Verbal Behavior - Functional Analysis

Functional Analysis

The context of speaker utterances is central to Skinner's perspective on language. With this as a background, Skinner developed the premise that Verbal Behavior—behavior under the control of consequences mediated by other people (who can interchangeably function as speaker and listener)—was best understood in a functional analysis. This theoretical extension was a direct product of his basic research using what he referred to as the "three-term contingency model" with the basic behavioral unit being the response and its consequence in a specified situation (antecedent–behavior–consequence). This is now sometimes called the four-term contingency model with setting conditions added as a fourth term. This consists of a motivating operation (MO), discriminative stimulus (SD), response (R), and reinforcement (Srein). Skinner's Verbal Behavior also introduced the autoclitic and six elementary operants: mand, tact, audience relation, echoic, textual, and intraverbal. Skinner argued that verbal behavior is a function of the speaker's current environment and his past behavioral and genetic history. For Skinner, the proper object of study is behavior itself, analyzed without reference to hypothetical (mental) structures, but rather with reference to the functional relationships of the behavior in the environment in which it occurs. This analysis extends Ernst Mach's pragmatic inductive position in physics, and extends even further a disinclination towards hypothesis-making and testing. Verbal Behavior is divided into 5 parts with 19 chapters. The first chapter sets the stage for this work, a functional analysis of verbal behavior. Skinner presents verbal behavior as a function of controlling consequences and stimuli, not as the product of a special inherent capacity. Neither does he ask us to be satisfied with simply describing the structure, or patterns, of behavior. Skinner deals with some alternative, traditional formulations, and moves on to his own functional position.