Skinner's elementary verbal relations: Some new categories.

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Psychology
• Linguistics
• Verbal Behavior Analysis

Background:

• B. F. Skinner's seminal work "Verbal Behavior" (1957) established five elementary verbal relations: mand, tact, intraverbal, textual, and echoic.
• The original categories of textual and echoic behavior have limitations due to their specific ties to visual and auditory stimuli, respectively.
• This necessitates a more generalized and robust classification system for understanding diverse verbal behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a revised classification of elementary verbal relations.
• To introduce two new, broader categories: codic and duplic.
• To create a set of five mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groupings for verbal behavior.

Main Methods:

• Re-evaluating Skinner's original five verbal relations.
• Introducing the codic category for relations with point-to-point correspondence but no formal similarity (e.g., Braille reading).
• Introducing the duplic category for relations with formal similarity (e.g., echoic behavior, sign imitation).

Main Results:

• The proposed five categories (mand, tact, intraverbal, codic, duplic) are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
• Textual behavior and similar relations are classified under the codic category.
• Echoic behavior and similar relations are classified under the duplic category.

Conclusions:

• The revised classification provides more useful and generalizable category names for all elementary verbal forms.
• This framework prevents potentially confusing extensions of original terms, such as misclassifying Braille reading as textual behavior.
• The codic and duplic categories offer a clearer distinction for behaviors involving correspondence and formal similarity.