Verbal Behavior (book)

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Verbal Behavior (1957) is a book written by psychologist B.F. Skinner in which he develops a behaviorist account of language. For Skinner, speech, along with other forms of communication, was simply a behavior subject to the same controlling contingencies as other forms of behavior. The traditional three-term contingency model (now commonly considered a four-term model) is applied to many forms of human verbal behavior.

Skinner argued that each act of speech is an inevitable consequence of the speaker's current environment and his behavioral and sensory history, and derided mentalistic terms such as "idea", "plan" and "concept" as unscientific and of no use in the study of behavior. For Skinner, the proper object of study is behavior itself, analysed without reference to mental structure, but rather with reference to the structure and history of the environment in which particular behaviors occur.

Skinner asserted the premise that Verbal Behavior - behavior under the control of consequences mediated by other people - was best understood in a functional analysis. This functional analysis was a direct product of his basic research using the three-term contingency (discriminative stimulus, response, reinforcement), but also included new terms such as mand, tact, autoclitic, textual, intraverbal, echoic and discussed other factors that would control verbal behavior.

A mand is a form of verbal behavior that is controlled by deprivation or satiation, or what is now called an establishing operation as well as a controlling history. An example of this would be asking for water when one has had no water for a long period of time. It is tempting to say that a mand 'describes its reinforcer' which it sometimes does, but mands may have no correspondence to the reinforcer, for example a loud knock may be a mand "open the door" and a servant may be called by a hand clap as much as a child might "ask for milk".

A tact is said to "make contact with" the world, and refers to behavior that is under the control of a generalized reinforcement.

Textual behavior refers to the type of behavior we might typically call reading or writing.

Skinner's ideas in psychology fall within what is now known as The Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Journals that publish works relating to basic and applied research using Skinner's original work as a basis include The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA) and The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB).

Skinner's theories in Verbal Behavior are being re-explored in the field of autism. Using Skinner's functional analysis of verbal behavior as a basis for treating autistic children significant, reproducible results have been obtained.^{[citation needed]}

Verbal Behavior can also refer to a specialized form of Applied Behavior Analysis. It is complementary to ABA, building on its foundation. However, Verbal Behavior focuses more on language as a behavior.