"[1] The tact described by Skinner includes three important and related events, known as the 3-term-contingency: a stimulus, a response, and a consequence, in this case reinforcement.
[3] Tacts can undergo metonymical extension when some irrelevant but related feature of the original stimulus controls a response.
For example, saying "refrigerator" when shown a picture of a kitchen, or saying "White house" in place of "President.
[1] Skinner notes things like serial order, or conspicuous features of an object, may come to play as nominative tacts.
It is these conditions which, in turn, affect verbal behavior which may depend largely or entirely on generalized reinforcement.
[4] Factors such as deprivation, emotional conditions and personal history may interfere with or change verbal behavior.
Skinner mentions alertness, irrelevant emotional variables, "special circumstances" surrounding particular listeners or speakers, etc.
Under stronger conditions of distortion, it may appear when the original stimulus is absent, as in the case of the response called a lie.
Skinner notes that troubadours and fiction writers are perhaps both motivated by similar forms of tact distortion.
Initially, they may recount real events, but as differential reinforcement affects the account we may see distortion and then total fabrication.
Many researchers in the field of verbal behavior and developmental disabilities have examined more intensive training procedures in order to teach tacts to these individuals.
Echoic prompts (teacher repeats the correct answer which the learner must echo) have also been used to train tact responses.
[8][9][10] These teaching procedures are especially important for individuals with autism and developmental disabilities because the learner can gain additional skills without direct instruction time.