Two kinds of verbal behavior plus a possible third

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Linguistics
• Developmental Disabilities

Background:

• Verbal behavior encompasses speaking, writing, and signing, each with distinct topographies.
• An alternative is stimulus-selection-based verbal behavior, where response topographies are uniform.
• These two forms of verbal behavior are often conflated but possess key differences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To delineate the distinctions between topography-based and stimulus-selection-based verbal behavior.
• To analyze the implications of these differences for language acquisition.
• To critically evaluate the prevalent use of selection-based methods in language instruction for the developmentally disabled.

Main Methods:

• Conceptual analysis comparing topography-based and stimulus-selection-based verbal behavior.
• Examination of response topographies, conditional discrimination, and scanning repertoires.
• Behavioral perspective on receptive language training.

Main Results:

• Topography-based verbal behavior lacks conditional discrimination; selection-based behavior requires it.
• Topography-based behavior shows point-to-point correspondence between response form and product; selection-based does not.
• Selection-based behavior necessitates a scanning repertoire, unlike topography-based behavior.

Conclusions:

• Significant differences exist between topography- and selection-based verbal behavior.
• Current extensive reliance on selection-based verbal behavior in language instruction for developmentally disabled clients is questionable.
• Further research is needed to optimize language intervention strategies based on these distinctions.