Verbal operants: what are they, types and functioning?

These functions of verbal behavior enhance learning and socialization.

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 operantseach with its own function and meaning. All of them revolve around language. In this article we will know what each one of them consists of.

Verbal operants and verbal behavior according to Skinner

The psychologist B. F. Skinner (1957) defined verbal behavior as behavior whose reinforcement is mediated by another person.. Teaching verbal repertoires is essential to promote independent development in the child, and that is why it 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 verbal behavior, both vocal and non-vocal. These were explained by B.F. Skinner in his book Verbal Behavior (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, tact, intraverbal, autoclitic and textual response, which we will see explained below.

Types of verbal operants

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

1. Echoica

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

2. Command

This is a type of verbal operant in which the speaker requests, asks or suggests something that he/she needs. requests, asks for, or suggests something that he/she needs. 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 to provide the stimulus that acts as a reinforcer. 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/she has direct contact through any of the sensory modalities. In this case the antecedent is a nonverbal 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 says "Yes honey, it's a car, very good" (she reinforces).

4. Intraverbal

The person responds differentially to the verbal behavior of others, ie, responding to specific statements or questions.

Here the antecedent stimulus is a verbal stimulus that controls the response, but does not have a point-by-point correspondence with the antecedent. For example, this would be when one child says "Hello" and the other responds "Hello, how are you?".

5. Self-clitics

The autoclitic verbal operants are non-vocal, and they modify the effects of elementary verbal operants (commands, tacts, tacts, tones). (commands, tact, 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. Textual Response

It is what we understand when we read, by the readingwithout going into the general comprehension of the text. It can be vocal if read aloud, or non-vocal if read "silently". For example, this is what the reader is doing right now with this article as he/she reads it.

Echoic operants

Let us go into a little more detail on the verbal operants of the echoic type, since they are among the most important in promoting language development.

This type of operant consists of a "hear-say" correspondence. For this reason has a topographic similarity (called point-to-point similarity) and formal similarity (i.e., it has the same modal (i.e., it has the same sensory modality) with the verbal stimulus that controls it. Let us look at an example:

As we have already seen in an example, let's think of an educator saying, "MA". And the student repeats: "MA". The educator reinforces this response in order to increase the probability that in the future he will say "MA" again when presented with the verbal stimulus "MA".

Parroting

Parroting is an early stage in children's development when they produce vocalizations that are automatically they produce vocalizations that are automatically reinforced; these are sounds from theThese are sounds from the surrounding context. They are not imitations, but simply vocal sounds, vocalizations. Parroting should be checked 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. One example of how to induce it is the stimulus-stimulus pairing procedure (Sundberg, 1996).

Thus, parroting is necessary for echoic responses to develop. Thus, the utterance of the parroting response could be a crucial step in 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 the child to learn the ability to repeat the sounds of other people, be they mothers, fathers, teachers or educators.whether they are mothers, fathers, teachers or educators. It is also the basis for learning other verbal operants, such as touch and commands.

Bibliographical references:

• Skinner, B.F. (1957, translation 1981). Conducta verbal. 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.