Verbal understanding: Integrating the conceptual analyses of Skinner, Ryle, and Wittgenstein.

Schoneberger (1991) wrote a theory paper. He linked Skinner’s verbal behavior with ideas from two philosophers, Ryle and Wittgenstein.

The goal was to give a clearer picture of what it means to "understand" words. No kids were tested; no data were taken.

The paper says verbal understanding is two things at once. It is a learned skill you can see in action, and it is the mix of small behaviors that show the skill is there.

Skinner gives the how (operants), Ryle gives the skill talk, and Wittgenstein gives the context rules. Fit them together and you get a full view of language use.

Hansen et al. (1989) came first and used Skinner to explain logic. Schoneberger (1991) widens the lens from logic to the broader idea of understanding, so the older paper is a stepping-stone.

Fryling (2017) updates Skinner’s verbal operants decades later. Fryling warns the operants may overlap more than we thought, so T’s clean skill-plus-behavior picture might need small edits in today’s work.

Freeman et al. (2015) and Rudy Zaltzman et al. (2022) take the same Skinner base into real therapy rooms with kids with autism. They show the ideas can guide drills and produce new learning, moving T’s arm-chair mix into practical lessons.

When a learner says "I get it," you now have three lenses to check: Is the right operant in place? Does the child show the skill across examples? Do the social rules of the setting support the response? Use all three and your language program becomes sharper and easier to explain to parents and teachers.