In the world of behavior analysis, tacts play a central role in communication. A tact occurs when the speaker names or labels objects, actions, or events they experience through their senses. It’s the process of identifying and communicating the environment around them. Tacts are guided by nonverbal stimuli, and they generate generalized conditioned reinforcement (praise, acknowledgment, etc.) for the speaker.
The key controlling variable in tacting is a non-verbal discriminative stimulus—an external factor that prompts a verbal response. There’s no required formal similarity or direct one-to-one correspondence between the stimulus and the response, which means tacts are flexible and open to interpretation based on individual learning histories.
Pure vs. Impure Tacts
- Pure Tact: When a verbal response is evoked solely by the environment without any prompts, we call it a pure tact. Imagine a child looking at a picture of a dog and immediately saying, “dog.” This response stems entirely from the environment.
- Impure Tact: Sometimes, tacts are prompted by a verbal cue, like a question. For example, if a teacher asks, “What is this?” while showing a picture of a dog, and the child replies, “dog,” this would be an impure tact. The response was influenced by the question rather than just the visual stimulus.
Tact Extensions: Generalizing the Art of Naming
Tact extensions showcase the ability to generalize or stretch one’s understanding of labels to new stimuli. This flexibility allows individuals to apply existing labels to novel situations in creative ways:
- Generic Tact Extension: When a new stimulus shares defining features with the original one, the child extends the label. For example, a child says “tree” when seeing both a maple tree and an oak tree—despite them being different species, they both fit the category of “tree.”
- Metaphorical Tact Extension: A metaphorical extension occurs when only some features of a new stimulus resemble the original. For instance, if a child sees a tree and calls it a “swing,” because they associate trees with swings, this shows a metaphorical connection.
- Metonymical Tact Extension: In this form, a child labels something based on irrelevant but related features. A child might see a tree and call it a “swing,” not because it functions as one, but perhaps due to an association with playing outside.
- Solistic Tact Extension: This is a more abstract or distant connection, where the label and the object don’t share defining characteristics. For example, if a child sees a tree and says “shoe,” this would be a solistic tact extension where the response is loosely or incorrectly related to the stimulus.
Why Tacts Matter
Tacts are fundamental to understanding and interacting with the world. Whether a child is naming objects they see or extending their vocabulary creatively, tacts form the foundation of language development. As individuals develop their verbal repertoires, their ability to tact different stimuli allows them to navigate and make sense of the complexities around them.
