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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.