Verbal operants: what they are, types and operation

The psychologist b. F. Skinner called communication skills “Verbal Behavior”; Specifically, it consists of the set of vocal or non-vocal operant behaviors intended to be socially reinforced.

Skinner differentiated 6 verbal operants, each with its own function and meaning. All of them revolve around language. In this article we will know what each of them consists of.

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Verbal operants and verbal behavior according to Skinner

The psychologist b. F. Skinner (1957) he defined verbal behavior as that whose reinforcement is mediated by another person. Teaching verbal repertoires is essential to promote independent development in the child, and it is for This should be one of the objectives of their education or of the different interventions that we can apply.

Verbal operants are different functions that we find within both vocal and non-vocal verbal behavior. Are were explained by B.F. Skinner in his book Verbal Conduct (1957). In this work the author analyzes the verbal behavior of people, traditionally called language, linguistics or speech.

There are a total of 6 verbal operants: echoic, commands, tacts, intraverbal, autoclitic and textual response, which we will see explained below.

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Types of Verbal Operants

B.F. Skinner differentiates and defines several types of verbal operants:

1. echoic

The speaker repeats exactly what another speaker says. It has a point-by-point correspondence with the antecedent verbal stimulus. It is an imitation of vocal verbal behavior. For example, it would be when a father says to his baby "garlic" and the baby repeats "garlic".

2. Command

It is a type of verbal operant in which the speaker request, request or suggest something you need. The command can be vocal or non-vocal.

Here the antecedent is a state of deprivation, satiation, or motivational conditions of the person. It requires the presence of a listener for the stimulus that acts as a reinforcer to be provided. For example, it would be when a child is thirsty and says "water".

3. Touch

Here the speaker names objects and actions with which he has direct contact through any of the sensory modalities. In this case, the antecedent is a non-verbal physical stimulus, such as seeing an airplane.

It is controlled by generalized social reinforcement. An example would be when a child sees a car and says "car"; his mother tells him "Yes honey, it's a car, very good" (she reinforces him).

4. intraverbal

The person responds differentially to the verbal behavior of others, that is, respond to specific statements or questions.

Here the antecedent stimulus is a verbal stimulus that controls the response, but has no point-for-point correspondence with the antecedent. For example, it would be when one child says "Hello" and the other responds "Hello, how are you?"

5. autoclitics

Autoclitic verbal operants are non-vowel, and modify the effects of elementary verbal operants (commands, touches, echoic and intraverbal) on the listener. For example, it would be to say "I want the red car"; In this case, "I want" and "red" are the autoclitics with which the command is being specified.

6. Text Response

Is what we understand when reading, by reading, without going into the general understanding of the text. It can be vocal if it is read aloud, or non-vocal if it is read “silently”. For example, it is about what the reader is doing right now with this article by reading it.

echoic operants

We are going to go into a little more detail on the echoic verbal operants, since they are one of the most important when it comes to promoting the development of language.

This type of operant consists of a correspondence in the “hear-say”. For this reason has a topographic (called point-to-point similarity) and formal similarity (that is, it has the same sensory modality) with the verbal stimulus that controls it. Let's see an example:

As we have already seen in an example, let's think of an educator who says: “MA”. And the student repeats: “MA”. The educator reinforces said response to increase the probability that in the future she will say "MA" again when the verbal stimulus "MA" is presented to her.

parroting

Parroting is an early stage of children's development, in which produce vocalizations that are automatically reinforced; they are sounds from the context that surrounds them. It is not about imitations, but simply about vocal sounds, vocalizations. Parroting should be checked for existence before teaching verbal or echoic operants.

Parroting is a stage that precedes the echoic function; however, if it is not observed, there are a number of procedures and methods to induce it. An example to induce it is the stimulus-stimulus matching procedure (Sundberg, 1996).

Thus, parroting is necessary for echoic responses to develop. In this way, the emission of the parroting response could be a crucial step for the development of echoic responses, and may be an early higher-order verbal operant.

Function of echoic behavior

Echoic behavior has the function of allowing for the child to learn the ability to repeat the sounds of other people, whether they are mothers, fathers, teachers or educators. It is also the basis for learning other verbal operants, such as tacts and commands.

Bibliographic references:

• Skinner, B.F. (1957, translation 1981). Verbal conduct. Editorial Trillas.
• Sundberg, Mark L., Michael, J., Partington James, W. and Sundberg, Cindy A. (1996). The Role of Automatic Reinforcement in Early Language Acquisition. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 13, 21-37.