1. An Operant Perspective
Verbal Behavior
An Operant Perspective

2. Defining language and verbal behavior
Language typically refers to linguistic behavior
By definition, must have several functions
Uses symbols, syntax and semantics
Used to get access to items/activities
Can be used to stimulate additional symbols
Can be used to prompt social behavior from others
Verbal behavior:
Skinner
Deals with performance of a speaker and the environmental conditions that establish and maintain verbal performance
Focus on the FUNCTION of the verbal behavior, not the form of the language

3. Basic Distinctions for Verbal Behavior
vocal, written, signed behavior of a speaker, writer or communicator
Behavior operates on the listener, reader, or observer
Reinforcement of verbal behavior occurs in particular settings
Allows the communicator to affect environment indirectly, as opposed to nonverbal behavior (which has a direct effect)

4. Range of Verbal Behavior
Verbal Operants include
Speaking
Signing
Writing
Function of the speaker functionally different from behavior of listener
Rule-governed behavior = listener
Verbal behavior = speaker

5. Rule Governed Behavior
Refers to effects of words in form of
Instructions
Advice
Maxims
Laws of listening
Rules = complex discriminative stimuli
Principles that govern sD’s govern stimuli that control behavior of listener

6. Verbal Behavior Govern behavior of speaker
Verbal behavior is mediated by actions of others
Way a person speaks is shaped by consequences from the listener
Reinforcement shapes
Style of speaking
Dialect
Tonal quality
Words used
Word structure, etc.
All speakers = part of a verbal community
Practices of a cultural/linguistic group
Verbal behavior established and maintained by reinforcing practices of one’s verbal community

7. How does Verbal Community control social use of words?
Social reinforcement shapes the way that speakers use words
Words don’t have own unique meaning, but only meaning given by verbal community
What we say = function of social contingencies involving effects/consequences arranged by members of our verbal community
Long range consequences of speech/word use = access to social and economic resources

8. Types of social word use
To establish facts, persuade others: use words to give accounts of own or others’ actions
Attributions = verbal strategies to persuade others of your current state
I am sad  access to comfort
Use as evidence or to prevent challenges to “factual” statements
Use words to support actions
Use words to gain access to social reinforcement:
Good behavior, then words that emphasize dispositional
Bad behavior, then words that emphasize situational

9. Operant Functions of Verbal Behavior
Two broad operant categories of verbal behavior
Mands
Tacts
Mands, or manding, =
Class of verbal operants whose form is regulated by establishing operations
Deprivation states, fear or aversive states
Use to gain access to solutions to establishing operations:
May I have a glass of water resolves thirst when get water
Stop scaring me avoid fear stimuli
Buy this toy for me gain access to toy

10. Operant Functions of Verbal Behavior
Tacts or tacting
Class of verbal operants whose form is regulated by nonverbal discriminative stimuli and maintained by generalized conditioned reinforcement in verbal community
Descriptions of the environment, other facts
Use to gain access to generalized conditioned reinforcement
The sun is yellow; grass is green
Reinforced by the verbal community (teacher says, “That is correct”)
Look at function of the verbalization to determine if it is manding or tacting
Often manding hides as tacting
“You look wonderful tonight”- description or gaining access to something?

11. How can we train Mands and Tacts?
Manding relations:
Use conditioned establishing operation (CEO):
Blocked response CEO: impede response by blocking access to a stimulus or event
As child reaches for cookie- prompt “cookie”; only gets the cookie if make the correct mand (sign or verbalization of “cookie”)
Can make these very complex: e.g., our test is a series of mands:
“define reinforcement”
Only gain access to points if use correct words to answer the question
Can also mand to make things go away (negative reinforcement) or to avoid/reduce punishment

12. How can we train Mands and Tacts?
Tacting relations:
Speaker must emit a verbal operant whose form depends on nonverbal discriminative stimulus AND operant class should be acquired and maintained by nonspecific reinforcement
Nonspecific reinforcement = reinforcer for one response exerts no stimulus control over the form of the next response
Thus: can use food reinforcement as long as it does not set the occasion for a subsequent verbal response or the selection of the next stimulus
E.g., identification of pictures: shown a picture of a tiger, say tiger, get food reward
The food reward does elicit another dependent response
Learning to name objects or describe relationship between objects = form of tacting
Manding training facilitates acquisition of tacting, but not vice versa

