June 21, 2015

June 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010) the authors write about what “naming” means in the analysis of verbal behavior. The meaning of “naming” is as we usually understand it, except that “in the analysis of verbal behavior the integration of behavioral processes involved is identified as a particular higher order verbal operant that is an important milestone in a language development.” “Naming” also involves “integration of the initially separate listener and speaker responses.” 

I am interested in “naming” as Horne and Lowe (1996) wrote about it as “the beginning of becoming truly verbal, because it fused the listener and speaker functions” (underlining added). I discovered that in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) “beginning” of merging “listener and speaker functions” finally matures. In SVB the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. 

In Verbal Behavior (1957) Skinnner had already described the process of “naming” as “speaker-as-own-listener.” When a child learns to say shoe, he or she does so because as a listener he or she responds to a speaker, who says shoe in the presence of a shoe. The child learns to respond to shoe with the word shoe and when someone else says shoe, the child knows what it is. 

These responses happen under different circumstances and thus, listening and speaking behaviors were acquired at different times. The saying “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, derived from a living situation in which one person is awakened by an upstairs neighbor, who is taking off his shoes and drops them on the floor. Interestingly, the person who was woken up, first is a listener, but then becomes a speaker. However, this listener had already acquired the word shoe and so the saying came about naturally and “without any instruction.” 


Another way of thinking about this is that the listener was talking with him or herself, while being annoyed by the regular noise he endures from his upstairs neighbor. Proper use of this saying involves more than only the shoe and comes about when the “speaker-as-own-listener” describes to him or herself what is happening and subsequently waits for the other shoe to drop. This private speech is essential to SVB, because in only SVB the mature adult, who knows that a shoe is a shoe and a spade a spade, can become more complex in his or her use of language. 

I have verified and explored with thousands of individuals that there are basically only two ways in which we talk: one is called SVB and the other is called Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Once we listen to ourselves while we speak, we are embarrassed by the fact that we seldom do this. In NVB speaking and listening behaviors are out of sync and disjointed. When we don’t listen while we speak, we actually neither listen nor do we really speak. 

 

Our talking has become so superficial, because in most of our verbal episodes we are not a “speaker-as-own-listener”, that is, most of our interactions are NVB and only very few are SVB.

Only if we name it that way will it change, but since we haven’t even done that, we keep beating around the bush. SVB exists and since it is defined as the “speaker-as-own-listener”, it is key to “the advancement of a science of verbal behavior.” 

If we want to have a complete account of verbal behavior, we need to have, as Skinner once emphasized, “separate but interlocking accounts of both speaker and listener” (underlining added. This interlocking account must necessarily be able to emerge while we speak. Writing and reading about “speaker-as-own-listener” is not the same as talking about this very important topic.

Greer and Longano, who look at children’s verbal development, emphasize “Naming seems to have been overlooked.” Indeed, without being able to name things children are unable to learn language. I look at adult’s verbal development and I observe that without being able to name and discriminate SVB and NVB, we remain unaware, mechanical and insensitive in each one of our conversations. Certainly, for children “Naming is foundational to more advanced verbal development, including how to read and write” and to development of “functions such as intraverbals”, but “naming" is also important for adults as it is necessary for becoming a conscious and mature communicator. 

Shouldn’t adults know how to “name” and differentiate the difference between the pretension of talking (NVB) and real talking (SVB)? The only reason we don’t think there is real talking is because we have gotten away with our NVB. There has to be a process as real talking. The extent to which our talking is real determines what we are able to accomplish with it. However, since most of our talking is NVB, we are not accomplishing many happy, healthy and supportive relationships. For that SVB is needed. Certainly, we accomplish many other things, but all of that is achieved at the expense of our relationships.

Horne and Lowe (1996) have defined “naming” as becoming acquainted with the “essentials of an unfamiliar object or topic.”  It is awkward for adults to admit that they are “unfamiliar” with something so common as talking and listening. It may seem as if we know, but when we look into why we have such high rates of NVB and such low rates of SVB, it is obvious while we talk that most of our attention goes to our speaking behavior and hardly any attention goes to our listening behavior. 


The reason for this great discrepancy is that in NVB the speaker aversively controls the behavior of the listener. In NVB, we are and we have to be on guard. We don’t and we can’t let our guard down as we feel continuously threatened, attacked, intimidated, pushed around, dominated and coerced. As most of our attention goes to speaking, we don’t and can’t create, let alone maintain, the safe environments in which SVB will occur. 

“Fusion of speaker and listener within the individual” will reliably occur if we “name” and identify, that is, experience, SVB. The experience that the speaker can in fact be his or her own listener is new to anyone who is introduced to SVB. Although many people recognize it as a possibility, it is new in that they have never experienced continuous support for it. 


We know SVB instances from being with friends, loved ones and people we care about and who care about us. However, we have at best achieved only a few moments of SVB, which happened accidentally, but we were unable to have SVB deliberately, consciously, skillfully and knowingly. “Integration of the listener and the speaker repertoires of human behavior” requires a unique environment, one which is free of aversive stimulation. 

Interestingly, the authors write about “naming” as “one of three types of speaker-as-own-listener behavior.”  The other two are “self-talk rotating speaker and listener responses aloud” and “correspondence between saying and doing.”  Yet, the authors have only thought about “when a young child rotates speaker and listener roles during solitary play” (underlining added). In SVB, adults rotate speaker and listener roles, while talking aloud with others, but they can also have SVB by themselves. 

“Typically developing 5-year-olds emitted distinct speaker and listener responses as they talked aloud to themselves while playing” (underlining added), when they feel safe. The same is true for adults; it is only when we feel safe enough with one another that the contingency is created and maintained in which SVB reliably occurs. The absence of playfulness in our way of talking is our response to an aversive environment. 

Usually, other people are that environment. The existentialist Jean-Paul Sarte correctly stated “Hell is other people” in his play called “No Exit.” However, it is not simply other people, who cause us to feel a particular way, it is our relationship with them or rather the lack of it, which determines that we end having NVB. 


In 1965, Sarte explained in a speech which preceded performance of his play that his statement “hell is other people” has often been misunderstood. He said “it has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I meant that if relations with someone else are twisted , vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves… we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgement always enters, but that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each of us. “ Sarte sounds like a behaviorist!

Sarte gives an analysis which is in tune with SVB. To the extent that private speech is a function of NVB public speech, we are stuck with a judgment of ourselves, with negative self-talk. He  said that blaming others was not what he meant. He referred to the disconnect which occurs within the “speaker-as-own-listener.” When Sarte points to “someone else judgments” he acknowledges the gap between the speaker and the listener. Obviously, “twisted and vitiated relationships” cause this gap, while supportive and positive relationships will close this gap. 

The “other” who Sarte refers to in his quotation, is “that by which we define ourselves, and the punishment of his three characters is that they will only ever be able to define themselves through the distorting mirrors of other people who reflect them badly, while at the same time they see themselves reflected badly in others as well” (Woodward, 2010). Thus, the existential crisis Sarte talks about is brought about by NVB, but can be solved by SVB.

Estelle, one of the characters in Sarte’s play says “When I can’t see myself in the mirror, I can’t even feel myself, and I begin to wonder if I exist at all. Inez promises to be an accurate mirror for Estelle in order to seduce her. Sarte used the idea of the mirror to great effect in the play – there are none in hell, and in order to see themselves, as it were from the outside, the characters have to rely on the way that others see them” (Woodward, 2010)(underlining added).  Our covert private speech is a behavior which is caused by the overt public speech of others, who are our environment.