Association for Behavior Analysis International

For many decades since the conflict between Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner over Skinner’s book, “Verbal Behavior,” the respective fields of language and cognition versus behavior analysis have gone their separate ways. But they have recently made contact again, when the YouTube channel called EnGrama invited a series of conversations between Noam Chomsky and Charles Catania. They discussed a range of topics, including but not limited to, politics, AI, the social sciences, philosophy, education, the future and of course linguistics and behavior. This panel will consider the content and the implications of these recent encounters. The topics will include generative grammar, free choice, the cognitive revolution, and evolution, among others. Given changes in both the real climate and the metaphorical intellectual one, is it conceivable that these two approaches be brought together under a single umbrella of science? The floor will be open to the audience as well as to the panelists.

The target audience should have either practical and/or academic training in verbal behavior or its theoretical background. Board certification at a supervisor level is recommended but not necessary. Undergraduate and Graduate students seeking a degree in behavior analysis, linguistics, speech pathology or related communication studies, as well as language programmers and developers.