13. Complex verbal relations
Intraverbal relations:
Class of verbal operants regulated by verbal discrmininative stimuli
Verbal stimuli elicited by verbal stimuli
E.g., counting: one, two _______
Answers to questions: “I went out to eat today”, “oh, where did you eat?”
Relatively finite set of appropriate (reinforced) responses

14. Complex verbal relations
Autoclitic relations
Form of verbal behavior that modifies the consequences produced by other verbal responses
Used to exert control by a nonverbal stimulus over the speaker’s tact
Five categories:
Descriptive: What color is that?
Qualifying: Do you think this is enough rice?
Quantifying: Put a place setting for each person, please.
Manipulative: I will give you a cookie if you say you love me!
Relational: Which one of these matches that one?
Controlled by motivating operations (MO): make it reinforcing for the speaker to modify the mand, thus increasing control over listener behavior
Get me water vs. Could you please get me some water
Addition of “please” increases likelihood of listener bringing the speaker water

15. Echoic vs. Textual relations
Intraverbal relations:
Class of verbal operants regulated by verbal discrmininative stimuli
Verbal stimuli elicited by verbal stimuli
E.g., counting: one, two _______
Answers to questions: “I went out to eat today”, “oh, where did you eat?”
Point-to-point correspondence between stimulus and response defines echoic vs. textual relations
Defined by formal similarity:
requires that the verbal stimulus and the product of the response be in same modality and have exact physical resemblance
Counting with 1:1 correspondence

16. Echoic vs. Textual relations
Echoic: class of verbal operants regulated by a verbal stimulus in which there is correspondence and formal similarity between stimulus and response
this is a dog, say dog; dog
imitation
Textural:
No formal similarity between the stimulus and response
Reading out loud: not naming the letters, but the letter combination creates a unique word.
Silent reading assumes that there is textural relations, but the verbalization has become silent

17. Matching to Sample and Language
Is metacognition or metalinguistic awareness necessary?

18. Language Words act as symbols Verbal humans can
Manipulate symbols
Map words onto internal concepts
Use words to “refer” to objects, events, relations
Behavioral perspective:
Meaning of word established through direct contingencies embedded in interactions with verbal community
Contingencies largely social
Symbols = discriminative stimuli
Symbols = stimuli that are “thrown together” with other stimuli
Is bidirectional!

19. Equivalence Class Three defining relations: Reflexivity: Symmetry
generalized identity matching
Matching novel stimulus to itself
Symmetry
Functional reversability of conditional relation
If A then B; if B then A
Occurs without direct reinforcement
Transitivity
Three stimuli: A, B, C
A = B
A = C
Therefore, B = C

20. Equivalence Class Stimulus equivalence:
Symbol and referents form functionally substitutable elements
Relation between symbol and referent not unidirectional
Deal with verbal or symbolic activity
Picture of a dog = word dog = picture of a dog
Many animals show stimulus equivalence
Monkeys
Chimps and bonobos
Parrots
Dogs
Pigeons to lesser degree
Sea animals
What cognitive abilities are necessary for this?

21. How test “concept formation”
problem solving strategy that is based on relations between stimuli
NOT strategy based on particular aspects of individual problems
Start with # of exemplars then applied to novel problems
Use matching to sample
Shown an exemplar
Pick the matching concept from stimulus array
Sameness-different-ness

22. Testing animals for Concepts
Several important criteria for testing across species:
Exclusion effect: novel vs. familiar
Correct answer = novel stimulus
Are you shaping “choose the new” or “choose the concept”?
Effects of novelty:
Can be disruptive
Is it the stimulus or the novelty that the animal is responding to?
Using large pool of stimuli helps reduce this effect

23. Pigeons: Maki and Hegvik (1980) directed forgetting
Assume that updating of memory is critical
Human data suggest that this depends on mnemonics
Directed forgetting = cueing what to forget
Can animals do this?
Use MTS task again
Now add a delay: DMTS

24. Pigeons: Method: 6 pigeons
3 key conditioning chamber; Center key lights up white; peck it
Peck would then result in one of two equally probable events:
2 sec access to grain
2 sec with no stimuli presented
Used different delays: 6-15 seconds
Then 2 keys light up: Red and Green
Red reinforced if trial begun with NO food
Green reinforced if trial had begun with NO stimulus presented
Had to remember first event: if correct, got food; if incorrect, got TO

25. Training Training: Group “light”:
comparison stimuli omitted for trials containing the house light during delay
Cue to remember : dark
Cue to forget: light on
Group “dark”:
comparison stimuli omitted for trials containing NO house light during delay
Cue to remember: Light
Cue to forget: Dark
Ran probe tests on last 20 days: Total of 40 F-cue and 40 R cue probe trials

