Formal and functional analyses of verbal behavior have been often considered to be divergent and incompatible. Yet, an examination of the history of part of the analytical approach used in "Verbal Behavior" (Skinner, 1957/1992) for the identification and conceptualization of verbal operant units discloses that it corresponds well with formal…

Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which the quality of parent-child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youths experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Nonetheless, there is relatively little…

When lecturing, teachers make use of both verbal and nonverbal communication. What is called teaching, therefore, involves not only the words and sentences a teacher utters and writes on the board during a lesson, but also all the hands/arms gestures, body movements, and facial expressions a teacher "performs" in the classroom. All of these…

Purpose: Children with language impairment (LI) often perform below the level of typically developing peers on measures of both processing speed and working memory. This study examined the relationship between these 2 types of measures and attempted to determine whether such measures can account for the LI itself. Method: Fourteen-year-old…

Bloomfield's "Linguistics as a Science" (1930/1970), "Language" (1933/1961), and "Language or Ideas?" (1936a/1970), and Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" (1957) and "Science and Human Behavior" (1953) were analyzed in regard to their respective perspectives on science and scientific method, the verbal episode, meaning, and subject matter. Similarities…

School counselors responded to an Internet survey containing vignettes describing physical, verbal, and relational bullying. Respondents rated relational bullying the least serious of the three types, they had the least empathy for victims of relational bullying, and they were least likely to intervene in relational bullying incidents. Counselors…

To assess the degree to which a mand repertoire that was taught to children with autism would generalize from adults to peers, three preschool-aged children diagnosed with Autism were first taught to mand with adult instructors, and then were tested for generalization across three subsequent phases that involved parents, siblings, and peers.…

This study explores effects of participation by second-semester college general chemistry students in an extended, open-inquiry laboratory investigation. Verbal interactions among a student lab team and with their instructor over three open-inquiry laboratory sessions and two non-inquiry sessions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Coding…

This study examines how locational (region and locale), community-level (school district poverty and adult educational attainment), and school district-level (district size and ratios of students to key school personnel) variables are related to indicators of hostile school climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth.…

In this paper, an attempt is made to reveal from Gandhi's thoughts, life, and work a nonviolent communication theory. The revelation of such a theory of nonviolent communication has the potential to add substantially to the understanding of what may bring about greater communal harmony in a variety of communication contexts, and the ability to…

A study analyzed the delivery of dabaters participating in the final rounds of the CEDA (Cross Examination Debate Association) National Tournament from 1989-1991. Transcripts of the final rounds were used to determine the words-per-minute and the number of pieces of evidence read per speech. Three statistical measures were used to analyze the…

This study examined children's dialogue about tasks in grades 1 through 6. Sentences produced by 14 children who were rated as having high or low self-direction by their teachers were observed and coded for dialogue features, task features, and emotional tone. Dialogue features included: (1) initiation, which was spontaneous or elicited; (2) mode,…

Recent court philosophy has introduced the concept of court-sanctioned "punitive speech." In response to the rising concern over drunken driving and other crimes, many courts are using public humiliation, in the form of public apologies or bumper stickers/license plates that proclaim the crime, as a form of punishment. The key question…

People are generally reluctant to transmit bad news to others. To examine this reluctance, college students (N=96) were randomly assigned to two conditions (i.e., assistant or confederate subject). Assistants administered a "psychological inventory" to confederate subjects. Student assistants believed the subject had previously taken one inventory…

The assumption that language is used solely to convey information with the maximum efficiency is refuted with examples of expository prose. Eight brief samples of expository prose are examined in order to demonstrate the use of syntactic euphemism to manipulate communication in complex and subtle ways. Syntactic euphemism involves the use of the…