Written by leading experts in language and cognition, this groundbreaking behavior analysis textbook brings the study of verbal behavior into the 21st century with cutting-edge research. Students and clinicians in the burgeoning field of applied behavior analysis will find the theoretical foundation they need to effectively help the increasingly diverse clients seeking their services. The origins of behavior analysis can be traced to the pioneering work of B.F. Skinner. Skinner’s fundamental insights into how human behavior is shaped, maintained, and can be changed were powerful and far-reaching. Some of Skinner’s most innovative contributions were in the study of language. Behavior analytic work in the area of language and cognition did not stop with Skinner, however. Indeed, Skinner’s work in this area has inspired considerable expansion, particularly with an eye toward more sophisticated verbal and cognitive repertoires. This important volume provides an overview of the concepts and core behavioral processes involved in language and cognition. You’ll find a deeper exploration of complex linguistic and cognitive skills, including generative responding, learning by observation, and perspective taking. Also included are clinically supported interventions based in mindfulness, psychological flexibility, and emotion regulation to help clients improve complex language, social, and academic skills. The future of behavior analysis is here. With its focus on the importance of language and cognition, this textbook is a must-read for anyone studying or practicing in the science of behavior.

Sixteen leading American and Japanese scholars in the field of behavior analysis present work on BA as it relates to language and cognition.

While the general wisdom has it that behaviorism is dead, it not only survives but is intellectually active in areas such as psychological theory, the analysis of language and cognition, and behavioral economics. It is a successful, albeit limited, source of behavioral science. Its chief difficulty arises when its practitioners look out from their laboratory windows and attempt to explain the complexities of human behavior that will never be amenable to direct experimental investigation. Behavior analysis has failed to establish a methodology of interpretation to deal fully with such complexity. The message of this essay is that it cannot do so without embracing intentional explanation in the form of an interpretive overlay that plugs the gaps in its explanations of life beyond the lab.

Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.