November 24, 2015

November 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

During the final weeks of this semester the atmosphere in my classes has changed and students are much more verbally involved. In each of my four classes they have submitted their term papers. I look forward to reading them. The energy is charged now that they have spoken, albeit in writing. I notice they are more involved in speaking too. It might be a good idea to have them write a short mandatory paper earlier in the next semester. Their writing increases their speaking behavior. This could make them more verbally stimulated from the beginning. 

I read “Separate but interlocking accounts of the behavior of both speaker and listener: when the listener speaks is there more to listening then just listening?” by C.A. Thomas (2004). Separate accounts of the speaker and the listener give rise to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), while interlocking accounts give rise to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The author, like Skinner, doesn’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction (my extension of radical behaviorism) and still believes there is such a thing as “Separate but interlocking accounts of the behavior of both speaker and listener.” However, during speech, SVB and NVB don’t co-occur. Only SVB provides an interlocking account. A separate account, on the other hand, only occurs in writing, which cannot give us an interlocking account. It is important to note that Skinner wrote “Our interest in the listener is not; however, merely an interest in what happens to the verbal stimuli created by the speaker. In a complete account of a verbal episode we need to show that the behavior of the listener does in fact provide the conditions we have assumed in explaining the behavior of the speaker. We need separate but interlocking accounts of the behaviors of both speaker and listener if our explanation of verbal behavior is to be complete. In explaining the behavior of the speaker we assume a listener who will reinforce his behavior in certain ways. In accounting for the behavior of the listener we assume a speaker whose behavior bears a certain relation to environmental conditions. The interchanges between them must explain all the conditions thus assumed. The account of the whole episode is then complete. (Skinner, p.34, 1957)" Skinner wanted a complete explanation of verbal behavior, but he didn’t discover the SVB/NVB distinction.

  

“The complete explanation of verbal behavior” can only be given when we listen to ourselves while we speak, that is, when we engage in SVB. As long as we, as Skinner and Thomas, remain overly involved in and concerned with writing and reading, we are merely chasing a shadow. The question which is raised by Thomas “When the listener speaks is there more to listening then just listening?” can only be answered if the listener speaks. My answer to this question is YES, as a listener who doesn’t speak doesn’t listen as well as a listener who speaks. Why? Such a speechless listener cannot hear him or herself. When we can’t hear ourselves we can’t hear others. We can only hear ourselves when we speak. In other words, we must speak to hear ourselves.

Self-listening-while-speaking enhances other-listening-while-speaking. That is SVB in which there is turn-taking between the speaker and the listener. However, the opposite is also true: other-listening-while-not-speaking makes it impossible to self-listen, as one is not speaking. That is NVB in which there is no turn-taking between the speaker and the listener. There is more to this question “When the listener speaks is there more to listening then just listening?” When the listener speaks, there is more to speaking than just speaking!! The difference between speaking at or speaking with the listener depends on whether the speaker is listening to him or herself while he or she speaks.

“In explaining the behavior of the speaker we assume a listener who will reinforce his behavior in certain ways.” An account of the speaker without the listener doesn’t make any sense. The speaker and the listener must be considered together. However, this doesn’t and can’t occur in NVB, it only happens in SVB. The listener-who-is-the-same-as-the-speaker “will reinforce” the speaker’s “behavior in certain ways”; he or she automatically reinforces him or herself. Likewise, the listener-other-than-the-speaker reinforces the speaker’s behavior, as he or she really listens and experiences total agreement with the speaker.

“In accounting for the behavior of the listener we assume a speaker whose behavior bears a certain relation to environmental conditions.” If the speaker affects the listener aversively, as is the case in NVB, the listener will behave differently as when the speaker affects the listener positively, as in SVB. Unless we acknowledge the difference in the interchanges between the speaker and the listener in SVB and NVB, we will never have a complete account of the whole episode. Although Skinner never indicated the SVB/NVB distinction, his account of our verbal behavior seems to be based more on SVB than on NVB. He says “The interchanges between them must explain all the conditions thus assumed. The account of the whole episode is then complete.”

Thomas writes “In his treatment of verbal behavior [Skinner] asserts that one cannot properly elucidate the functions for the responding of speaker without taking into account the responding of the listener and the ecological contingencies in which the behavior is emitted.” Such a statement refers to SVB. To really talk about and agree on these matters there would have to be a situation free of aversive stimulation that would allow us to actually engage in that conversation. “Skinner (1957) laid out a functional model of speaker behavior” as he, unlike others, thought out loud and was automatically reinforced for this.

Thomas asks “If the listener vocalizes does that make the listener the speaker?” My answer is again YES, but only in SVB. In SVB, the speaker and the listener are one. In other words, in SVB, the speaker and the listener as well as the-listener-who-is-the-speaker agree, but in NVB there is no such agreement between the speaker and the listener. In NVB “the listener vocalizes”, but it will make him or her a NVB speaker, who doesn’t listen to him or herself, who then separates the speaker from the listener. My answer to the question “Can a speaker actually be responding as a listener even though the response may be a vocalization?” is again YES, but this will only occur in SVB. In SVB the speaker responds as his or her own listener, but in NVB this doesn’t and can’t occur. In NVB we are focusing on and listening to others or making others listen to us, but in either case we are not listening to ourselves. 

Thomas concludes “sometimes the listener speaks, but does not cease responding as the listener making developing approaches to training language acquisition a clearly easier “concept” for both practitioners who design curriculum and those who strive to use it in practice.” The “training of language acquisition” will be greatly enhanced if practitioners, rather than focusing on designing new curriculum, distinguish between SVB or NVB. As Thomas’ conclusion demonstrates, the focus is on written, not on spoken language. As long as we have not engaged for an extended period of time in SVB, we cannot be “fluent members of the verbal community.” By teaching others, we find out things about ourselves: if we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, others don’t listen. Emancipation of the listener requires that the listener to becomes a speaker. Behaviorists have continued to broadly “disregard the listener’s behavior as receptive” as long as they didn’t properly analyze the speaker-as-own-listener. This can’t be done while writing and reading, it must be done while simultaneously speaking and listening, that is, while engaging in SVB. “Refinement in the study of verbal operants” demands that we have SVB. “A better understanding of the listener operants” creates better speakers.