Behavior passivity refers to the nature of behavior, all behavior, including all human behavior, of any type or level of complexity. Like all real events in nature, on this planet, in this universe, behavior is natural, that is, it comprises natural events. It is an inevitable reaction.
This column considers a greater range of functional relations to which robot behavior must be sensitive regarding programmer–unanticipated events. This range goes well beyond respondent conditioning, extending into all the key areas covered by the term operant conditioning. As you recall from the first set of columns (see references) operant processes occur continuously throughout life.
The topic of language as verbal behavior ranks as one of the most complex and sophisticated considerations in behaviorology. Even if we broke it down into parts that could stand alone, each part would still be far too long to be one of these columns. Later I will explain some resources with which you can cover this topic at whatever depth you prefer. Meanwhile, we need not know the details of language as verbal behavior to appreciate the beneficial discovery of “rule–governed” behavior that is based on verbal behavior.
The public of others perspective supports our understanding of, and dealing with, overt behavior while the public of one perspective supports our understanding and interpretation of covert behavior.
Consider the covert verbal behavior that constitutes the common kind of purely neural behavior that we call thinking. This opens the path to seeing consciousness combine brain processes and behavior chaining. We often use the term thinking to describe this kind of covert neural verbal behavior, but we recognize that thinking need not be verbal, and happens in other sense modes as well. Ever find some piece of music playing “inside your head?”
The dining hall provides another venue to increase the amount of time spent in what feels like informally organized foreign–language practice. Designate some particular dining–hall tables as verbal–community tables. Again, for evaluation, if possible keep track of who sits at such tables and for which meals. Place a sign on each table indicating which foreign language those using the table will speak.
Here are more possible, and fun, methods especially adaptable to teaching in foreign–language programs in large educational settings. The setting size is relevant, because these methods work best with verbal communities, for each language, that are larger than a single full classroom of students.
Now we continue discussing easier, and even fun, scientific methods to improve success in teaching non–native language repertoires. The conditioning of each and all of the verbal relations never really stops as new response forms continually accrue. And that accrual resides in part on the exponential response growth that occurs due to the previously mentioned equivalence processes. (For curious readers, Chapter 18 of the reference describes these processes).
By focusing on improving access to the variables responsible for conditioning verbal behavior, language teachers can improve the conditioning of non–native language repertoires (i.e., “foreign” languages). Here we provide a few of the possibilities along these lines.
Any and all of the verbal relations that the last several columns covered—mands, tacts, intraverbals, codics, duplics—occur in normal interactions between and among people. Each of these verbal relations constitutes a different kind of behavior repertoire. What does that mean? Your everyday conversational experience provides you with nearly unlimited examples.
