Verbal Behavior: Extended Edition

Skinner called Verbal Behavior his most important book. It took him over twenty years to complete it. The book extends his laboratory-based research on selection-by-consequences to the behavior of talking, writing, gesturing, and even thinking. These verbal actions differ from other behavior, he explains, because they do not operate on the environment directly, but rather through the behavior of a verbal community. Skinner illustrates his analysis with examples from literature, the arts, and the sciences, as well as from his own verbal behavior and that of his colleagues and children. Today, teachers and parents who work with children or adults lacking verbal skills will find Skinner's analysis key to teaching others to communicate effectively.This Extended Edition includes three of Skinner's articles published after his 1957 original book: "A Lecture on Having a Poem" (1971), "The Evolution of Verbal Behavior" (1986), and "The Behavior of the Listener" (1988). They address creativity, how verbal behavior arose, and the role that listeners play in his analysis.