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Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies Learning about Others Learning from Others Observational Learning Imitation The Social Origins of Language Learning about Oneself Discriminating Properties of One ’ s Own Behavior - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others
Page 2: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Social Learning

Kinds of Social Contingencies Learning about Others Learning from Others Observational Learning Imitation The Social Origins of Language

Learning about Oneself Discriminating Properties of One’s Own Behavior

The Selection of Cultural Contingencies

Page 3: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

“The human species took a crucial step forward when its vocal musculature came under operant control in the production of speech sounds. Indeed, it is possible that all the distinctive achievements of the species can be traced to that one genetic change”

p. 117 in Skinner, B. F. (1986). The evolution of verbal behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 45, 115-122.

Page 4: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

The irreducible function of verbal behavior is that it is an efficient way in which one individual can get another individual to do something

Sometimes the effects are nonverbal, as when we ask someone to do something; sometimes the effects are verbal, as when we change what someone has to say about something

All other functions of verbal behavior (e.g., communication, truth, logic) are derivatives of this primary function and gain their significance only through it

Verbal behavior is “effective only through the mediation of other persons” (Skinner, 1957, p. 2)

Page 5: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Some examples:

• We communicate items of information or convey our thoughts or ideas because a consequence is that others may act upon them

• We express our feelings and emotions because a consequence is that others may then behave differently toward us

• The thoughts or ideas or feelings or emotions do not travel from the speaker to the listener. Only the words do - and that only in a special sense

The Functions of Verbal Behavior

Page 6: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal behavior can emerge only in organisms whose behavior is sensitive to social contingencies

Consider the advantages of a single vocal releaser functionally equivalent to “Stop!”

A minimal repertory of fixed action patterns elicited by vocal releasers may evolve into a richly differentiated repertory

Once in place, ontogenic contingencies may begin to supplement this rudimentary vocal control

The Origin and Evolution of Verbal Behavior

Page 7: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

• Verbal behavior requires 3 varieties of selection:

Phylogenic selection, as populations of organisms (and their genes) are selected by evolutionary contingencies

Ontogenic selection, as populations of responses are selected within lifetimes

Cultural or memetic selection, as populations of responses are passed on within groups and across generations

The Origin and Evolution of Verbal Behavior

Page 8: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Why should contingencies favor repetition?

- The effects of repetitions may summate

- Once verbal governance is in place, the listener’s replication of the speaker’s verbal behavior extends the influence of the speaker

- The listener’s replication of the listener’s own verbal behavior creates conditions under which verbal governance may become extended over time, in the speaker’s absence

- Verbal governance can then be maintained by powerful social contingencies

The Origin and Evolution of Verbal Behavior

Page 9: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(p. 11) The emphasis is upon an orderly arrangement of well-known facts, in accordance with a formulation of behavior derived from an experimental analysis of a more rigorous sort. The present extension to verbal behavior is thus an exercise in interpretation rather than a quantitative extrapolation of rigorous experimental results

Some history: the William James lectures (1948), publication (1957), a review by Chomsky (1959), some decades of eclipse, but enduring effects

Political and social factors: the German WWII Enigma code broken, Turing’s mathematics, Sputnik and the space race, language translation, granting agencies, ABA and autism

Skinner’s book, Verbal Behavior

Page 10: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(p. 6) There is obviously something suspicious in the ease with which we discover in a set of ideas precisely those properties needed to account for the behavior which expresses them

(p. 7) One unfortunate consequence is the belief that speech has an independent existence apart from the behavior of the speaker. Words are regarded as tools or instruments....

