mands

Mands are a category of verbal behavior described by B. F. Skinner in Verbal Behavior (1957). A mand is a verbal operant whose form is controlled by an individual’s current motivation or deprivation and that is reinforced by obtaining the requested object or outcome. In practical terms, a mand is a request or demand such as “give me water” or “I want cookie” that ends a motivating state by delivering the preferred reinforcer.

Key features include that the reinforcement is the specific reinforcer named in the utterance, and the eliciting stimulus is a motivating operation such as hunger, thirst, or the need for attention. The mand does not depend on a prior verbal repertoire in order to be reinforced, though later language development can expand the ways mands are expressed. Mands are distinguished from tacts (labels of nonverbal stimuli), echoic responses (imitation of spoken language), and intraverbals (responses to questions or conversational exchanges).

In practice, mands have important applications in applied behavior analysis (ABA). Mand training is a common technique for teaching functional communication, especially for children with language delays or autism. Interventions typically involve creating clear motivating operations and providing immediate access to the desired reinforcer to strengthen the mand, with gradual prompting and reinforcement to promote more complex or generalized requests.