Preparation for Effective Self‐regulation: The Development of Generalized Verbal Control

Abstract

A correspondence training procedure was used to develop consistency between children's verbalizations and their subsequent behavior across increasingly remote settings and time. The interval of time between the verbalizations and the opportunity to engage in several target behaviors was systematically increased across four preschool settings. Probes of generalized verbal control of home behaviors were conducted throughout training and showed that generalization was obtained in the absence of any salient externally imposed contingencies after the children had reliably come under the control of verbalizations about preschool behaviors.

Inferências Sobre Classes De Operantes Precorrentes Verbais Privados

“…Entretanto, a publicação de Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957) demorou a gerar testes experimentais, sendo precedidos nos anos 1970 por estudos focalizando a emergência de classes de estímulos equivalentes (Sidman, 1971;Sidman & Cresson, 1973;Sidman, Cresson & Wilson-Morris, 1974), muito importantes por demonstrarem o controle de estímulos envolvido nos processos considerados simbólicos. Nas décadas seguintes surgiram estudos sobre a correspondência entre dizer e fazer visando, entre outros objetivos teóricos, investigar a dependência ou independência funcional entre mandos e tactos (e.g., Baer & Detrich, 1990;Freitas-Ribeiro, 1989) e sobre processos adicionais envolvendo controle verbal (e.g., Baer, Detrich & Weninger, 1988;Deacon & Konarski, 1987;Guevremont, Osnes & Stokes, 1986;Ward & Stare, 1990). Tendo em vista que essas áreas de pesquisa promovem a compreensão dos processos considerados simbólicos como efeitos do controle de estímulos e, deste modo, demonstram empiricamente sua natureza operante, alguns serão brevemente sumariados para, na discussão geral, explorar suas relações com o presente estudo.…”

Saying and Doing: A Commentary on a Contingency‐space Analysis

“…Some of the complexity in the study of verbal regulation is seen in the research by Guevremont, Osnes, and Stokes (1986a Matthews et al (1987) correctly acknowledge that it is important to distinguish an instance of say/do correspondence that is a member of a generalized dass of correspondence from a specific say/ do sequence that may not be a member of a generalized class. They say that correspondence can be identified as a response class only on the basis of observing that the probability of doing given saying is greater than the probability of doing in the absence of saying.…”

“…For example, behaviors induded in a response dass (doing) may be restricted to a narrow range of topographically similar activities (e.g., Williams & Stokes, 1982). Furthermore, say/do relationships observed when both verbal and nonverbal responses are emitted in a single setting or in close temporal proximity may be quite different from other arrangements, such as when verbal and nonverbal responses are emitted across temporally distant settings (e.g., Baer, Osnes, & Stokes, 1983;Guevremont et al, 1986a). The development of generalized verbal control is not a passive process but one that may involve active programming tactics .…”

“…It is often observed, for example, that verbalizations emitted at one point in time are reliable predictors of some future nonverbal responses (e.g., Baer et al, 1983;Guevremont et al, 1986a). This form of remote verbal control is not well accounted for by traditional operant formulations describing the way discriminative stimuli operate.…”

“…This may not necessarily be a permanent requirement. For example, Guevremont et al (1986a) (Stokes & Baer, 1977;. The generalization may be said to be mediated to the extent that the controlling verbalization is produced across time and settings and functions as a discriminative stimulus for the performance of the behavior.…”