RECENT RESEARCH IN VERBAL-BEHAVIOR - THE FUNCTIONAL-ROLE OF VERBAL-BEHAVIOR WITH RESPECT TO OTHER VERBAL AND NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR

The functional role of verbal behavior with respect to other verbal an d nonverbal behavior. Three research topics, into the conceptual frame of behavior analysis, have been developed during the last decade. The se topics have in common the study of verbal behavior with regard to t he formation of rules (stating the rule) and following the rule. The g oal of the present paper is to briefly describe each of these topics, that is, Equivalence Relations, Say-Do and Do-Say, and Sensitivity and Insensitivity to the contingencies, which have to do, respectively wh ith (a) the emergence of new behavior without being explicitly trained , (b) the correspondence, on the one hand, between what a person says is going to do and what he or she actually does, and on the other hand , what a person did and what he or she sayds he did, and (c) the chang es in our actions as a function of the characteristics of our verbal d escriptive repertoire, that is, the characteristics of rule-governed b ehavior, or instructional control. The main data are indicated and the interpretations about them are discussed. Further research is also em phasized.