Elementary Verbal Operants and the Kind of Reinforcement That Will Function

Unit 8 Discussion Board
Student's Name
College/University
Course
Professor's Name
Due Date
Cooper et al. (2022) identify four elementary verbal operants: mand, echoic, tact, and intraverbal. The mand is a verbal operant via which a verbal individual gives orders, makes requests, asks questions, and identifies reinforcements required by people. The mand repertoire is anchored on contexts where a verbal operant elicited under aversive stimulation or deprivation is followed by similar reinforcing consequences (Miguel, 2018). For example, "Where is the kitchen?". Echoic is a verbal operant that happens when the speaker repeats another speaker's verbal behavior (Cooper et al., 2022). Verbal discriminative stimulus (SD) is depicted by generalized reinforcement, or speaker controls echoic. The verbal response and discriminative response depict point-to-point correspondence. SD (speaker)(verbal) – R(listener)(verbal) – C(non-specified) R= SD. An example of an echoic operant is when a mother says "come," and their child echoes that by saying "come" (Cooper et al., 2022).
Tact enables the speaker to establish or delineate physical environment attributes. Non-verbal SD controls tact, leading to pure touch or rather generalized reinforcement. Skinners indicate that tact is the most vital of the verbal operants due to its exceptional control exercised by the previous stimulus (Cooper et al., 2022). SD (non-verbal) – R (speaker)(verbal) – C (pure touch/generalized reinforcement). For example, w...