26. Results for early Pigeons
Obtained Mean percentages correct for F (forget) cue and R (remember) cues, dark and light, and short or long delays
Results:
Decrease in matching accuracy in F-cue probe trials relative to R-cue trials for both Part A and Part B training
Remembered less when cued to forget!
R-cue trials were more accurate than F-cue, particularly when F-cue was house light and not darkness

27. Experiment 2
Examined effects of cuing and the predicted time course of cuing
Also examine feature positive vs. feature negative effect
Method:
6 birds again
Trained on basic task with no delay
Trained to flashing vs. steady houselight
Trained to dark vs. light
Added probe trials

28. Results of Exp 2 with pigeons
Again, performance during house light as cue for forgetting was worse compared to house light as cue to remember
Matching following forget cues was less accurate than following remember cues
Delay decreased performance
Presence of House light as forgetting cue was disruptive!

29. Conclusions:
Cuing effects can vary with nature of to-be-remembered sample (remember the feature negative effect!).
Did NOT support the rehearsal hypothesis, but appears pigeons “did something else” when prompted to forget
Suggests must engage in mediating behaviors to maintain remembering

30. Memory without Awareness in Pigeons?
Metamemory?
People can report state of memories, don’t know if animals can
Why is reporting on memory important?
Adaptive
Provides functional guide to how to remember
Memory monitoring = form of Memory awareness
How test metamemory:
Test of sensitivity to memory strength: choose whether to take a memory test
Rejecting the test = less reward than taking test
Used Direct test of memory (DMTS)
Animals with strong memory awareness should choose to take test more often
Who has shown metamemory
Humans
Monkeys
Other primates
Dogs
Rats!?!
Now test pigeons!

31. Metamemory experiments
Several experiments with 3 pigeons
Exp 1: birds chose between fixed small # of pellets and varying probabilities of larger # of pellets
Fixed = escape: nNO test
Variable = larger reward for remembered or none for miss (error)
Over time all birds chose constant reinforcer and switched away from higher variable payoff
No differences in memory
Just a difference in preference

32. Metamemory experiments in pigeons
Trained on task, then tested memory:
Given the option of a test or no test
If chose no test got an easy discrimination task rather than time out
Examined choice and accuracy during choice testing vs. forced trial testing
Predicted that less memory = easy discrimination choice when had choice
Results:
No effect on memory: all pigeons remembered regardless of forced or choice test
Found longer delays = poorer performance regardless of forced or choice
Pigeons still preferred to not take the test!

33. Metamemory experiments in pigeons
Now present choice to escape simultaneously
Again examined forced vs. choice testing and length of delay
In general, more accurate when choice test, but not significant
Exp 4:
Had pigeons rate their confidence level for “answers”
Trained on conditional discrimination (DMTS)
Again, choice vs. forced and the delay interval examined
Results:
None of pigeons chose to gamble after incorrect response
Ambiguous choice for gambling after correct responses
Accuracy dropped with longer delay intervals, but no affect on confidence

34. Summary of pigeons and metamemory
Bottom line: little evidence for metamemory in pigeons, even with high accuracy for DMTS task!
Can perform the task, BUT appear to be “unaware” of how strong or accurate their memory might be
Unlike other higher mammals and some birds
Interesting because of strong performance
But absence of metamemory

35. Sea Lions 2 female Sea lions: Rocky and Rio Procedure:
All initial stimulus training = problems with 2 stimuli
Novel stimuli always paired with novel stimuli
Large number of stimuli used
Allowed assessment of novelty effects
Each comparison stimuli had an equal probability of appearing as S+ and S-: maintains conditionality (A=B or B=A)
Hypothesis: Identity matching experience that is gained by completing one test will facilitate performance on subsequent tests.

36. Experiment 1
At beginning of trial: sample stimulus exposed for 4 sec, then 2 side doors opened revealing 2 choices (S+ and S-)
Simultaneous conditioning
Nose poke was operant response; Sr = fish
Training:
Exclusion phase: correct vs. familiar, familiar = S-
Trial and error: all novel stimuli, trained until 90% correct
Reshuffling: any stimulus could appear with any other within the concept
Why reshuffling?
Additional experience
Dependence on context eliminated
Minimize control by other unintentional stimuli
Testing: 30 novel stimuli in 15 paired problems
4 training sessions
Then test stimuli
Assessment:
First trial performances compared with chance (50%)
Test trials into 2 groups:
Trials 1-4 (trial 1 alone, too)
Trials 5-8
Compared these 2 groups compared to baseline
Examined 4 test groupings as a test to be passed or failed: 3/4

