1996/01/01 by Pauline J. Horne, C. Fergus Lowe · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Behavioral and Psychological Studies #Hearing Impairment and Communication #Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
paper · doi:10.1901/jeab.1996.65-185
crossref issued 1996/01/01 · crossref published 1996/01/01 · crossref published-print 1996/01/01 · openalex publication_date 1996/01/01 · crossref created 2006/03/03 · crossref published-online 2013/02/26 · crossref deposited 2023/08/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We identify naming as the basic unit of verbal behavior, describe the conditions under which it is learned, and outline its crucial role in the development of stimulus classes and, hence, of symbolic behavior. Drawing upon B. F. Skinner's functional analysis and the theoretical work of G. H. Mead and L. S. Vygotsky, we chart how a child, through learning listener behavior and then echoic responding, learns bidirectional relations between classes of objects or events and his or her own speaker-listener behavior, thus acquiring naming-a higher order behavioral relation. Once established, the bidirectionality incorporated in naming extends across behavior classes such as those identified by Skinner as the mand, tact, and intraverbal so that each becomes a variant of the name relation. We indicate how our account informs the specification of rule-governed behavior and provides the basis for an experimental analysis of symbolic behavior. Furthermore, because naming is both evoked by, and itself evokes, classes of events it brings about new or emergent behavior such as that reported in studies of stimulus equivalence. This account is supported by data from a wide range of match-to-sample studies that also provide evidence that stimulus equivalence in humans is not a unitary phenomenon but the outcome of a number of different types of naming behavior.