Cue Properties of Words: The Control of Operant Responding by Rate and Content of Verbal Operants1

Five experiments were reported which give evidence that verbal operants, or the discriminative stimuli for these operants, have properties which can control concurrent or subsequent verbal and manual responding. Methodologically, Ss went through training to establish a discrimination of responding with one verbal operant to one stimulus-light and another verbal operant to another stimulus-light (e.g., the words fast vs. slow). After such discrimination was established, differences in rates of verbally responding and differences in rates, latencies, and choice of manual responding were observed under alternate presentation of the stimulus-lights.