedure allowed both within- and between-subject comparisons between omission and response-independent schedules. The response-reinforcer delay under the omission contingency was adjusted so as to equate reinforcement frequency in the presence and absence of the SD. As the SD was not correlated differentially with reinforcement and the running response did not involve approach or withdrawal to the site of food delivery, the successful discrimination performance observed in this experiment cannot be accounted for by appeal to implicit classical conditioning. Instead, it is suggested that decreased running in the presence of the discriminative stimulus was based on the animals' veridical representation of the negative contingency between the response and reinforcement.     

Delayed reinforcement as an indiscriminable contingency in verbal/nonverbal correspondence training

We investigated the programming of generalization and maintenance of correspondence between verbal and nonverbal behavior in a preschool setting. Four children participated in a series of multiple-baseline designs. In Experiment 1, delayed reinforcement of verbal behavior effectively controlled maintenance of correspondence with previously trained responses and also resulted in generalization of correspondence to one untrained response. As the latter effect was limited, Experiment 2 was a further assessment of the effects of delayed reinforcement of generalization of correspondence to untrained responses, and consistent generalization was shown. Experiment 2 also showed that generalization, if lost, could be recovered through use of "booster training," in which the original contingencies were reinstated for a brief period. Experiment 3 provided replications, with two additional children, of the effects of delayed reinforcement on maintenance of correspondence. Results are discussed in terms of using delayed reinforcement as an indiscriminable contingency.     

Toward accurate inferences of response class membership

In their review of synthesis within the functional analysis (FA) literature, Slaton and Hanley (2018) reported that most synthesized contingency analyses have included multiple topographies of problem behavior in the reinforcement contingency class. This leaves the question of whether one, some, or all forms of problem behavior are sensitive to the synthesized reinforcement contingencies in published analyses. To address this ambiguity, all topographies of problem behavior that were reported by caregivers to co-occur with the most concerning problem behavior were analyzed for 10 participants. We implemented extinction across one or more forms of problem behavior to determine whether all forms reported to co-occur were sensitive to the same synthesized reinforcement contingency. For nine of 10 participants, the most concerning topographies were sensitive to the same synthesized reinforcement contingencies as the less concerning topographies (results were inconclusive for one). Implications for inferring response class membership from single analyses are discussed.     

Eliminating the battering of women by men: Some considerations for behavior analysis

Based on review of representative literature, history and current research indicate that battering by male partners is a major health problem for women. Use of physical aggression and verbal coercion can be described by three-term contingencies involving escape, avoidance, punishment, and positive reinforcement. These contingencies occur within societal practices, rules, and models that involve oppression of women and insubstantial consequences for men who batter. The difficulties in directly observing a couple's interactions and their aggression have been a methodological barrier to the involvement of behavior analysts in treatment of and research on domestic violence. Recommendations are made for behavior analysts to contribute to reducing battering through development and analysis of program components and application of contingency management and behavioral training technology.