March 2, 2016

March 2, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my second response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Control by stimuli that are already present before the response occurs plays a much more significant role in everyday life than it is currently accorded in our research even in our textbooks.” How is it possible there is such a misrepresentation of the reality? Why do behaviorists, who should know better, give short shrift to respondent conditioning and only talk about operant conditioning?

If among radical behaviorists classical conditioning is not given much attention, we should conclude that their way of talking also excludes something, which should be included. In other words, the public speech of the radical behaviorists has not come under direct stimulus control of the crucial distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

If behaviorists had analyzed the dialogue that took place at the dinner table between Skinner and Whitehead (1937), in which Skinner tried to explain that science could account for all human behavior, verbal behavior included, it would have been clear that Whitehead ended the conversation by bringing in a negative antecedent. “Let me see”, he said, “account for my behavior as I sit here saying “No black scorpion is falling upon this table (1957).”” This is a plain example of NVB in which the speaker aversively affects the listener. 

Unfortunately, this sort of intimidation happens every day. Since we have been conditioned by coercive NVB, we accept it as normal. Thus, hierarchical communication or NVB, in which the speaker negatively affects the listener, is given more importance than the mutually enhancing SVB interaction, in which the speaker and the listener can take turns. As Skinner’s conversation with Whitehead illustrates, NVB is NOT communication; it is oppression, forcefulness and abuse, in which the whip and shackles are replaced by the way in which we talk. The sound of Whitehead’s voice must have been perceived by Skinner, the listener, as an aversive stimulus.