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Before yesterdayLatest Results for The Psychological Record

Observation, Language Learning, and Development: The Verbal Behavior Development Theory

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

A review of recent applied research in observation suggests researchers could profit from a new account of observational learning. Current research in the identification and establishment of verbal developmental cusps demonstrates the importance of the range of observational cusps necessary for the acquisition of language. These cusps encompass learning through imitation, duplication of outcomes, understanding consequences of observed behaviors, acquiring new reinforcers, incidental unidirectional and bidirectional naming, and more. This account offers solutions to bridge gaps in the literature and complements related research, providing a comprehensive understanding of observational learning processes. This updated account of observational learning is especially relevant when we consider its implications for human language acquisition. In this article, we emphasize that language acquisition is not solely an individual cognitive development, but a socially mediated process, where observation plays a fundamental role in linguistic growth and development.

The Shape of Relations to Come: Multidimensional Analyses of Complex Human Behavior

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

Science, understood to be the behavior of scientists, falls within the purview of behavior analysis. All scientists use scientific instruments to study a natural phenomenon, and for the behavior analyst, perhaps no tool is more important than the graph used to show changes in level, trend, and variability, and upon which behavior analysts make data-based decisions. Modern behaviorism as we know it dates back to the development of the cumulative recorder first developed in the 1930s. Though revolutionary to the science of behavior, two-dimensional graphs may be limited in application for analyzing complex human behavior. In the current article, we conceptualize verbal behavior as a multidimensional field of environmental relations, and introduce the use of multi-axial radar charts for its visual and quantitative analysis. From there, we survey the use of radar charts toward advancing a behavior-analytic understanding of human language and cognition. We demonstrate the use of radar charts for calculating simple shape descriptors as a quantitative measure of dynamic interactants, and show how they can be used to measure change over time.

Do Bilinguals Have One Verbal Repertoire or Two? Evidence from Listener Word-Emotion Responses

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

Word emotion data were used to explore whether the two languages of bilingual speakers represent one or two verbal repertoires. Spanish–English bilinguals and monolingual speakers of Spanish and English rated the pleasantness of behavior analysis and general clinical terms in Spanish and English translations. Bilinguals' pleasantness ratings of Spanish and English terms were more similar than those made by Spanish and English monolinguals. This finding suggests that the Spanish and English listener repertoires of bilinguals are integrated, as one might expect from a derived stimulus relations perspective. Two control studies ruled out alternative explanations. We discuss the general importance of bilingual research in behavior analysis and the challenges of replicating and extending this finding and of reconciling it with the apparently contrasting results of mainstream investigations of bilingual repertoires.

To Dismantle or Not to Dismantle: Components of Derived Relational Responding

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

The behavior-analytic approach to language and cognition is consistent with parsimony and coherence in explanatory systems within and across fields of science. Some disagreement exists regarding the appropriate composition of the conceptual tool kit that behavior analysts apply to problems in language and cognition, but ultimately these differences in perspective are minor within the context of shared goals and assumptions. This article summarizes two lines of research guided by the analyses of derived relational responding in terms of contingencies or stimulus correlations acting directly upon its components. The two lines of research eventually produced different conclusions regarding the utility of the analysis within the boundaries of the parameters that were studied. Successful prediction and control of DRR should serve to identify strength and boundaries of utility of different levels of analysis, which could lead to theoretical progress.

Skinner and Relational Frame Theory: Integrating Units of Analysis on a Continuum of Complexity

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

Skinner and relational frame theory (RFT) present different behavioral perspectives on language. Although some bridges can be found between Skinner's account to verbal behavior and RFT at the conceptual level, the units of analysis presented by each tradition are not fully integrated. The unit of analysis suggested by RFT allows the components that constitute the practices of a verbal community (arbitrary, conventional relations) to be investigated within an operant point of view. Moreover, understanding relational responses as generalized operants, defined functionally by RFT, highlights the reinforcement contingencies involved in the multiple-exemplar training that gives rise to the generativity that hallmarks language as a phenomenon. The present article aims to explore an integration between the Skinnerian text and RFT. Such integration is grounded in the concept of mediated reinforcement contingencies that shape the practices of the verbal community. A conceptual treatment is offered whereby these practices can be better understood on a continuum of complexity that shapes specific instances of verbal responses (echoic, tact, mand etc.) up to purely functional generalized operants. Possible advantages of such an integrative view, as well as some of its limitations and practical challenges are discussed.

General Reflections on Interactions between Cross-Disciplinary Theories of Human Language Development

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

The robust vocabularies acquired by neurotypical children are impossible to account for by direct instruction alone, and as such incidental acquisition must play a role. A variety of explanations for the source of this exponential language growth have been put forth by theorists across related disciplines. We provide our general reflections on interactions that exist among the possible sources of incidental language acquisition that have been put forth by both behavior-analytic and cognitive perspectives. We first consider the behavior-analytic perspectives of bidirectional naming (BiN), stimulus equivalence (SE), and relational frame theory (RFT). Next, we consider the cognitive perspective of fast mapping. We also provide comparisons between the behavior-analytic principle of exclusionary performance, and the cognitive principles of mutual exclusivity and the principle of contrast as additional sources for incidental acquisition of novel object–word labels and meanings. We reflect on points of contact and departure between these cross-disciplinary theories of human language and cognition.

