The purpose of the current experiment was to investigate the role of private verbal behavior on the operant performances of human adults, using a protocol analysis procedure with additional methodological controls (the "silent dog" method). Twelve subjects were exposed to fixed ratio 8 and differential reinforcement of low rate 3-s schedules. For…

We examined the nature and timecourse of hemispheric asymmetries in verbal memory by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) in a continuous recognition task. Participants made overt recognition judgments to test words presented in central vision that were either novel (new words) or had been previously presented in the left or right visual…

Language acquisition has been a contentious topic among linguists, psycholinguists, and behaviorists for decades. Although numerous theories of language acquisition have surfaced, none have sufficiently accounted for the subtleties of the language that children acquire. The present study attempts to explain the role of modeling and automatic…

The effects of the relationship between the presentation of a verbal stimulus ('right') and an established reinforcer (M & Ms) on the reinforcement efficacy of the verbal stimulus were tested with three groups of retarded boys. (Author/CS)

Eight sentences with high associative connections between their major elements (hi-m sentences) were generated from the Michigan Restricted Association Norms (Riegel, 1965a, b). Eight additional sentences with no or low association connections (lo-m sentences) were derived from the hi-m sentences by a scrambling procedure. All sentences were of…

A sample of six newborn infants were picked up when spontaneously awake, and were presented recorded mother-talk while being held to the shoulder. Control groups received the same recorded stimulus while awake in the crib or received no stimulus trials. (Author/JMB)

In a classification task, preschoolers matched a target stimulus with a conventional category, a visually similar item that cut across conventional categories, or an unrelated item. Items were presented in picture, verbal, and picture-verbal conditions. In all conditions, conventional classifications outnumbered visual ones, and this difference…

Although a student may not be able to verbalize a concept, he may very well have a good grasp of it. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this understanding, he most likely was exposed to some type of verbalization. (CK)

This study is a replication of Sundberg and Sundberg (1990) that compared topography-based verbal behavior with selection-based verbal behavior in terms of acquisition, accuracy, and testing for the emergence of a new verbal relation. Participants were three typical children and three developmentally disabled persons with autism. The study sought…

Supplementary stimulation was supplied for 30 minutes per day for approximately six weeks to 156 normal, full-term institutionalized infants prior to adoption. The Gesell Developmental Schedules were administered regularly (until age 27 months), to determine whether development had been enhanced by the treatment. (JMB)

Paper based in part upon a PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Waterloo, and supported in part by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation (Project No. 76).

ONE GROUP OF 16 SS (SUBJECTS) WAS GIVEN A RANDOMIZED LIST OF WORDS THAT CONTAINED EIGHT SERIES OF FOUR ASSOCIATIVELY RELATED NOUNS, WHILE ANOTHER GROUP OF 16 SS WAS GIVEN A RANDOMIZED LIST OF WORDS THAT CONTAINED EIGHT SERIES OF FOUR ASSOCIATIVELY UNRELATED NOUNS, AND THE TASK FOR BOTH GROUPS WAS TO WRITE A STORY THAT CONTAINED THE NOUNS FROM THE…

THIS STUDY WAS CONCERNED WITH THE SYNTACTIC RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN WHICH ASSOCIATIVELY RELATED AND ASSOCIATIVELY UNRELATED NOUNS APPEAR IN SENTENCE PRODUCTIONS. TWENTY SS (SUBJECTS) WERE ASKED TO WRITE SENTENCES THAT CONTAINED FOUR NOUNS. THE HIGH ASSOCIATION (HA) SS WERE GIVEN GROUPS OF ASSOCIATIVELY RELATED NOUNS, AND THE LOW ASSOCIATION (LA) SS…