February 17, 2015

February 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

The situation that sets the stage for spoken communication is different from culture to culture. As individuals from different cultures become exposed to unfamiliar contingencies, they soon realize what is punished in one culture is reinforced in another.  In addition to phylogenetic (caused by evolutionary processes) and ontogenetic (caused by processes occurring during an organism's life time) processes, B.F. Skinner pointed to culture as the third component to be considered in explaining behavior. 

This writer stimulates the reader to consider the different sounds of these different cultures. German sounds different from Hindi and Russian sounds different from English. However, we can also find similarities in how different cultures sound. This is where the distinction between Sound and Noxious Verbal Behavior as two subsets of verbal behavior becomes important. It doesn’t matter whether we speak Hindi or Russian, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with positive reinforcement. In both  English and German, however, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. It is pragmatic to consider SVB and NVB as languages from different cultures, because they too occur in different environments. A hospital, in which nurses and doctors are trying to take care of patients, is a different communication environment as a battlefield on which soldiers are trying to kill each other. We have not been able to see similarities in cultures, because our differences between SVB and NVB inevitably got personal. That is, SVB and NVB explain human verbal behavior at the level of the individual organism.  

Although different topics, such as work, art, science, politics, family, finances or sports, may characterize our spoken conversation, limited interaction is possible when people don’t speak the same language, that is, when they don’t sound the same. Swedish sounds don’t make any sense to a French person who has never been exposed to Swedish sounds. 

The same stimulus generalization principle that is involved in teaching a child to say “dog” to a German shepherd as well as to a Chihuahua, is at work in learning to speak a different language than one’s native language. In learning to say “dog”, in the presence of relatively different-looking creatures, the child responds, however, to the similarities. Thus, the child learns different concepts such as tool, food and transportation. Although a hammer looks very different than a saw, a hammer and a saw are tacted as a “tool”, because of what we use them for. Likewise, the common element class “as something eatable” evokes our ability to discriminate apple, bread and candy as “food.” However, "as research with nonverbal pigeons has often demonstrated, verbal behavior is not necessarily involved in such conceptual behavior" (Martin & Pear, 2007, p. 106). The principle of behavioral continuity is illustrated by the fact that pigeons can easily be taught to respond to concepts such as “fish” or “human.” Thus, when a child responds with “fish” upon hearing words such as shark, sardine and whale or seeing pictures of these, this child has learned “to emit the appropriate response to all the members of a stimulus common-element class and does not emit that response to stimuli that do not belong to that class” (Martin & Pear, 2007, p. 106). 

   

As long as the distinction between SVB and NVB has not been made, we are not fully verbal, that is, we are not showing the conceptual behavior that is necessary to call a spade a spade. Although we do have a vague  notion of them as subsets of verbal behavior, as evidenced by sayings such as: it is not what you say but how you say it, we often mistake NVB for SVB. The stimulus common-element class of NVB and SVB can only be correctly discriminated if we listen to how we sound while we speak. 

Voice I is the common element in NVB and Voice II is the common element in SVB. Voice I is called Voice I, because we will not be able to recognize Voice II without first identifying Voice I. Our mistake to view NVB as SVB is based on our unfulfilled need for peace, safety, stability and support, which functions as Establishing Operations for NVB. Unless we discriminate that the stimulus classes that comprise our negative and our positive experiences (regardless of our phylogenetic, ontogenetic or cultural heritage) always, everywhere and under all circumstances sound very different, we continue to mistake SVB for NVB and visa versa. 

SVB and NVB are two important equivalence classes which can be easily learned. What is needed is matching-to-sample. Only SVB can reinforce SVB and only SVB can shed light on NVB. In a simple stimulus equivalence experiment, a child may be taught during a couple trials to match number 2 with a picture of two ducks on it. In a second number of trials, the child is then reinforced for matching the picture of the two ducks with the word “two.” During the third trial the child will be tested to see if it has learned the equivalence class. If the child matches the word “two” with the number 2 then “members of this equivalence class are functionally equivalent in the sense that they all control the same behavior” (Martin & Pear, 2007, p. 106). We do more matching-to-sample training for NVB than SVB, because we don’t know SVB. We acquired equivalence classes, but don't see the negative consequences of stimulus generalization. “When a new behavior becomes conditioned to one member of an equivalence class, that behavior is likely to be controlled by other members of the class without explicit training” (Martin & Pear, 2007, p. 108). 

SVB and NVB are concepts which tell us about how we communicate. NVB has Voice I in common and SVB has Voice II in common. However, what we say in NVB pertains to the same equivalence class. What we say in SVB refers to an entirely different, for many new, way of communicating. As SVB is reinforced it will last longer. Its newness is proportional to the extent that it lasts longer than the previous time. Although most of us can recognize components of SVB, we have not experienced repeated trials in which components came together and stayed together for a longer time. For this we must arrange lab-like conditions in which we control for NVB. This will only be done if we see the need for it and the potential of it. 

Generalization is said to fail when the child says “doggie” to a hairy four-legged creature in the presence of a cat. Similarly, generalization fails as long as we accept as normal the way of communicating to which we are used, which we have come to expect and which we reinforce: NVB, in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. It is necessary that we teach discriminations and that we stop reinforcing aggressive or passive aggressive communication as a way of communicating. Although NVB is verbal behavior, as it is Noxious, listeners are aversively controlled by it and are bound to respond to it with some form of counter-control, escape or avoidance. 

Only SVB, in which the speaker controls the listener with positive reinforcement, is to be tacted as real communication. That is, SVB must be differentiated from NVB, because it is a different subset of verbal behavior. NVB may be better tacted as coercion, aggression, domination, exploitation, intimidation, but not as communication. A dog is not a cat.