There are six verbal operants. They are textual, mand, echoic, tact, intraverbal, and transcription.
Textual: An elementary verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by a verbal discriminative stimulus that has point-to-point correspondence, but not formal similarity, between the stimulus and the response product.
Mand: An elementary verbal operant that is evoked by an MO and followed by specific reinforcement.
Echoic: An elementary verbal operant involving a response that is evoked by a verbal discriminative stimulus that has point-to-point correspondence and formal similarity with the response.
Tact: An elementary verbal operant evoked by a nonverbal discriminative stimulus and followed by generalized conditioned reinforcement.
Intraverbal: An elementary verbal operant that is evokedby a verbal discriminative stimulus and that does not have point-to-point correspondence with that verbal stimulus.
Transcription: An elementary verbal operant involving a spoken verbal stimulus that evokes a written, typed, or finger-spelled response. Like the textual, there is point-to-point correspondence between the stimulus and the response product, but no formal similarity.
Try the following phrase to remember the Elementary Verbal Operants: Three monkeys eat tasty ice cream together.
