The Importance of Form in Skinner's Analysis of Verbal Behavior and a Further Step.

Vargas (2013) is a theory paper, not an experiment. The author re-read Skinner’s 1957 book and asked one question: why do we keep splitting form from function when Skinner treated them as one package?

The paper walks through Skinner’s text and shows that the shape of a word only matters if the verbal community has a history of reinforcing that shape. Without the community’s contingencies, form is just noise.

The main point is simple: form and function are married. The sound “water” is a mand only if past listeners gave water after that sound. Change the history and the same sound becomes a tact, an echoic, or nothing at all.

The paper ends with a nudge: study abstract language by tracking how new verbal communities teach new form-function links.

Andery et al. (2005) set the stage. They showed that Skinner flipped the definition of “meaning” in 1945: meaning is the environmental cause, not the mental content. Vargas (2013) carries that flip forward and says the cause always includes both form and community history.

Abbott (2013) is a direct successor. It takes the same lens and points it at our own field’s jargon. Instead of fighting over the “real” definition of “mand,” D tells us to study the contingencies that shape how BCBAs actually use the word in journals and supervision meetings.

Embregts (2000) pushes the idea even further. It warns us not to treat “words” as fixed things. Vargas (2013) agrees: the form “cup” is not a thing; it is an activity that survives only if the verbal community keeps reinforcing it.

Next time you write a program for intraverbal fill-ins, ask: what community history makes the response “cookie” correct? If the learner signs “cookie” but the community only reinforces spoken words, the form fails even though the function is right. Pair form drills with the natural community that will maintain them, and your clients’ language will last outside the clinic.