It is important to study about language and verbal behavior because it helps understand other people in a better way. Language or verbal behavior is defined as an operant behavior, which is strengthened by other people’s mediation (Skinner, 1957). This can be well explained as a practical relationship existing between the behavior of a person speaking, as well as the conditions in their environment. However, in this relationship, an important question, on how reinforcement between the speaker and the other people occurs arises.
According to research, it is clear that children acquire a number of language skills mainly without any instructions. Although this is a contradiction to Skinners analysis on verbal communication, the parents and guardians of the children always take part in some parts of their children’s speeches. Additionally, Skinners model seems to lack the source of reinforcement, which conform children to the verbal behavior model. This can be demonstrated by a simple example; where when a little boy sees and hears his elder brother whistling, he will also try to do the same thing. They will try to breath out as much air as he can then try to shape his mouth as that of his elder brother. At the beginning, it will not be possible for him to produce the same whistling sound but with time and as he tries doing time and again, he finally may start doing it right, in which case he becomes an influential reinforce (Skinner, 1957).
The example shows how imitation and regular practice plays a significant role in acquiring verbal behavior. Nevertheless, this kind of imitation is not echoic, due to the fact that the verbal reaction is not produced in the instant chronological connection to the vocal stimulus. In his book, Skinner (1957) discussed the issues or verbal behavior, which include parity, which is a term used to illustrate the way a speaker who is known to a good listener can sense when they agree or diverge from the verbal community practice, hence regulating their verbal behavior in order to be like the modeled behavior (Skinner, 1957). Automatic reinforcement is a vital method of acquiring verbal behavior because it helps in the shaping of the behavior of the speaker. Reinforcing voices both active and passive in the children’s’ surroundings leads to automatic reinforcement.
Children are normally good listeners even before they reach the age of being good speakers. They usually have the ability to identify every small difference in the oral expressions. There are two types of reinforcements upon which language acquisition is based. The first one is the fact that verbal behavior is usually reinforced by the verbal community members. Secondly, the basis of verbal language acquisition is that automatic reinforcement takes place when the person speaking listens to him/herself speaking according to the verbal conventions (Whitehurst, et al,,, 1974).
Other researchers, Whitehurst, Ironsmith, and Goldenfein (1974) carried out an investigation to investigate how passive voice is acquired as a model for the way verbal behavior is acquired. The experiment involved six children, with normal development in speaking English, with ages ranging between 4 year and 5 years. The children were exposed to various sessions where they were required to listen to adults describe drawings with the use of passive voice. After a while, the same children were asked to describe the same photos but use different stimuli. All the participating children constructed sentences to at least describe the stimuli in the passive voice. In the investigation, there was a control experiment that included the same number of children with the same age, who did not the passive voice made by the adult who was describing the drawings.
After a series of similar experiments, it was concluded that small children in their pre-school level increased their way in which they used passive voices after it was modeled to them by an adult, instead of the active voice that would be reinforced to them (Wright, 2006). The results showed that most of the participants started to use the passive voice after the verbal behavior was modeled. In future, similar experiments could be used to investigate the degree to which the people involved would only use the passive voice as compared of the active voice. Such experiment could also be used to model other grammatical models other than just the passive voice model.
Another way of modeling new grammatical models is to make artificial pronunciation of a common word. In case there is a possibility of the artificial verbal reactions can be constituted in the verbal behavior of small pre-school children, then it would only imply that some types of grammatical language can also be acquired through parity, as well, automatic reinforcement. It is therefore important to know that both automatic reinforcement way of acquiring verbal behavior and the explicit social reinforcement models can be used in the study of acquiring verbal behavior.
References
Skinner, B. F. (1992). Verbal behavior. Acton, Mass: Copley.
Whitehurst, G, Ironsmith M. and Goldefeunn (1974) Select imitation of the passive construction through modeling journal of experiment child psychology
