Date of Award

8-1996

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Richard W. Malott

Second Advisor

Dr. Alan Poling

Third Advisor

Dr. Jane Howard

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Jack Michael

Abstract

To some extent, one understands a complex aspect of human language if one can produce that kind of language in children who have not already acquired it. Skinner’s (1957) concept of autoclitic secondary verbal behavior is the most complex of his various verbal units, and until recently has not been the subject of experimental analysis. Howard and Rice (1988) made the first attempt to generate an autoclitic repertoire in preschool children, and the present study is an attempt to corroborate and extend their findings. They worked with the autoclitic “like” which identifies the accompanying primary verbal behavior as a form of metaphoric extension, as when we say that a color is “like” red, or an letter is “like” a circle. In the present study four preschool children were taught a similar autoclitic relation, but with nonconventional stimulus material and response forms, so as to decrease the possible effect of their having been exposed to “like” in its ordinary usage, and to the various primary responses that “like” accompanied (colors, common geometric shapes, and letters of the alphabet). The children were trained on generic, metaphoric, and nonexamples of five nonsense symbols or shapes, each of which had a nonsense name (ki, nam, mo, ta, and do). If the figure contained all of its essential features it had to be identified as an nonsense symbols or shapes, each of which had a nonsense name (ki, nam, mo, ta, and do). If the figure contained all of its essential features it had to be identified as an example of a ki, a nam, a mo, etc. If it contained some but not all of the features (if it was distorted in some way) it had to be identified as a “zola nam,” a “zola mo,” etc. If it was a nonexample it had to be identified as a “taka nam,” a “taka mo,” etc. Throughout the training, there were tests that assessed the extent to which the various response forms were evoked by novel generic, metaphoric and nonexamples. The three subjects who completed the training on the five symbols showed generalization of the extension autoclitic. All subjects showed generalization of the negation autoclitic (identifying the shape as a nonexample of a particular shape). These results replicate and strengthen the essential findings of Howard and Rice, and are interpreted as furthering the effort to understand complex verbal behavior in terms of environmental variables.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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