February 4, 2015

February 4, 2015 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is the second part of this writer's comments on the paper “Listening is behaving verbally” (2008), by H.D. Schlinger, who, like many others, seems to believe that Skinner in Verbal Behavior (1957) “omitted” the behavior of the listener. This writer disagrees with that assumption and believes many don’t realize or pay attention to the fact that because we talk a certain way, we listen a certain way. Moreover, because we talk a certain way, we write a certain way, and, because we write a certain way, we read a certain way. What Schlinger and many others wrongly read into Skinner’s words is caused by their different way of talking. Skinner had a unique way of talking, which hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. What Skinner has written was based on his speaking. 

There was no need for Skinner to “justify” what others considered to be a “omission”, but his instructions and explanations were needed to make people pay attention to “the special responses to the patterns of energy created by the speaker” (1957) (italics added). In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the patterns of energy created by the speaker, are responded to, by the speaker, as his own listener as well as by the listener as someone else. Being listened to simultaneously by oneself and by others, is why Skinner speaks of “special responses.” Such listening responses are “special” because they are not as common as we would like to believe. To the contrary, in most conversation people want others to listen to them or  make an effort to listen to others, but  are not listening to themselves. Such an effort is always involved in listening to speakers who are not listening to themselves. Skinner was easy to listen to. He knew that most people are not listening to themselves while they speak. 

This writer, wants his readers to know that when he is speaking and when listeners are effortlessly listening to him, he is also simultaneously effortlessly listening to himself. In other words, effortless self-listening makes effortless other-listening possible. Without effortless self-listening, other-listening becomes an effort. This describes Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  

With the extension of SVB and NVB, the statement that “the behavior of the listener in mediating the consequences of the speaker’s behavior is not verbal in any special sense” (1957, p.2) makes perfectly sense, especially since Skinner started out by describing “an adequate account of verbal behavior need cover only as much of the behavior of the listener as is needed to explain the behavior of the speaker” (1957, p. 2). Skinner wrote it like that because he was talking very often in a SVB manner.

  

The following is not, as Schlinger believes, an admission of having forgotten the listener, it is Schlinger, who imagines that “the behavior of the listener was more complex and needed to be considered more fully.” Once we have learned how to speak and listen, the trouble really begins. Schlinger doesn't quote Skinner's words “But, this is only the beginning” (1957, p.10), the beginning of the paragraph in which the reader is informed about what is to come: “Once a repertoire of verbal behavior has been set up, a host of new problems arise from the interaction of its parts” (1957, p. 10). Skinner refers to our communication problems. He comes up with “A New Formulation”, but he anticipates problems which are going to occur while communicating this with others. 

“Verbal behavior is usually the effect of multiple causes. Separate variables combine to extend their functional control, and new forms of behavior emerge from the recombination of old fragments. All of this has appropriate effect upon the listener, whose behavior then calls for analysis” (1957, p.10). Schlinger’s deductive analysis of Verbal Behavior (1957) at best repeats what Skinner had already said, but arrived at inductively.  “The host of problems” that “arise from the interaction of” the “parts” of “the verbal repertoire that has been set up” refers to NVB.

None of these "problems" occur in SVB. It is only  during NVB that “still another set of problems arises from the fact, often pointed out, that a speaker is normally also a listener” (1957, p.10). During SVB the speaker perceives him or herself as the listener and audience members listen to a speaker who listens to him or herself. Consequently, in SVB, the different parts of the verbal repertoire can interact very smoothly. It should be noted that Skinner mentions “the fact, often pointed out, that a speaker is normally also a listener.” He seems to have written this to counteract the abnormal circumstances of NVB in which “a speaker" is not "also a listener.” 

During SVB, self-listening and its importance for other-listening, is obvious to both the speaker as well as the listener. Indeed, during SVB, the speaker can understand why he “reacts to his own behavior in several important ways” (1957, p.10). During NVB, however, the speaker is totally unaware about which “Part of what he says is under control of other parts of his behavior”(1957, p.10). 

