Verbal Behavior Week 3 Material

Front 1

What is generalized conditioned reinforcement? Distinguish it form ordinary conditioned reinforcement. What role does it play in Skinner's approach to verbal behavior?

Back 1

Generalized conditioned reinforcement is reinforcement associated with a variety of specific reinforcers and is insensitive to motivating operations.

Conditioned reinforcers are sensitive to motivating operations.

Generalized reinforcement allows behavior to be released from motivating operations and then brought under the exclusive control of discriminative stimuli.

Front 2

Explain how a verbal response can be made relatively independent of establishing operations and thus brought under almost exclusive control of a prior or current SD.

Back 2

To remove MO control, we either provide a variety of reinforcers, a generalized reinforcer, and avoid the use of conditioned reinforcers.

Front 3

Describe some common examples of verbal behavior reinforced by generalized conditioned reinforcement.Why are these not mands?

Back 3

Echoics, textuals, intraverbals

They are not sensitive to motivating operations.

Front 4

Echoic

Back 4

A vocal verbal operant maintained by generalized reinforcement occasioned by an auditory verbal stimulus for which there is point to point correspondence between the occasioning stimulus and the product of the response

Front 5

Describe the various sources of reinforcement for echoic behavior. What are the advantages for the speaker? For the verbal community?

Back 5

Educational reinforcement, can produce more time for the speaker to do self editing, relay something to a third party, confirmation, pre current behavior.

To a speaker: rapid acquisition of new topographies of verbal behavior

To the verbal community: Allows teaching to happen much faster

Front 6

Interpret the following remark: "Echoic behavior does not depend upon or demonstrate any instinct or faculty of imitation"

Back 6

Echoic behavior appears to be operant(ontogenically selected) rather than respondent (phylogenically selected)

Front 7

What's the smallest unit of echoic behavior?

Back 7

A speech sound

Front 8

What is self echoic behavior? How is it explained? Why is it difficult to demonstrate?

Back 8

An echoic for which the same person acts as both the speaker and the listener.

Used to reproduce or replicate a stimulus; covert

Front 9

What is a textual? What reinforces textual behavior?

Back 9

A textual is a vocal verbal operant maintained by generalized reinforcement occasioned by a written verbal stimulus for which there is point to point correspondence between the occasioning stimulus and the product of the response.

Educational reinforcement, reading to others, reading for pleasure (automatic SR+)

Front 10

Identify and comment on the important differences between echoic and textual behavior.

Back 10

Echoics- continuous stimulus and response unit;can be fine tuned; smallest unit is a speech sound

Textual- response dimension is continuous but stimulus dimension is discontinuous; smallest unit is phoneme

Front 11

Transcription

Back 11

Written verbal operant maintained by generalized reinforcement occasioned by a written verbal stimulus for which there is point to point correspondence between the occasioning stimulus and the product of the response.

Front 12

Dictation

Back 12

A written verbal operant maintained by generalized reinforcement occasioned by an auditory verbal stimulus for which there is point to point correspondence between the occasioning stimulus and the product of the response

Front 13

Intraverbal and identify sources of reinforcement for this behavior

Back 13

A verbal operant maintained by generalized reinforcement occasioned by a verbal stimulus for which there is no point to point correspondence.

Reinforced by: educational reinforcement, members of the verbal community when answering questions, pre current behavior

Front 14

What does Skinner mean when he says that the more complex the stimulus pattern, the stronger the control over a single response?

Back 14

The more rare a stimulus is, the easier it is to arrange for reinforcement of a specific response in its presence.

Front 15

Interpret the following statement: "...there is no minimal repertoire similar to that which approaches mimicry in echoic behavior or permits the skilled reader to pronounce a new word in a text"

Back 15

Intraverbals cannot be broken down into smaller units; size is variable

Front 16

What does Skinner mean when he says that a "translator may not react to his own behavior as a listener at all"?

Back 16

Translator does not respond in the same way a listener typically does. Translator may just translate in a functional way, not necessarily in intraverbals.

Front 17

Explain how translation from a new to an old language is similar to early stages of reading.

Back 17

You may have to translate everything that you read first and then respond as a listener to your own translation. Eventually, you may not need the mediating translation.

Front 18

Explain why verbal behavior under the control of verbal stimuli and generalized reinforcement does not show much dynamic variation in speed or energy of response

Back 18

The elimination of motivating operations decreases the variability of the response.

Front 19

Why are verbal response under the control of verbal stimuli dismissed as unimportant or trivial in traditional accounts of language? What is Skinner's view?

Back 19

Traditional account suggests that words are representational; used as symbolic communication

Skinner- Verbal behavior occasioned by nonverbal stimuli are just as important as those occasioned by verbal stimuli