ABSTRACT

The behavior now called rule-governed was first discussed by Skinner when he gave the distinguished William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1947. His topic was verbal behavior, emphasizing the behavior of the speaker. The behavior of the listener was also discussed but only in terms of explaining the behavior of the speaker. As Skinner (1957) noted: ‘…the behavior of the listener is not necessarily verbal in any special sense. It cannot, in fact, be distinguished from behavior in general, and an adequate account of verbal behavior need cover only as much of the behavior of the listener as is needed to explain the behavior of the speaker’ (p. 2). Thus, only a small section in his lectures and later a section in Verbal Behavior (1957), were devoted to, as he called it then, conditioning the behavior of the listener.