Let’s work on some technical definitions from Skinner/Jack Michael of a few verbal operants presented in my previous question to help break down the concept:
- Tact – a verbal operant in which the response is reinforced by generalized conditioned reinforcement and is under the functional control of a nonverbal discriminative stimulus.
- Essentially the verbal response is controlled by a nonverbal discriminative stimulus (e.g., an item like an apple) and is followed by reinforcement (e.g., “yes, that is an apple, great job!”)
- We often tact public and private events such as “I have a headache” or “That rain is heavy today.”
- Echoic – a verbal operant that has formal similarity and point to point correspondence with the verbal discriminative stimulus that evokes it.
- Essentially a verbal response that is repeating another individua’s verbal behavior.
- After someone tells you their dog’s name, you repeat the dog’s name.
- Mand – a verbal operant in which the response is reinforced by a characteristic consequence and is therefore under the functional control of the establishing (motivating) operation relevant to that consequence. Thus, it has no specified relation to a prior discriminative stimulus.
- Essentially an individual requesting something and no verbal operant is present to evoke it.
- This could include pointing to the salt as a request/mand to have someone pass the salt.
- Intraverbal – is controlled by a verbal antecedent stimulus without point-to-point correspondence or formal similarity and is reinforced by nonspecific reinforcers.
- A verbal antecedent led to a response that does not match the initial antecedent.
- Saying “you’re welcome” after someone says “thank you.”
Any questions? Now do you have a better idea on how to answer the question below?