 

Skinner's statement that “we refer to this interaction when we say that the speaker qualifies, orders, or elaborates his behavior at the moment it is produced” (1957, p.10) evokes some surprising conclusions. When we, the listeners, say that the speaker “qualifies” or “elaborates”, the listener finds that he or she is spoken with, that is, the listener is having SVB with the speaker. However, when listeners say a speaker “orders”, they find that we are being spoken at, they are being coerced. Although listeners,  due to previous behavioral history, may be used to this, it doesn’t make any difference as to what is actually happening. The “host of problems”  involves NVB, in which the speaker speaks at, not with the listener. 

If we consider the previous statement (“we refer to this interaction when we say that the speaker qualifies, orders, or elaborates his behavior at the moment it is produced”) in the light of SVB, we begin to understand why the speaker’s NVB-private speech, in which he “orders” “his behavior at the moment that it is produced”, prevents or hinders his public speech, in which he “qualifies” or “elaborates.” Coercive “qualification” or “elaboration” doesn’t make good teaching. When Skinner writes “The mere emission of responses is an incomplete characterization when behavior is composed “ (1957, p.10), he is saying that ‘talking at people doesn’t work, but talking with them does.’ During NVB our behavior is not “composed”, because the speaker is not listening to him or herself. In NVB, no “new forms of behavior emerge from the recombination of old fragments” (1957, p.10) in the speaker, only more coercive “ordering” of the listener. 

When the listener presumably “understands” the NVB-speaker, this means that he or she is merely following orders and is not required to think. In SVB, on the other hand, the “speaker and the listener within the same skin engage in activities which are traditionally described as “thinking” (1957, p.10). Skinner mentions that the extent to which we manipulate our own behavior, review it, reject it or emit it in modified form (1957, p.10), is determined in part by the extent to which the speaker serves as his or her own listener (1957, p.10). However, our ability as a speaker to be our own listener, is limited to the amount of time we spend having SVB. 

When Skinner says “in part”, he means that we can only “think” to the extent that we have been conditioned by a communication which includes activities that involve the “speaker and the listener within the same skin” (1957, p.10). His SVB scientific repertoire made him “a skillful speaker”, who learned to “tease our weak behavior and to manipulate variables that generate and strengthen new responses in his repertoire” (1957, p.10).

Although it is great that “such behavior is commonly observed in the verbal practices of literature as well as of science and logic” (1957, p.11), it is “only a beginning” (p.10), because what is urgently needed is that such behavior is observed during our spoken communication, because then and only then, will “An analysis of these activities, together with their effects upon the listener” lead us to the solution of “the role of verbal behavior in the problem of knowledge” (1957, p.11). 

The “problem of knowledge” is maintained by our NVB and will only be dissolved by SVB, our calm, sensitive, conscious way of speaking. The reader is reminded that when speaking and listening are not perceived as functionally the same, misunderstandings are inevitable.  As there can be “understanding”, understanding is never an issue during SVB. Schlinger beats a dead horse when he repeats Skinner who states “the listener listens, pays attention to, or understands the speaker.” He says nothing new when he concludes “any analysis of speaking also applies to listening.” 

Skinner never as Schlinger suggests “moved away from listening as verbal behavior.” Besides, Skinner “could justify that because, except when the listener was also to some extent speaking, listening was not verbal in the sense of “being effective only through the mediation of other persons.” Skinner refers to turn-taking. When, in NVB, there is no turn-taking, when the listener doesn’t speak or is not  allowed to speak, listening is not verbal, because it is not “being effective.. through the mediation of other persons” (1989, p. 86).  Only when there is turn-taking, only during SVB, is listening considered to be verbal behavior.  Interestingly, Skinner states “…But if listeners are responsible for the behavior of speakers, we need to look more closely at what they do” (1989, p. 86).