Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer
Dear Reader,
This is a continuation of a response to “Rescuing The Science Of Human Behavior From The Ashes Of Socialism” (1997) by Ullin T. Place. “How linguistic utterances control behavior” is not discussed as long as “the view prevails that a substantial part of human behavior is controlled by processes which are innate and thus by implication immune from modification by learning.” Although Place criticizes Chomsky’s “preoccupation with syntax”, he doesn’t recognize his own verbal fixation, which sets the stage for NVB and prevents discussion of this important topic. NVB and not the preservation of the “tradition behaviorist idea that the principles of animal learning can and should be applied to human behavior” led to “discrimination by the academic establishment.”
Restoring “to the academic respectability the idea of a link
between linguistics and the scientific study of animal learning” is only
possible when we address the SVB/NVB distinction, because it is due to our
NVB-way of talking and writing that this link keeps
being missed. Unless we realize that the “persistent disparagement of
behaviorism and the mood of apathetic fatalism with respect to human nature” is
not “bred by nativism”, but by how human beings behave verbally, by
NVB, we are not going increase SVB, which involves the “systematic
application of positive reinforcement.”
The “systematic discussion” of “the reality” and the “functional
significance of the phenomenon of the novel sentence” couldn’t happen because
of our NVB and is only going to happen due to our SVB. Communication of “information
about remote contingencies”, which either aides or threatens our lives, requires SVB. Our individual use of “novel information-providing
declarative sentences” that is necessary for problem solving, is only as good
as the extent to which “contingency-specifying stimuli or rules” that make SVB
possible “have become embedded in the culture.” Only during SVB, can the problem solver “construct sentences specifying behavior-consequences relations based on
personal experience.” Without the ability to construct “novel sentences in the
form of a descriptive rule”, that is, without SVB, we cannot solve any of our
relationship problems. Only SVB makes us a “linguistically competent
human being.”
This author agrees with Place that “Something
needs to be said about the role of
reinforcement in maintaining and making possible the construction and emission
of novel sentences by the speaker and their construal by the listener.” We need
to talk about this, rather than write about it, because only then will we be able
to identify the great difference between SVB and NVB. This author disagrees with Place’s distortion of the individual process of listening. He
writes “If you listen to a tape recording of any naturally occurring verbal
interaction between two or more people, or read any professionally prepared
transcript of such an interaction, or simply
listen to a conversation in which you are not a participant (italics added),
you cannot avoid observing that virtually every sentence that a speaker
completes is reinforced by the listener.” This author is against Place's suggestion that to be able to listen we have to stand aside. This separation of speaking and listening behavior is characteristic for NVB, while in SVB a verbalizer can be the same person as a mediator.
What Place describes as “continuers”, the “yes” or “no” or
“Mmhmm”; in other words, the expressions of agreement and acknowledgment by the
mediator to reinforce the verbalizer and what Harzem and Miles (1978) have
called a “disenforcer”, the expression of “incomprehension”, “disagreement”, or
“a request for clarification”, can be mapped onto SVB and NVB. Although it is
true that “all such responses or absences thereof tell the speaker that the
sentence has failed either to communicate or persuade and that some repetition,
restatement, elaboration, or answer to the objection is required”, what this
analysis leaves out is what the verbalizer him or herself as a mediator overtly
says, to either continue or disenforce his or her overt speech.
In the conclusion of his paper Place, who thinks Verbal
Behavior is “flawed", insists on an analysis of human behavior at the level
of the individual, nevertheless he refers to verbal behavior at the level of group.
“The effect of these different varieties of consequence provided by the
listener in either maintaining, terminating or disrupting the speaker’s flow is
plain for all to hear (italics
added).” However, what is not so plain for all to hear is that there are, in
addition to what Perreira (2013) has called
ecto-environmental or external verbalizers and mediators, also
endo-environmental or internal verbalizers and mediators. Surely, each individual
overt verbalizer also has his or her own covert private speech, which also
mediates what he or she says. Moreover, the endo-environment of the
ecto-mediator can be dramatically altered by the extent to which covert speech
of the verbalizer can become overt. The exclusion of covert private speech from overt public
speech characterizes NVB, but inclusion and exploration of private speech during our
public speech characterizes SVB.
This author agrees that “there is a science of human behavior”,
but this science requires a new way of talking called SVB, which
always includes “a complete three-term contingency.” Like most people, Place is
frustrated with the spoken communication. Like most people, Place is conditioned by,
mostly exposed to and probably unknowingly troubled by NVB. His emphasis on the
individual, on himself really, is because he doesn’t yet distinguish between SVB
and NVB. Only in NVB “the terminator” doesn’t and can’t “act as a reinforcer”
and doesn’t have “the effect of allowing the listener to take a turn to play
the role of speaker.” In SVB there is constant turn-taking. The absence of turn-taking
is characteristic for NVB. Without turn-taking we don’t really communicate.
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