Talk:Verbal Behavior

autoclitics
"A child comes into his parents' bedroom and night and says "I think I am sick." The mother takes the child and brings him to a hospital."

The example doesn't make it clear that it is the autoclitic "I think" I am sick that is operational, rather it appears to be simply a softened version of the mand "I am sick!" which, for someone not familiar with mands, would be slightly less than clear.

Providing several excellent examples is a very good method to enhance discrimination of these subtle points and I think this should be continued and improved. florkle (talk) 03:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

This example, "I think I am sick" is not a mand - rather it's an autoclitic, tact, "I am sick functions as a label, the tact. Where as the, "I think functions as a descriptor for the listener. This would serve as multiple control - autoclitic tact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C67:51F0:6210:25FA:DDCF:1B3B:C6B (talk) 21:18, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

German language page
Damn it's good. Nice tables. I am not a fan of the "ABC" model (which I am inferring since I don't speak german) as I don't feel it conveys the richness of the MO->Sd->R->Sr+ relationships but it is common. The page has a nice layout, not too much emphasis &c. It would be a good model for this page I think. Will have to work on it. --Michaelrayw2 (talk) 10:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Improvements
Verbal Behavior (book)

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Fixed, Michaelrayw2 (talk) 22:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

* If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.[?]

FixedMichaelrayw2 (talk) 22:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

* Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called ==The Biography==, it should be changed to ==Biography==.[?]

FIXED - May 3, 2008

* Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally should not repeat the title of the article. For example, if the article was Ferdinand Magellan, instead of using the heading ==Magellan's journey==, use ==Journey==.[?]

Corrected Josh.Pritchard.DBA (talk) 21:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC) Corrected some more --Michaelrayw2 (talk) 19:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

* Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), avoid using special characters (ex: &+{}[]) in headings.

Corrected Josh.Pritchard.DBA (talk) 21:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC) Could this be a reference to the link in stimulus control? --Michaelrayw2 (talk) 19:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

* Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) may be too long - consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per Wikipedia:Summary style.[?]

Daughter pages would be ideal for the major types of VB also a large expansion of the Chomsky et al criticism of VB and responses would be nice too --Michaelrayw2 (talk) 19:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I have added Mand(psychology) and Tact(psychology) as daughter pages. I have merged two short sections, and I have deleted two sections which weren't as clearly relevant. More needs to be done still. Maybe move autoclitics into its own daughter page Michaelrayw2 (talk)

* The script has spotted the following contractions: doesn't, wouldn't, if these are outside of quotations, they should be expanded.

CorrectedJosh.Pritchard.DBA (talk) 01:45, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

* As done in WP:FOOTNOTE, footnotes usually are located right after a punctuation mark (as recommended by the CMS, but not mandatory), such that there is no space in between. For example, the sun is larger than the moon [2]. is usually written as the sun is larger than the moon.[2][?]

Fixed Michaelrayw2 (talk) 15:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

* Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:19, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Brought in table from German page
Hi all, I brought in the nice table from the German article on this subject. Maybe someone could go to the original citation and get the actual original English, rather than my retranslation? Canjo (talk) 06:47, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

2011 Is Anyone Working on this Article?
I have just read this article, on October 28, 2011. Given the way the article appeared to be in revision, I am surprised to find that the last edits seem to be at least two years old. I was looking forward to helping edit and clarify it, but I last read "Verbal Behavior" in 1974, just before defending a Master's thesis on Skinner's philosophical position, and so I am pretty rusty. However, I am pleased to see a piece of work which gives a detailed description of Skinner's efforts on this subject, as almost every thing I have ever seen on this subject simply assumes that Chomsky had demolished it. I agree with the writer of this article, (and with MacCorquodale,) that Chomsky did not adequately understand the language of behaviorism, and that he did not appreciate the scope of what Skinner was doing: -- that Skinner was not just attempting to reformulate the subject matter of grammar. I would look forward to interaction with others who are interested in this topic. My master's thesis was called "B.F. Skinner's Concept of Mind" (1974) and it is archived on microfiche at the University of Calgary, Canada. I don't know how hard it is to get access to a readable copy, so if anyone wants to read it, I would undertake to provide access. It was written before wordprocessors (!) and the style is not like current academic writing -- I had been reading Gilbert Ryle at the time, and I used a similar style of discussion. However, I stand by the conclusions and the arguments, which were that Skinner's and Ryle's views of 'mental' phenomena were essentially the same, and able to be 'translated' back and forth fairly easily. jvian@telusplanet.net Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 02:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: It is now September 21, 2017, and I (Janice Vian,) have just re-read this article. A lot has been done, and what is written here is coherent and correct, but generally speaking, I feel that the actual content of Skinner's work on verbal behaviour is less accessible now than it was in 2011. The fact that there are now 'daughter pages' and that the content of those pages has been removed from this article has resulted in fewer contextual examples, and so there is less context to frame the remaining content. Some of the places where the phrase "functional analysis" is used would be improved if it was made clear that what is being described is the probability of a speaker uttering (emitting) a linguistic phrase. Many people do not associate predictions and probability with the word "functional", which Skinner borrowed from its mathematical context. "Functional" is too easily associated with "functionalism." If a reader was not fluent in behavioural terminology, this article would be pretty well opaque. The author of the daughter pages (who obviously has a very good understanding of this subject matter,) might consider simply moving them back to this article, under section headings. Some Wikipedia articles should be long and detailed, and use several sets of explanatory language with explanations of what technical vocabulary means, so that such articles can provide a comprehensive portrait of the subject.

