Abstract
Skinner's (1957) analysis of verbal behavior is "inherently practical and suggests immediate technological applications at almost every step" (p. 12). Thus, our purpose in this chapter is to describe the fundamental concepts of Skinner's system and illustrate some of the ways they have been successfully used in understanding and teaching language. The chapter is organized in the following way: First, we provide a definition of verbal behavior and follow it with a primer on the main elements of the verbal behavior taxonomy. We devote the remainder of the chapter to therapeutic concepts and applications, which include the concepts of functional independence and assessing and teaching verbal behavior on the basis of its defining taxonomic features, as well as various applications for generating new verbal behavior with and without explicit teaching efforts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)