The acquisition of tacts,mands, and intraverbals by individuals with traumatic brain injury

Two individuals who sustained traumatic brain injuries from motorcycle accidents were taught several verbal responses by using tact, mand, and intraverbal training procedures. The rate of acquisition for each operant and the transfer to untrained verbal operants involving the same response topography were measured. The results showed that tacts and intraverbals were acquired quickest, and training on the tact produced the greatest amount of transfer to the untrained verbal operants. Intraverbal training also resulted in transfer for both subjects, but to varying degrees. Direct mand training proved to be the least efficient way to generate a mand repertoire, and when acquired showed least amount of transfer to the untrained operants. These results seem to be in contrast with the findings of similar research with developmentally disabled individuals, and may have implications for methods of language instruction for the brain injured population.

     

Zombies and a Decaying American Ontology

What would it mean to take zombies seriously? Cultural savants have noted the rise of the zombie in American popular culture in the twenty‐first century. And many scholars have found the zombie useful as a lumbering, empty‐headed metaphor that could signify just about anything. The zombie might look like a loved ovne, but their flesh is rotting and their individualism has tragically withered away. Before I came to zombology, I was already fascinated by an American obsession with preventing the decay of the corpse through an exceptional devotion to embalming. I argue that the intersection of the new zombie‐ism, the rapid decline of embalming, and the mass trauma of 9/11 is significant. Playing with zombies along a spectrum from fright to humor allows Americans to work through not a crisis of meaning, but a crisis of being. The cult of individualism no longer needs a perfect biological body.