ABA Exam CoachLessons · B. Concepts and Principles
B.19 · Telling the verbal operants apart
Here's the twist: the exact same word, "water," can be a mand, a tact, an echoic, or an intraverbal. The word itself won't tell you which one it is. Let's learn to look past the words and find what actually controls them.
Key takeaway
A verbal operant is defined by its controlling variables, not by the words. Mand: evoked by an MO and reinforced by the specific thing asked for. Tact: evoked by a nonverbal stimulus and maintained by generalized reinforcement. When the antecedent is verbal, check point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity: echoic and copying a text have both, textual and transcription have only correspondence, and intraverbal has neither.
A verbal operant is defined by its controlling variables, not by the words. Mand: evoked by an MO and reinforced by the specific thing asked for. Tact: evoked by a nonverbal stimulus and maintained by generalized reinforcement. When the antecedent is verbal, check point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity: echoic and copying a text have both, textual and transcription have only correspondence, and intraverbal has neither.
Members get the full lesson video, notes and a 5-question test
The video walks through the idea, worked examples, the trap people fall into and an exam-style question. The notes and the checkpoint come with it, and your results feed your Where to focus plan.