An investigation of echoic control in verbal behavior

Abstract

This study investigated whether echoics account for a significant percentage of the choice of words used by speakers in normal conversation and also to determine to what extent echoic control could be manipulated in an interview type situation. In the first experiment university students were divided into two groups and assigned to pairs. Pairs of students in one group spoke on the women's liberation movement in the following situations with one week between sessions: monologue, dialogue, monologue. Pairs of students in the second group spoke on the same subject in the following order: dialogue, monologue, dialogue. The percent of words in common that subject pairs had in monologues and dialogues was then computed for each group. It was found that subject pairs had significantly more words in common in dialogue conditions than in monologue conditions, thus supporting B. F. Skinner's contention that echoics are a variable of some potency in determining the choice of words in normal conversation. In the second experiment different subjects answered standardized questions by the experimenter in three sessions one week apart. Target words were imbedded in the questions with one set of target words (A-words) used in sessions one and three, and a roughly synonymous, but different set of target words (B-words) used in session two. The percentage of the total words in each session which were A-words and the percentage of the total words which were B-words were then determined for each session. It was found that the frequency or usage or an A-word or a B-word by the subjects was directly related to whether the experimenter's questions for that session contained A-words or B-words. This supported the hypothesis that echoic control could be exerted in an interview situation through the manipulation of verbal discriminative stimuli. The results or these experiments support the theory of echoics as proposed by B. F. Skinner in his theory of verbal behavior. The implications of these experiments for other areas was also discussed.