Abstract

PENA, TELMO E.  and  ROBAYO, BEATRIZ H. SKINNER'S VERBAL BEHAVIOR: 1957 -2007. rev.latinoam.psicol. [online]. 2007, vol.39, n.3, pp.653-661. ISSN 0120-0534.

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of Skinner´s Verbal Behavior, we analyse the main contents of this book in which language phenomena are presented from an operant conditioning viewpoint. Some of the reasons why the Skinnerian analysis of language has been neglected among behavior analysts and other scholars of linguistic phenomena are discussed. They include Chomsky´s criticism of Verbal Behavior, difficulties to develop an empirical research program based on Skinnerian categories of verbal behavior, and conceptual difficulties implied in the interpretation of verbal behavior as a special class of operant behavior. The Skinnerian analysis of verbal behaviour is a fundamental background to analyse linguistic phenomena from a non mentalistic and functional perspective. Recent Behavior Analysis proposals such as Relational Frames Theory (Hayes y cols, 2001), or the analysis of language from a interbehavioral framework (Ribes, 1990, 1999) use Skinner’s proposal as the reference point.

Keywords : B.F. Skinner; Verbal behavior.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )