February 5, 2015

February 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a third writing in which this writer comments on the paper “Listening is Behaving Verbally” (2008) by H.D. Schlinger. Skinner defined verbal behavior as behavior that is “reinforced through the mediation of other persons” (1957, p.2). However, many years later, he wrote “except when the listener was also to some extent speaking, listening was not verbal in the sense of “effective only through the mediation of other persons”” (1989, p. 86). Mediation, then, according to Skinner, involves more than only listening. These “other persons” or listeners are not responsible for the behavior of the speaker, if they don’t become verbal, that is, if they don’t themselves become speakers. 

Stated differently, Skinner’s definition of verbal behavior doesn’t apply to uni-directional, coercive, hierarchical, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the listeners are punished for becoming speakers. Skinner's definition of verbal behavior only applies to bi-directional, sensitive, equal, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which listeners are reinforced for becoming speakers and speakers are reinforced for becoming listeners.


The SVB/NVB distinction is necessary for recognizing how we can all be part of the conversation. Those who mostly talk need to become more often a listener and those who mostly listen, need to talk more often. Only in SVB can turn-taking be restored or adjusted. If no adjustments can be made, even if this is talked about and agreed upon by those who would like to make these adjustments, we still engage in NVB. We know how often we have NVB as in most of our spoken communication such adjustments cannot be made. Without the SVB/NVB distinction, the functional analysis of verbal behavior is unlikely to change the way in which we speak. 

Unless we engage in this new way of communicating called SVB, in which a decrease of speaking behavior makes an increase of listening behavior possible and in which a decrease in listening behavior makes an increase of speaking behavior possible, we are going to continue to have more and more NVB.  Schlinger writes “It seems highly unlikely that in competent listeners, warnings, advice, directions, instructions and rules would evoke only simple discriminated or motivated behavior. More likely is that such verbal events evoke compliance with warning, advice, direction, instruction, or rules (and any other nonverbal and operant behaviors), only if they evoke a cascade of verbal behaviors that I am describing as listening or understanding.” Thus, Schlinger distinguishes “unremarkable discriminated and motivated behavior in the listener” from behaviors we call “listening” and urges caution “about using the term listening for all behaviors of the listener.” It is no coincidence that Schlinger, who doesn’t distinguish between the SVB or NVB “cascade of verbal behavior” uses “compliance with warning, advice, direction, instruction, or rules” as his example to illustrate the importance of the difference between “unremarkable discriminated and motivated behavior in the listener” and “listening” or “understanding.” As he doesn’t consider the great difference between the evocative effects of SVB and NVB, Schlinger equates “compliance” with “listening” and “understanding.” This writer, however, believes that “in competent listeners, warnings, advice, directions, instructions and rules would evoke only simple discriminated or motivated behavior”, because the competence of a listener is not determined by words, but by sounds. 


What Schlinger and many others forget is that listeners “are specially trained by the verbal community to reinforce the behavior of the speaker” only if they produce the vocalizations, which the listener can “understand.”

Skinner’s “refined definition” which explains the listener reinforces the speaker “primarily because it establishes and maintains a particular form of behavior in the speaker” (1957, p. 84) applies to SVB and NVB, the two forms of behavior of the speaker. Schlinger seems to distance himself from these “consequent-mediating behaviors” as he is interested only in “structural regularities of a grammar or a language.” 


In 1977, Skinner stated “very little of the behavior of the listener is worth distinguishing as verbal. “ (p.379). This writer finds it hard to believe that Skinner would say this only “as part of a reaction against linguists” and is more inclined to attribute this statement to Skinner’s way of responding as a listener to himself as a speaker. This writer explains much of what Skinner has said and written as SVB. When he spoke with others, he was simultaneously a listener of others and of himself. 

The “boring lecture” example is the exact opposite of the aforementioned. It is an instance of not listening in which the listener is less likely to remember what the teacher has said. This writer considers that a typical instance of hierarchical NVB, in which the speaker (the teacher) is not listening to himself, expects others (the students) to listen to him, in which listeners are bound to feel obliged and coerced to listen to the authority. The evoked covert private speech of the listeners, which distracts from what the speaker says, is a function of the listener’s “unremarkable” ability to discriminate the NVB of the speaker. Since echoing someone’s name transforms a verbal stimulus in a verbal response (Palmer, 2007), echoing “is one form of verbal behavior that is probably important in listening.” However, as in the  boring lecture, the listeners don’t like to echo the sounds which they perceive as aversive. The sound of the speaker's voice in NVB is experienced as punitive and thus prevents learning. Moreover, NVB makes and keeps us unconscious.