The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) is an alternative/ augmentative communication protocol designed to help children and adults with autism and related disabilities to engage in functional communication. The protocol was developed over a number of years and was based on Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior. Publications about the application and effectiveness of PECS have grown st...

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in kindergartners’ perceptions of competence and to determine the effects of teachers’ verbal behaviors on these perceptions. A sample of 168 kindergartners from 31 classrooms participated in a preand posttest administration of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance and three classroom observations. Kindergartners in th...

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior, it may be important to reconsider the role of the listener in the verbal episode. Although by Skinner's own admission, Verbal Behavior was primarily about the behavior of the speaker, his definition of verbal behavior as "behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons" (1957, p. 2) focused on...

Factor analysis was carried out on the National Adult Reading Test (NART) and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) performance of 139 normal subjects. The NART loaded very highly on factor I extracted by principal components analysis (PCA), suggesting that the NART has high construct validity as a measure of general intelligence. Varimax rotation of the three factors extracted by PCA produc...

short-term visual retrieving processes were investigated in three groups, of schizophernics (n=10), right hemisphere brain damaged (n=10) and a normal grou (n=10) . all of subjects were men and right handed. the study utilized wais (verbal subtests), meaningless syllabuses, retrieve and recall tests and non-verbal patternes retrieve and recall tests. data were analyzed by three factor repeated ...