My 1974 Master's thesis is quite brief, and is now available on Research Gate (https://www.researchgate.net), where it could be searched by its title or by my name. The landmark work of Gilbert Ryle was "The Concept of Mind" (1949) and it is adequately summarized in my thesis, so that Ryle's position can be understood from reading that thesis. It essentially explains how Skinner's quite unique language of 'functional analysis' can be 'translated' into the philosophical version of 'ordinary language' which Ryle used in his published work. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 03:11, 22 September 2017 (UTC)


 * This article was essentially a bit of Chomsky propaganda before I rewrote it (more than 2 years ago I believe, look at the early versions if you want a laugh). I have no active plans to support this page, but I might do so (in 2012). I was thinking of working on another page. There's alot of verbal behavior research in the jouranl The Analysis of Verbal Behavior which probably could use some incorporation.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/609/. That's where I'd go with this. I have no familiarity with Gilbert Ryle.  -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.75.35.50 (talk) 19:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * And it's 2013 and I'll probably give this page a few edits. florkle (talk) 21:27, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

This page needs a major clean-up. If I'm not careful I'm going to end up re-doing the whole thing from scratch. 20 June 2013 -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.216.196.138 (talk) 03:22, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I think I just worked out what the problem is with this page. The article is about the book Verbal Behaviour instead of being about verbal behaviour as a topic or theory. Treating it as an article about a theory would probably make it a lot more sensible. -- Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.93.132.32 (talk) 22:51, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

"Combining audiences" instead of "Combing audiences"* -- (right?)
This might well be just a TYPO or something minor like that.

In the section Verbal Behavior, the last sentence begins with the words "Combing audiences". Wouldn't that more correctly be written as "Combining audiences"? Note that the previous sentence starts out with "The issue of multiple audiences [...]". Plus, [note that] the whole section is entitled "Multiple causation".

Just my 0.02. I could be wrong. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 22:50, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Propose deleting sub-section
The lead sub-section under Criticism and other reactions addresses Chomsky's review. This subsection contains two paragraphs. The first describes what the book Verbal Behaviour is about, a subject that should be adequately covered in the body of the article and not requiring repeating in each section/sub-section and finishes:

"Chomsky thought that a functionalist explanation restricting itself to questions of communicative performance ignored important questions (Chomsky, Language and Mind, 1968)"

The questions are not provided and the review written in 1959 is only described by the views Chomsky expressed in 1968.

The second of the two paragraphs states that Chomsky's criticisms were influential. but that others disagreed because, to paraphrase: e don understan nuffink bout it. Whatever one's views of Chomsky it's hard to imagine him not saying something more closely argued.

Under the title of this subsection is a "main article" ref which links to Noam Chomsky § Contributions to psychology, where can be found even less information.

The subsection then concludes noting that Skinner thought Chomsky influential and that interest in Skinner is growing, both points seeming irrelevant.

On the face of it this subsection as it stands should be deleted until it can be replaced, for instance by a simple statement that Chomsky wrote an influential review criticizing Skinner's book.

Unless I've missed something. LookingGlass (talk) 16:23, 28 September 2014 (UTC)


 * The sub-section should be fixed, but certainly not deleted, since Chomsky's review is considered a semi-classic essay within the field of linguistics, and is symbolic of the fact that the relationship between psychology and linguistics (in the U.S. at least) changed to be very different in the 1960s and later from what it was in the 1950s and before. See my previous comments at Talk:Verbal Behavior/Archive_1. -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:13, 7 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I tried to fix it with a quote from a source. The material I deleted could be relevant to attempting to explain that Skinner's methods have some value for certain sub-areas of linguistics (such as pragmatics or discourse conventions), but it did nothing to address the claim that Skinner had very little new and interesting to offer with respect to the core issues of linguistics of most interest to many linguists.
 * As for the impact of Chomsky's review, some have claimed that there was no substantive detailed behaviorist reply until eleven years afterwards, and that Skinner never wrote another academic book... AnonMoos (talk) 09:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

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Purposive use of proper name
In the "General problems" section, why was the name "Chomsky" chosen out of all the words in the language? If it is merely used as an example, many other words could be used. There seems to be an intention to inject the name into the article for a reason.173.72.63.96 (talk) 15:49, 13 August 2016 (UTC)Hans Wurst
 * The verbal behavior that is evident in the repeated use of Chomsky's name should be explainable, according to Behaviorism, without the mentalistic mention of such words such as "chosen," "intention," "reason," and "purposive."173.72.63.96 (talk) 22:47, 14 August 2016 (UTC)Hans Wurst

"An energetic and strong 'Chomsky!' forms the basis for inferring the strength of the response as opposed to a weak, brief 'Chomsky'....Repetition - 'Chomsky! Chomsky! Chomsky!' may be emitted and used as an indication of relative strength compared to the speedy and/or energetic emission of 'Chomsky!'."

My membership in the Chomsky Fan Club expired last February. However, as a current and active member of the Kripke Fan club, I propose the following: "An energetic and strong 'Kripke!' forms the basis for inferring the strength of the response as opposed to a weak, brief 'Kripke'....Repetition - 'Kripke! Kripke! Kripke!' may be emitted and used as an indication of relative strength compared to the speedy and/or energetic emission of 'Kripke!'."

In this way, I get to see the name of my revered favorite displayed with exclamation points in the article. 173.72.63.96 (talk) 21:16, 28 August 2016 (UTC)Hans Wurst

Split field of study from book article
The section suggests to me that Verbal behaviorism as a field of study may be a notable topic in its own right. Really, this is less of a proposal to split and more a proposal to write a new article. I've made a note to myself to write one, but feel free to beat me to it. Daask (talk) 00:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)