Abstract

SIMONASSI, Lorismário E; TIZO, Marcileyde; GOMES, Ueliton dos Santos  and  ALVARENGA, Lenny Francis Campos de. Context as a determinant of public verbal behavior. Rev. bras. ter. comport. cogn. [online]. 2010, vol.12, n.1-2, pp. 80-91. ISSN 1517-5545.

The present study ascertained how verbal contexts (instructions) and nonverbal contexts (objects) exert control over verbal responses in a total verbal episode. Participants consisted of 10 undergraduate students (19 to 26 years old). Four experimental conditions were employed by using subjects as their own control (withinsubjects design). In the first three conditions, the instruction "Burn this tip now" was given, but in the second and third conditions, nonverbal stimuli were also shown. In the fourth condition, the instruction 'Burn this tip now. Calm down, sir, or I will end up damaging your clothes' was given. For each condition, the participants were required to submit written answers. It was found that manipulated variables such as context controlled the participants' verbal responses in each experimental condition. Explanations of contextual control took into consideration principles of discrimination, generalization and arbitrary conditional relations

Keywords : Verbal and non-verbal contexts; Verbal behavior; Verbal episode.