The experimental analysis of verbal behavior.

The verbal behavior literature, in the pages of this journal and elsewhere, includes both data-based research on verbal behavior and talk about verbal behavior. Acknowledging that we have ourselves occasionally contributed to the imbalance, we nevertheless believe that there should be more of the former and less of the latter. For example, we once submitted a chapter to a book about verbally governed behavior, and when the book appeared we were surprised to discover that among the 10 contributions in it ours was the only one to present original data (Catania, Shimoff, & Matthews, 1989). We therefore offer here a few suggestions about some possibilities for enhancing the experimental database for the analysis of verbal behavior. Depending on the available time and resources, we may some day get to one or another of these topics ourselves. But we are not likely to start on any of them in the near future, and we surely will never be able to cover all of them, so we offer these suggestions in the hope that some others will take them up. The worst that would happen if more than one investigator got to work on the same topic is that each would become more experienced in gathering data on verbal behavior and that some findings would be strengthened (or questioned) by replication. The most welcome commentary we could get on our suggestions would be the presentation of data sets from one or more of these research lines. Verbally governed and contingency-shaped behavior. Verbally governed behavior is a