Language Development and Behavioral Systems

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

We present the core principles of a behavioral systems theory (BST) that incorporates dynamical systems concepts and applies them to a behavior analysis of early language development. The tenets of BST include multiple determinism, coalescent organization, nonlinearity, emergence, phase shifts, and developmental cusps. Developmental changes are marked by the transactions between genetic inheritance, interactional history, current physiological and environmental conditions, and behavior dynamics. Certain key emergent behaviors, known as cusps, enable further cascading development. Contingencies operating in the young child’s current social environment are the catalysts for the coalescence of conditions into the early learning of precursors to communication cusps in early childhood including orienting responses, eye contact, joint attention, and social referencing. In turn these social interaction cusps enable the development of organized patterns of verbal behavior that include imitation, mands, tacts, intraverbals, autoclitics, and naming. Some of these emergent patterns are the product of derived relational responding that enable further verbal behavioral cusps to develop. Early language results from an intensive, naturally occurring, skills learning process consisting of a massive number of contingent interactions between the child and the caregivers. This naturally occurring process resembles the use of multiple exemplars procedures employed by experimental researchers in training language skills to children but are employed intuitively by caregivers. These skills facilitate the emergence of new and more advanced sociocognitive skills later in childhood such as perspective taking, the self, and complex rule-following. We recommend further collaborations with other behavioral and developmental scientists.

Meaningful Stimuli and Equivalence Classes: The Intersection of Hedonics, Connotative, Denotative, and Discriminative Functions

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
1 December 2024 at 00:00

Abstract

An equivalence class can contain nominally meaningless stimuli that become related to each other by training and testing. It can also contain at least one meaningful stimulus. The likelihood of equivalence class formation is enhanced by the inclusion of a meaningful stimulus as a class member. It is traditional for stimulus meaningfulness to be characterized by its hedonic, denotative, and connotative properties. Thus, class enhancement can be attributed to these properties. In addition, the hedonic and connotative properties of the meaningful class member generalize to the other class members and is determined by the nodal structure of the class. Apart from hedonic, denotative, and connotative content of a meaningful stimulus, that stimulus also generates responses that are respondent and vary in topography, or are operants that are under discriminative or conditionally discriminative control. When one of these functions is acquired by a meaningless stimulus and it is then included as a member of a to-be-formed equivalence class, its inclusion also enhances likelihood of class formation, sometimes to the same degree as the inclusion of a meaningful stimulus. Thus, class enhancement typically attributed to the hedonic and connotative properties of a meaningful stimulus can be accounted for by the stimulus control functions served by that stimulus instead of their hedonic and connotative properties. Finally, denotation is considered last in the relative absence of empirical findings. In total, then, this article explores meaning from traditional and behavior analytic perspectives.

The Effect of Cooperation with Conspecifics on a Pigeon’s Behavior under the Random Ratio Schedule

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
15 January 2025 at 00:00

Abstract

Social behavior involves interactions among individuals of the same species, and the presence or behavior of other individuals plays important roles. An individual’s performance in any particular task is improved or facilitated when others are present. The phenomenon of social facilitation has been studied for over a century, and it has implications for important behaviors like substance use, gambling, or choice behavior. The present study aimed to explore how the presence of conspecifics affects the behaviors of pigeons under a random ratio schedule. Four homing pigeons were used in various conditions to analyze response rates and bout-pause patterns. Experimental conditions were set up to examine the effects of conspecifics based on the following factors: the mere presence of conspecifics, simultaneous engagement in the same task, and sharing gains. Pigeon performance in each condition was compared based on the response rate and bout-and-pause patterns of key pecking behavior. The results suggest that sharing gain would work as an abolishing operation, although it does not produce a systematic effect on bout-pause patterns.

Emergent Untrained Combined Functions in Equivalence Classes

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
14 January 2025 at 00:00

Abstract

Three experiments examined whether each of the functions controlled by different stimuli in an equivalence class would become integrated in a test for transfer of function. In Experiment 1, a paper-and-pencil protocol was used to establish two 3-member equivalence classes (A1, B1, C1 & A2, B2, C2). Nonsense syllables were used for all stimuli except for B1 and C1 which were pictures of blue and green discs, respectively. Participants then were presented with five boxes containing discs of five different colors, including blue and green. Participants were instructed to respond as they felt appropriate. Across all participants varying numbers of blue and green discs were placed on B1 and C1, respectively. Responding at A1 included combinations of blue and green discs by seven out of eight participants. These results were replicated after the classes were extended to include D and E stimuli. In Experiment 2, the overall procedure was repeated, however, there was a pretraining condition in which participants were instructed to select and place discs of their choosing on each of B1 and C1. In general, responding within both classes was consistent with results in Experiment 1. Two participants placed similar combinations of colored discs at A1, D1, and E1 but retained the single colors at B1 and C1. Experiment 3 changed the B1 and C1 stimuli to nonsense syllables and trained the function to placing colored discs at B1 and C1. It was found that results were similar to those found in both Experiments 1 and 2. Results are discussed in the context of procedures used to investigate the emergence of novel behavior.

Fostering Creativity: The Role of Operant Variability on Problem-Solving and Insight

✇Latest Results for The Psychological Record
10 January 2025 at 00:00

Abstract

Creative performances and problem-solving behaviors have been associated with the phenomenon of operant variability. However, to the best of our knowledge, no studies evaluate the effects of operant variability in insightful problem-solving. This research aimed to analyze the relationship between operant variability and its effects on participants’ general performance and type of resolution during a problem situation, using the video game Portal 2. The general procedure had two phases. The Training Phase consisted of a sequence of 12 problems presented in virtual chambers. The Test Phase consisted of a new problem in a new virtual chamber. Twenty-five participants were allocated into five groups: four underwent different Training Phases and one had no training—baseline group (BL). Each one of the four other groups had a different variability training, with or without contact with the objects and stimuli presented in the Test Phase. After the Training Phase, all participants were presented with the same problem in the Test Phase. Our results suggest that operant variability may facilitate insightful behavior depending on the learning history. We discuss the effects of training operant variability and the function of stimuli related to the problem on the type of problem-solving behavior.

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