Using Skinner's model of verbal behavior analysis to study aggression in psychiatric hospitals

Abstract

An adaptation of Skinner's verbal behaviour model is proposed as a framework for analyzing the aggressive behaviour of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Few behaviour analytic studies have addressed verbal aggression and none draw upon Skinner's model. These few studies suggest that the aggression of psychiatric patients is multiply determined and multi-functional. In this context, aggression occurs primarily to express anger. It is preceded proximally by aversive interpersonal interactions and often protects status. More recent approaches to the asses sment of function are broader and more instructive for observers of aggressive behavior than Skinner's original conceptualisation. These approaches eliminate those operants (textual, transcriptive) that lack relevance to the study of psychiatric inpatient aggression and they differentiate the functions of other operants (mands, tacts) to reflect the functions of aggression demonstrated by these patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)