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Common and Intraverbal Bidirectional Naming

  • Special Section: The Intraverbal Relation
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Abstract

Naming has been defined as a generalized operant that combines speaker and listener behaviors within the individual. The purpose of this paper is to reintroduce the concept of naming and its subtypes, common and intraverbal, distinguish it from other terms such as the tact relation, and discuss the role of naming in the development of verbal behavior. Moreover, a taxonomical change is proposed. The addition of the qualifier bidirectional would serve to emphasize the speaker-listener bidirectional relation and serve to distinguish the technical term from its commonsense use. It is hoped that this paper will inspire future basic and applied research on an important extension of Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior.

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Notes

  1. Subsequent equivalence studies have used the term naming in the same fashion (e.g., da Costa, Grisante, Domeniconi, de Rose, & de Souza, 2013; Hayashi, Schmidt, & Saunders, 2013).

  2. Research suggests that children first learn context-bound words (Harris, Barrett, Jones & Brookes, 1988), with nouns (usually names of things) before verbs (Gentner, 1978; 1982).

  3. Joint attention develops between the ages of 9 and 15 months and seems crucial in the development of verbal behavior (Carpenter, Nagell, Tomasello, Butterworth & Moore, 1998); although see Lieven (1994).

  4. Note the importance of generalized imitation, and more generally, maternal responsiveness of vocalizations in the development of verbal behavior (Hart & Risley, 1995).

  5. See Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, and Baumwell (2001) for a study on the effects of maternal responsiveness to children’s vocalizations on language development.

  6. Doug Greer pointed out to me that the term “transformation” of stimulus control may be best here. The control is not transferred from one stimulus to the other; rather the original stimulus retains its function, while the other stimulus function is “transformed” in a sense that it acquires control over a new verbal topography (tact).

  7. “Caminhão” is the word for “Truck” in Portuguese.

  8. It could be suggested that this response is not verbal (Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, & Cullinan, 2000).

  9. For didactic purposes, my example involves the same stimuli used in Ma et al. (2016), even though Jennings and Miguel (in press) used different stimulus sets.

  10. It is possible to argue that novel categorization is a direct product of the same history of reinforcement responsible for the development of naming as a generalized operant. Although this perspective sees naming as a form of relational responding between words and their referents (Hayes, 1996), naming may still be considered a precursor for other types of relational responding. Evidence (and common sense) suggests that verbal behavior may be used (as a problem-solving strategy) to mediate adult performances in derived relations tests (e.g., Miguel et al., 2015; Ma et al., 2016).

  11. Dave Palmer suggested that rehearsal is just one common example of a source of stimulus control, but it is not always required (see Palmer, 2006).

  12. I cannot count the times I have been asked to explain the differences between tact and naming, sometimes after one of my talks on the subject. I take partial responsibility for not being more didactic. Thus, the current (hopefully didactic) paper should be taken as an apology.

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  1. Department of Psychology, California State University, Sacramento. 6000 J. St, Sacramento, CA, 95819-6007, USA

    Caio F. Miguel

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This paper is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Horne and Lowe’s (1996) seminal paper on naming. I would like to thank Danielle LaFrance, Dave Palmer, Doug Greer, and Svea Love for their comments.

This article is part of a special section on the intraverbal relation in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior.

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Miguel, C.F. Common and Intraverbal Bidirectional Naming. Analysis Verbal Behav 32, 125–138 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40616-016-0066-2

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