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| 2006 ABA Tutorial: The Extension of Skinner's Verbal Operants to Interpretations of Complex Behavior: A Tutorial |
| Sunday, May 28, 2006 |
| 2:30 PM–3:20 PM |
| Centennial Ballroom I |
| Area: VBC |
| Chair: William F. Potter (California State University, Stanislaus) |
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| 2006 ABA Tutorial: The Extension of Skinner's Verbal Operants to Interpretations of Complex Behavior: A Tutorial |
| Abstract: This tutorial will be aimed at the behavior analyst who has little or no familiarity with Skinner's Verbal Behavior. I will briefly outline Skinner's interpretive scheme and will then discuss two verbal operants, the intraverbal and the autoclitic, in greater depth. I will show the role these operants play, or might plausibly play, in our understanding of grammar, problem solving, and memory. In this exposition, I will have occasion to mention one of the remarkable assumptions of the book, namely that behavior that has not been emitted, either overtly or covertly, plays a role in our understanding of complex behavior. |
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| DAVID C. PALMER (Smith College) |
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 David C. Palmer discovered Skinner by reading Walden Two while on a caving trip to North Carolina, because he thought it must have had something to do with his hero, Thoreau. He spent the next decade on a soap box preaching about Walden Two and reading the rest of the Skinner canon. Eventually he realized that he was no Frazier, and he applied to graduate school in behavior analysis under John Donahoe. He was happy in grad school and would be there still if the University of Massachusetts hadn’t threatened to change the locks. He has spent the last 17 years as the token behaviorist at Smith College. During that time he co-authored, with Donahoe, Learning and Complex Behavior. He continues to puzzle over the interpretation of memory, problem-solving, and, particularly, verbal behavior. He once referred to himself, in a jocular vein, as a goose-stepping Skinnerian, but he found that the label fit, and he now wears it without apology |
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