[1][2] Skinner's work describes the controlling elements of verbal behavior with terminology invented for the analysis - echoics, mands, tacts, autoclitics and others - as well as carefully defined uses of ordinary terms such as audience.

[9][10][11] Skinner's Verbal Behavior also introduced the autoclitic and six elementary operants: mand, tact, audience relation, echoic, textual, and intraverbal.

Skinner presents verbal behavior as a function of controlling consequences and stimuli, not as the product of a special inherent capacity.

He notes that these are all very limited means for inferring the strength of a response as they do not always vary together and they may come under the control of other factors.

[15] Chapter Three of Skinner's work Verbal Behavior discusses a functional relationship called the mand.

Mand is verbal behavior under functional control of satiation or deprivation (that is, motivating operations) followed by characteristic reinforcement often specified by the response.

A tact is said to "make contact with" the world, and refers to behavior that is under functional control of a non-verbal stimulus and generalized conditioned reinforcement.

In contrast, the tact is the most useful form of verbal behaviour to the speaker as it allows to contact tangible reinforcement.

Tacts can undergo many extensions: generic, metaphoric, metonymical, solecistic, nomination, and "guessing".

Such a formulation permits us to apply to verbal behavior concepts and laws which emerge from a more general analysis" (p.

[22]That is, classification alone does little to further the analysis—the functional relations controlling the operants outlined must be analyzed consistent with the general approach of a scientific analysis of behavior.

[24][25] Supplementary stimulation is a discussion to practical matters of controlling verbal behavior given the context of material which has been presented thus far.

Issues of multiple control, and involving many of the elementary operants stated in previous chapters are discussed.

A special case of where multiple causation comes into play creating new verbal forms is in what Skinner describes as fragmentary responses.

Freudian slips may be one special case of fragmentary responses which tend to be given reinforcement and may discourage self-editing.

Little progress in the area of science has been made from a verbal behavior perspective; however, suggestions of a research agenda have been laid out.

The verbal community shapes the original development and the maintenance or discontinuation of the tacts for private events (Catania, 2007, p. 232).

It may be more difficult to shape private events, but there are critical things that occur within an organism's skin that should not be excluded from our understanding of verbal behavior (Catania, 2007, p. 9).

The second problem Skinner (1957) describes is our current inability to understand how the verbal behavior associated with private events is developed (p. 131).

An example would be when a kid comes running and is crying and holding their hands over their knee, the caregiver might make a statement like, "you got hurt".

The third way is when the verbal community provides reinforcement contingent on the overt behavior and the organism generalizes that to the private event that is occurring.

[30] Chomsky pointed out that children acquire their first language without being explicitly or overtly "taught" in a way that would be consistent with behaviorist theory (see Language acquisition and Poverty of the stimulus), and that Skinner's theories of "operants" and behavioral reinforcements are not able to account for the fact that people can speak and understand sentences that they have never heard before.

According to Frederick J. Newmeyer: Chomsky's review has come to be regarded as one of the foundational documents of the discipline of cognitive psychology, and even after the passage of twenty-five years it is considered the most important refutation of behaviorism.

Of all his writings, it was the Skinner review which contributed most to spreading his reputation beyond the small circle of professional linguists.

[31]Chomsky's 1959 review, amongst his other work of the period, is generally thought to have been influential in the decline of behaviorism's influence within linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science.

[32][33] One reply to it was Kenneth MacCorquodale's 1970 paper On Chomsky's Review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior.

On account of these problems, MacCorquodale maintains that the review failed to demonstrate what it has often been cited as doing, implying that those most influenced by Chomsky's paper probably already substantially agreed with him.

Chomsky's review has been further argued to misrepresent the work of Skinner and others, including by taking quotes out of context.

[35] Chomsky has maintained that the review was directed at the way Skinner's variant of behavioral psychology "was being used in Quinean empiricism and naturalization of philosophy".