Behavior Bubbles

According to Cooper, Heron & Heward (2007), a “mand is a type of verbal operant in which a speaker asks for (or states, demands, implies, etc.) what he needs or wants.”.

As such, a mand is a behavior that directly specifies what the speaker wishes to attain, allowing the speaker to attain direct reinforcement for requesting both appropriately (i.e. using words, signs, pictures exchange communication systems, writing, etc.) or inappropriately (i.e. screaming, crying, etc.).

In general, the reinforcer for a mand (e.g. “more ice please) is specified and easily attained from the natural consequences (e.g. waiter gives more ice). This increases the likelihood that the speaker will request/mand for the item the same way in future upon getting the requested item/activity. As such, it is important to teaching a speaker to mand appropriately and to reinforce appropriate mands to reduce the occurrence of problem behaviors in future.

In future posts, we will look deeper into the types of mands and possible ways to contrive situations to increase number of appropriate mands a learner can make in different situations.

References
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.