(p. 7) We have no more reason to say that a man “uses the word water” in asking for a drink than to say that he “uses a reach” in taking the offered glass

Verbal Behavior and traditional views

Page 11: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(p. 461) The ‘languages’ studied by the linguist are the reinforcing practices of verbal communities. When we say that also means in addition or besides ‘in English,’ we are not referring to the verbal behavior of any one speaker of English or the average performance of many speakers.... In studying the practices of the community rather than the behavior of the speaker, the linguist has not been concerned with verbal behavior in the present sense

Verbal Behavior is not about language

Page 12: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(p. 8) To define a proposition as “something which may be said in any language” does not tell us where propositions are, or of what stuff they are made. Nor is the problem solved by defining a proposition as all sentences which have the same meaning as some one sentence, since we cannot identify a sentence as a member of this class without knowing its meaning---at which point we find ourselves facing our original problem

Verbal Behavior on Meaning

Page 13: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior on Meaning

(p. 9) ...dictionaries do not give meanings; at best they give words having the same meaning

(pp. 13-14) ...meaning is not a property of behavior as such but of the conditions under which behavior occurs

(p. 87) ...we do not behave toward the word “fox” as we behave toward foxes.... [The word may] lead us to look around....but we do not look around when we see a fox, we look at the fox

Page 14: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(p. 2) The behaviors of speaker and listener taken together compose what may be called a total verbal episode. There is nothing in such an episode which is more than the combined behavior of two or more individuals

(p. 14) In defining verbal behavior as behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons we do not, and cannot, specify any one form, mode, or medium

Verbal Behavior --- and nothing else!

Page 15: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Skinner and Chomsky:Historical parallels from biology

• Issues of structure versus function

• The argument from the poverty of the stimulus: Where are the negative instances?

• Sources of novel behavior (productivity) and theirimplications for the development of verbal behavior

• Was there sufficient time?

• Where are the intermediate forms?

Page 16: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Skinner and Chomsky:Historical parallels from biology

• Chomsky was particularly concerned with issues of whether utterances were grammatical (structure)

• Skinner was particularly concerned with the circumstances under which verbal behavior occurred (function)

• The difference was similar to the difference between anatomy (structure) and physiology (function) in biology

• Besides, Chomsky had nothing to say about semantic novelty and the creation of new verbal entities such as angels and demons

Page 17: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

What are linguists talking about when they speak of universal grammar?

• Examples

• X talked while he wrote

• He talked while Y wrote

• While he talked, Y wrote

• X who is writing is talkative

• Is X who writing is talkative?

• Is X who is writing talkative?

Page 18: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

The Darwinian Parallels

• The Eclipse of Darwinism: Alternatives to Darwinian Selection

• Orthogenesis: The unfolding of structure

• Lamarckism: The inheritance of acquired characteristics

• Mendelian genetics: It did not provide sufficient variation to allow for selection

• But variations are the sources of novelty --- so the Darwinian issue, like the Skinnerian one, was where the new forms came from

Page 19: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others
Page 20: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 21: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

ANTECEDENTS

BEHAVIOR

(WORDS)

CONSEQUENCES

Page 22: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

What are the functional partsof verbal behavior,

what are they good for,and how are they shaped?

Page 23: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

Page 24: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

Verbal Behavior

Page 25: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

THE TACT AND TACTING

Naming

Extensions of the Tact

Metaphor

Private Events

Page 26: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

THE TACT AND TACTING

Naming

Extensions of the Tact

Metaphor

Private Events

INTRAVERBAL BEHAVIOR

Page 27: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

THE TACT AND TACTING

Naming

Extensions of the Tact

Metaphor

Private Events

INTRAVERBAL BEHAVIOR

THE MAND AND MANDING

Page 28: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

THE TACT AND TACTING

Naming

Extensions of the Tact

Metaphor

Private Events

INTRAVERBAL BEHAVIOR

THE MAND AND MANDING

AUDIENCES

Page 29: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Verbal Behavior

THE FORMAL VERBAL CLASSES

Echoic Behavior

Dictation-Taking

Textual Behavior

Transcription

THE TACT AND TACTING

Naming

Extensions of the Tact

Metaphor

Private Events

INTRAVERBAL BEHAVIOR

THE MAND AND MANDING

AUDIENCES

COMBINATIONS OF VERBAL PROCESSES

Multiple Causation Autoclitic Processes Higher-Order Classes and Adduction Verbally Governed Behavior

Page 30: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

They are defined by function and not by form

Few instances of verbal behavior have only a single function, so it is not often profitable to analyze a complex utterance by saying some parts of it are members of one verbal class and other are members of another class

