This paper draws together findings from the fields of psychology, communication, linguistics, and clinical psychiatry into a single theory which explains elements of dyadic communication, verbal behavior, thinking, and understanding. The central idea in this theory is that there is a common characteristic in these forms of cognition and their related behavior, namely, that there is a set of socially learned operating rules determining how we think, speak, etc., and that these rules exert their influence primarily because of the context within which the cognition and behavior take place. Special attention is given to those aspects of cognition which are “automatic.”