TITLE:
The Separate Development of Children’s Listener and Speaker Behavior and the Intercept as Behavioral Metamorphosis
AUTHORS:
R. Douglas Greer, Peter Pohl, Lin Du, Jennifer Lee Moschella
KEYWORDS:
Bidirectional Operant, Verbal Behavior Development, Comprehensive
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science,
Vol.7 No.13,
December
14,
2017
ABSTRACT: The
study of verbal behavior focuses on communicative functions of the speakers/producers
as they affect the behavior of listeners/observers. Effects on the listener
reinforce the speaker and the listener/observer benefits (i.e., is reinforced) from the behavior of the speaker/producer. The
interlocking of, and exchange of, the speaker and listener behavior between
individuals and within one’s own skin constitute bidirectional operants. These
bidirectional operants are instances of social interactions and measures of
social behavior. Evidence suggests that the act of listening, among other
observing responses, is initially developmentally independent from speaker
behavior. How they become joined parallels the biological phenomenon of
metamorphosis. The succession of changes has been empirically identified as a
succession of verbal behavior development cusps, which are described in their
sequence biologically as a manifestation of functional metamorphosis. The onset
of a cusp constitutes first instances of behavior and accompanying stimulus
control that allows infants and children to contact parts of the environment
for the first time resulting in their learning things impossible to learn
before or learning faster. Cusps for the intercept of the speaker and listener
lead to bidirectional operants and provide explanations for how children
incidentally learn the names of things, become increasingly social, and make
subsequent complex behavior possible. Many of the cusps identified in our
research resulted from the missing behavior and stimulus control of children
with autism. Once cusps were established, these children learned things they
could not learn before, learned faster, and learned by contacting parts of the
social environment they could not contact before. These findings led to a
theory of verbal behavior development that point to the selection of
bidirectional operants as behavioral phenotypes during functional
metamorphosis, which has enhanced the survival of Homo sapiens through emergent symbolic skills for more effective
collaboration between two or more individuals.