A scoping review of empirical research on emergent intraverbal behavior

Abstract

For decades, Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior has been applied in a variety of contexts. One critically important topic in this area is the extent to which some verbal operants may be learned indirectly, as a result of learning other verbal operants. This phenomenon is often referred to as emergent verbal behavior, and is critical to our understanding of how language is learned in a generative fashion across the lifespan. Emergent intraverbal repertoires are especially important because responses under some degree of intraverbal control may constitute a majority of responses in a fully formed verbal repertoire. Recent literature reviews suggest that there are many published studies on emergent intraverbals, but that this body of literature is highly heterogeneous. To provide an overview of this literature and map out the various tactics used across studies, we conducted a scoping review. We identified 99 total experiments on emergent intraverbals contained in 79 total articles. Findings are summarized in terms of populations and independent variables studied, procedural variations, and recommendations for future research.