Linguists and grammarians do so when they distinguish among nouns and verbs and so on, but it is only rarely that we can say that this word in a sentence is a tact and this other one is a mand and this third one is an intraverbal

The Units of Verbal Behavior

Page 31: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 32: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others
Page 33: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Echoic behavior

A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

Dictation-taking

A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding written response

Textual behavior

A written verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

Transcription

A written verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding written response

Page 34: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 35: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

The Formal Verbal Classes

• Echoic behavior: A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

-But the correspondence is not one of physical units

-Along many dimensions, Daddy’s deep male voice is very different from the voice of his young daughter

-Consider dialects, speech mannerisms, and other sources of individual vocal differences

- Instead, the units of correspondence must be phonetic ones shaped by verbal communities

Page 36: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

The Formal Verbal Classes

•Echoic behavior: A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

-The units of correspondence must be phonetic ones shaped by verbal communities

-How can this work?

-The coordinations required in speech are complex

- If sounds made by caregivers become reinforcers by virtue of their relation to important events in the infant’s life, then self-produced sounds can be shaped by the reinforcing consequences of ever closer approximations to those sounds

Page 37: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 38: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

They are defined by function and not by form

Few instances of verbal behavior have only a single function, so it is not often profitable to analyze a complex utterance by saying some parts of it are members of one verbal class and other are members of another class

Linguists and grammarians do so when they distinguish among nouns and verbs and so on, but it is only rarely that we can say that this word in a sentence is a tact and this other one is a mand and this third one is an intraverbal

Comments on Verbal Classes

Page 39: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 40: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Transcription: A written verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding written response

•The issue of the correspondence of verbal units rather than physical units is more obvious in transcription than in echoic behavior

•A a A a A G g G g G R r R r r D d D d D

•H h h N n n E e E e e Q q Q q Q T t

T t

•There are no simple physical features that make the groups of stimuli above members of their various respective classes

The Formal Verbal Classes

Page 41: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Transcription: A written verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding written response

•And look at how many features some very different letters have in common:

•m h n el E F P R B

•I i L l MNUVW OQD

•Clearly, once again, these arbitrary relations must be taught

Page 42: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

•Coming back to

Echoic behavior: A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

•As in transcription, the correspondence is not one of physical units

•The units of correspondence must be phonetic ones shaped by verbal communities

•Along many dimensions, Daddy’s deep male voice is very different from the voice of his young daughter

•Mommy’s higher female voice is very different from the voice of her young son

Page 43: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 44: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Textual behavior: A written verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding vocal verbal response

•Here again there is no issue of physical correspondence

•Written words have no auditory properties

•Spoken words have no visual properties

•The look of a written “A ” has no particular physical relation to the sound of a spoken one

•Clearly, again, these arbitrary relations must be taught

The Formal Verbal Classes

Page 45: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

(VB, pp. 65-6) Since the term “reading” usually refers to many processes at the same time, the narrower term “textual behavior” will be used here.

Consider what “pure” textual behavior or transcription or dictation-taking must be: have you ever been reading a book to find you’ve reached the bottom of a page without being able to say what you read at the top or in the middle?

(The boss and the secretary and other examples)

Page 46: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 47: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

Dictation-taking: A vocal verbal stimulus occasions a corresponding written response

•Here there is no issue of physical correspondence

•Spoken words have no visual properties

•Written words have no auditory properties

•The sound of a spoken “A ” has no particular physical relation to the look of a written one

•Clearly, these arbitrary relations must be taught

The Formal Verbal Classes

Page 48: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 49: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others
Page 50: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others

LEARNING WITH WORDS

Verbal Function: Formal Classes

Correspondences Between Spoken and Written ClassesEchoic Behavior The Development of Echoic Behavior Categorical Perception of Phonemes

TranscriptionTextual BehaviorDictation‑TakingRelations Among the Classes The Replication of Verbal Behavior Parallels in Music

Page 51: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others
Page 52: Social Learning Kinds of Social Contingencies     Learning about Others     Learning from Others