February 12, 2015

February 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a fourth response to the paper “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. By looking for similarities and differences between Skinner’s work, these authors and his own, this writer explains Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), a distinct, but not yet understood or validated construct by most behaviorists. 

If verbal behavior “is behavior that is effective only through the mediation by other persons” and “has so many dynamic and topographical properties, that a special treatment is justified, and indeed, demanded” (Skinner, 1957, p.2), we must also account for the enormous amount of ineffective verbal behavior that has obviously not been mediated. This is exactly what the SVB/NVB distinction makes emphatically clear.

Most of our verbal behavior is NVB, that is, non-mediated operant and respondent behavior. Only a small portion of our verbal behavior is SVB, “behavior that is effective only through the mediation of other persons.” 

When one thinks of the very few people who are capable of mediating the verbal behavior of B.F. Skinner, one gets a sense of the true proportion of SVB and NVB, that is, of mediated and non-mediated verbal behavior.

Since even among behaviorists there is no mention of this distinction, the non-mediated verbal behavior is just as common among the behaviorists as it is among the non-behaviorists. 

 

The reason this distinction is continuously overlooked is because people write rather than talk about it. Although writing about it is surely more reinforcing, it actually prevents us from understanding the importance of talking about it. Moreover, writing can’t and it doesn’t affect and hasn’t affected our way of talking in any significant way. NVB is everywhere. 

Although bi-directional, mediated SVB, because most people don’t know how it really works, to this day is still rare, this writer has faith in this “postcendent selectionist relation.” Ever since the stimulus response formulation has been replaced by Skinner, non-mediated, uni-directional NVB has been on its deathbed. This writer, who is a  behavioral engineer, subscribes to the aim of Skinner, Beacon and Mach: “The proof of a valid and viable science was its useful outcomes.” 

SVB always yields useful outcomes. Moreover, SVB is “a naturalistic approach” in which “variables of which verbal behavior is a function are analyzed in terms of the conditions which lead to the emission of verbal behavior” (Hefferline Notes, p.2). From the intertwinement of Skinner’s work on mediated and non-mediated relations, it should be clear that both are needed for a complete account of verbal behavior. 
 

The authors comment on the Hefferline Notes that “there are a few differences in content” between them and the later volume of Verbal Behavior (1957). However, “The topics dropped or changed may be the most interesting.” Interestingly, the Notes also reflect the transition of Skinner’s analysis from spoken to written form (Knapp, 2009). 


What was dropped and left out was considered to be unnecessary by Skinner. On the final pages, Skinner once again explains that mediated, verbal behavior is always embedded in and arising from un-mediated, nonverbal behavior. He says “There is nothing exclusively verbal in the material analyzed in this book. It is all part of a broader field” (Skinner, 1957, p. 452). His functional account is definitely going to improve our way of communicating once we begin to acknowledge the nonverbal embedded nature of our verbal behavior. 


Although Skinner’s analysis didn’t include the SVB/NVB distinction, this was not because he was unaware of it. He wanted to “bridge the gulf between the verbal and non-verbal, or between verbal and the vestigial remnants of a dualistic system” (Skinner, 1947, p. 76). Verbal Behavior only fits with SVB, but NVB is not mediated by other persons in the way Skinner described. 

In NVB the listener defers to the speaker, because the speaker is not allowing the listener to become a speaker. This has consequences for both the speaker and the listener. The speaker who is deferred to is not stimulated by the listener to become a listener either. In other words, in NVB the speaker and the listener get deeper entrenched in their roles.

In a conversation between a speaker and a listener, we can only engage in SVB, if the speaker becomes the listener and if the listener becomes the speaker. This is more complicated than is usually believed. Neither the speaker can easily become the listener nor the listener can easily become the speaker, as SVB deals with much more than that.

For SVB more is needed than the turn-taking between the speaker and an the  listener. For SVB there must be turn-taking between the speaker as-own-listener and the-listener-as-own speaker. In other words, the speaker must take turns with him or herself and listen to him or herself. This listener learns to speak only if he or she is listened to...

Once the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she is no longer the same and can never be like the speaker, who didn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks anymore. In SVB, the speaker is permanently changed and becoming interested in listening. Also, the listener who becomes a speaker is instantly transformed.

Listeners who become speakers, play different roles than speakers who become listeners. All this goes on within just one person. The speaker who became a listener becomes capable of saying things which he or she couldn’t say before and the listener who became a speaker is capable of hearing things which he or she couldn’t listen to before. 


SVB first changes how a person talks with him or herself and then it will change how he or she talks with others. Likewise, SVB first changes how a person listens to himself and then how a person listens to others.  In SVB we listen to others and we can hear if they are listening to themselves.