March 6, 2015

March 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

It is only in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) that the verbalizer’s behavior evokes the mediator’s response that provides the reinforcement for the verbalizer’s behavior. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), on the other hand, elicitation of the mediator’s response also reinforces the verbalizer, but since this involves the verbalizer’s aversive control of the mediator, it doesn’t fit with Skinner’s definition of verbal behavior. 

In a later refinement, Skinner specified that verbal behavior required not just any person, but someone whose way of behaving was shaped by a verbal environment or language (Skinner, 1986, p.121). In SVB and in NVB, the consequence, reinforcement, occurs through the mediation of another person, but only in SVB the verbal behavior of the verbalizer is shaped by a verbal environment or language. In NVB, by contrast, verbal behavior is shaped and maintained by a nonverbal environment. Moreover, SVB is behavior that is shaped and maintained by a positive reinforcing nonverbal and verbal environment, but an aversive nonverbal environment sets the stage for aversive verbal behavior or NVB. 

Presence of the mediator, an audience, makes SVB possible, but absence of an audience makes NVB necessary. Absence of an audience here is defined as the inability of the mediator to become a verbalizer. As long as the mediator is not in the position to verbalize, they are not mediating. As long as mediators protest their inability to verbalize, they will produce NVB and the initial verbalizer will not be mediating them. Thus, in NVB, there is an absence of turn-taking between verbalizer and mediator. Lack of turn-taking also causes the discrepancy between private and public speech. Although in NVB private speech is separated from public speech, NVB, besides being a function of NVB public speech, is also a function of NVB private speech and makes public speech agreement is impossible. 

In NVB, absence of an audience, that is, lack of positive reinforcement by a mediator, establishes negative automatic repertoire in private speech, which becomes worse and worse over time, unless it is counteracted by the presence of a positively reinforcing audience. However, the positively reinforcing, overtly expressed mediating effects of SVB that took place during the conditioning of our speaking repertoire, in spite of the many challenges and adversities, remains with us at the covert level and reinforces us even in the absence of an audience. 

Just as the presence of an audience stays with us our entire lives, the absence of an audience also continues to have its effects over the course of our development. NVB is ubiquitous because most of us grew up with a  relative absence of an audience. The common absence of an audience signifies that many parts of our verbal repertoire are actually missing. If these parts were present, they would control our behavior in the absence of an audience. We would be able to produce different verbal behavior on different occasions as we already had acquired the repertoire and verbal stimuli would still evoke in us these audience-controlled responses.  

The levels of NVB stay pretty much the same during a person's lifetime, regardless of the place or the situation, because we lack verbal behavior that helps us to adjust. Although NVB, like SVB, is of course a function of environmental variables, since these variables, due to conditioning have changed our neural behavior and exist within our own skin, we don’t realize the extent to which our private speech, our thinking, estranges us from our body, our immediate environment. NVB is best described as a disembodied spoken communication, while embodied spoken communication only happens in SVB, when we sound good and feel good. Moreover, due to NVB people can’t feel safe even when the situation is safe. The sound of our voice not only signifies that we speak the proper language, it also indicates whether we are nonverbally adjusted to our environment.