37. Results of Sea Lion MTS Training: Reshuffling:
Rio learned first problem more easily (90% or higher)
But: Initial probe trials with novel stimuli , she scored only at chance (50%).
Reshuffling:
No decrement in performance for either sea lion
Showed transfer of training between stimuli
Appeared to be responding according to identity relationship

38. Reshuffling: Test 1: Rio: Rocky: Pass/fail analysis:
first set NOT better than chance
But further training: 90% or better
Treated novel problems differently than familiar
Interestingly, vocalized and touched novel stimuli more
Novel stimuli appeared to disrupt Rio’s behavior
Rocky:
No apparent reaction to novelty of stimuli
Test 1 was ambiguous
Test 2 was improved
But: overall, performed well on both tests
In general: performed as well as during baseline
Pass/fail analysis:
Rio passed all
Rocky passed 14/15 then 15/15

39. Experiment 2
Assess degree to which generalization of matching rule would occur with stimluli previously encountered in nonidentity context.
Retrained sea lions on arbitrary MTS task that they previously had extensive training on (changed the pairings)
Tested on MTS using familiar stimuli from old task
Same procedure, but different pairing of stimuli
Test with familiar, not novel stimuli

40. Results of Experiment 2 with Sea Lions
Pass/Fail analysis:
Rocky: 10/10 for first set; 8/10 for second set
Rio: 7/10 and 8/10
Not as many 100% as in novel training
Did show reflexivity among elements previously related only to dissimilar or nonmatching stimuli
Suggests that there was some interference from previous training

41. Conclusions regarding Sea Lions
Sea lions were able to transfer identity concept to novel problems in visual MTS test
Why successful?
Large number of exemplars
Extended training
Reshuffling phase allowed problems to be broken up, reducing reliance on unintentional attributes….This way, selecting only for the identity relation
Habituated to novelty
Individual differences apparent:
Experience
“intelligence”
How transferable is MTS? May depend on “abstractiveness” of concept
Context important: what can the abstract concept be grounded with?
MTS not necessarily limited by precise context that is learned

42. DTMS and human children
12 children in 3 groups (MA mos)
Normally developing preschoolers
Mentally retarded with near typical language
Mentally retarded with no language development
Stimuli:
4 conditional discriminations:
If A then B
If D then E
If A then C
If D then F
Matching made up animal like figures using MTS

43. DTMS and human children
Training: Presented A or D as sample, B,E or C,F as comparisons
3 stimuli presented on paper
Sample at top, two choices at bottom
Test: equivalence indicated by matching B and C or E and F
B or E as sample with C and F as comparisons
C and F as sample with E and B as comparisons
Each child taught and tested individually
Reward = short activity or treat
Did use visual prompting
Obtained interobserver agreement and reliability estimates

44. Language and kids: Results
Looked at group and individual data
Data graphed as percentages of unprompted correct responses in blocks of 10 consecutive trials
Performance varied across 3 groups:
Typical and retarded/language required fewer trials to mastery
About 100 for typical; 225 for retarded/language; 500 for retarded/no language

45. Language and kids: Results
Equivalence test:
Individual data
Did track # of no responses made by child during each block of 10 trials: did not differ x group
% of correct responding = # correct responses/total number of responses in block
Normal group: 84.5% correct
Retarded/language: 78.25%
Retarded/no language: 44.5%- very close to chance
Typical and retarded/language children improved across the equivalence testing phase:
Normal: 77.5 to 95.5
Retarded/language: to 88%
Retarded no language: and 39.25%

46. Language and kids: Results
Data suggest that language/symbol use may be necessary for development of stimulus equivalence in young children
Not that couldn’t learn discriminations
Couldn’t learn conditional discriminations under these conditions
Literature shows can learn with overtraining
Seems to be lack of symmetrical responding rather than inability to show transitivity
Slower to learn overall
May just take longer

47. Conclusions
Which comes first: equivalence class learning or symbol use?
Animal data suggest equivalence class
Pigeon data: could do task, but not aware
Sea lion data: better transitivity and symbol use
Higher mammals, primates, dogs show transitivity and symbol use
Is language learned, innate?
Is it a process that requires multiple inputs from genetics, environment
Synergistic interactions between nature and nurture?
But is it required to discriminate complex stimuli?
Answer seems to be, depends on the type of complex stimuli!