Abstract
Competing viewpoints on the independency or interdependency of Skinner’s verbal operants have been discussed in the literature and with empirical support for both positions generated using single-case research methods. Our study provides support for the interdependency of the verbal operants using items contained in the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program as a measure of broader skill acquisition in each verbal operant category and across skill complexity levels. The result of an exploratory factor analysis conducted across 85 participants with autism suggested that items did yield factors consistent with the verbal operants, rather items appeared to cluster in terms of skill complexity producing a best-fit 2 factor model. Together with prior research showing untrained cross-operant transfers, results fail to support Skinner’s verbal behavior taxonomy distinguishing between the verbal operant categories as independent constructs, with implications for how behavior scientists and analysts describe language development and assess and treat language deficits of individuals with autism.
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Notes
We specify “some” behavioral scientists because of disagreements regarding the usefulness of Skinner’s account in general (e.g., Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche, 2001).
See Belisle, Stanley, and Dixon (2017) for data suggesting that distinguishing between functions of challenging behavior in this way may provide less utility as language develops and behavior becomes increasingly rule-governed.
We do not intend to downplay the single-case research that has been conducted to answer this research question; rather, that a larger, statistical analysis can supplement these studies and add additional depth to answering this research question.
Although the PEAK Direct Training and Generalization assessments do not offer scores for each “verbal operant,” several items do note the operant “e.g., tacting planets,” and results of the EFAs of these PEAK modules do not indicate that items in the same operant class necessarily fall into the same factor (Rowsey et al. 2015, 2017).
We use “theory” here to describe any account that extends some prior research to develop a complete set of constructs or descriptions that extend considerably from the prior research prior to empirical testing. Given Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957) was published in the absence of direct experimental testing of basic assumptions (e.g., independency of verbal operants), this qualifies as a theory in this sense.
The multicollinearity observed in our results suggest that eliminating items that appear to approximately equally correspond in both factors may lead to greater construct validity for the VB-MAPP as an assessment instrument.
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Belisle, J., Dixon, M.R., Malkin, A. et al. Exploratory Factor Analysis of the VB-MAPP: Support for the Interdependency of Elementary Verbal Operants. J Behav Educ 31, 503–523 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09413-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10864-020-09413-2