Verbal Behavior - Research and Theory

Research and Theory

Functional analytic psychotherapy is one application of Skinner's model of verbal behavior to typically developing adult human populations in non-laboratory (clinical) settings. As such this approach represents an attempt to empirically validate applied behavior analysis and verbal behavior for problems such as depression and other common clinical problems.

Current research in verbal behavior is published in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior (TAVB), and other Behavior Analytic journals such as The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) and the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA). Also research is presented at poster sessions and conferences, such as at regional Behavior Analysis conventions or Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) conventions nationally or internationally. There is also a Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA) which has a mailing list.

Journal of Early and Intensive Behavior Intervention and the Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Applied Behavior Analysis both publish clinical articles on interventions based on verbal behavior.

Skinner has argued that his account of verbal behavior might have a strong evolutionary parallel. In Skinner's essay, Selection by Consequences he argued that operant conditioning was a part of a three-level process involving genetic evolution, cultural evolution and operant conditioning. All three processes, he argued, were examples of parallel processes of selection by consequences. David L. Hull, Rodney E. Langman and Sigrid S. Glenn have developed this parallel in detail. This topic continues to be a focus for behavior analysts. Behaviour analysists have been working on developing ideas based on Verbal Behaviour for fifty years, and despite this, experience difficulty explaining generative verbal behaviour.