March 3, 2016

March 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my third response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Pavlov referred to the stimulus as an unconditional stimulus, the response to that stimulus as an unconditional response, and the relation between the two as an unconditional reflex.” There is overwhelming evidence that nonverbal babies have “an unconditional response” to the sound of their parent’s voice, which is “an unconditioned stimulus.” We can describe “the relation between the two as an unconditional reflex.” 

In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the nonverbal baby will respond positively to the mother’s voice as her sound will elicit a sense of well-being. However, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the mother’s voice will trigger negative responses in the baby. Most likely this is caused by the fact that the mother is tired, stressed, overwhelmed, confused, depressed or anxious, in other words, the mother is experiencing negative emotions.

To the extent that the mother or the caretaker is experiencing and expressing either negative or positive emotions, the baby’s nonverbal foundation for language will be NVB or SVB. Any time the sound of the mother’s voice was paired with appetitive stimuli, such as food, toys or caressing, the nonverbal basis for language was laid and these unconditioned stimuli became conditioned stimuli for SVB, the conditioned response. By contrast, to the extent that the mother’s negative-sounding voice repeatedly preceded neglect, abandonment, dysregulation or other abuse, such sound was the conditioned stimulus for a conditioned response and shaped beginnings of a different language: NVB. The sound of a speaker’s voice is either linked with appetitive or aversive stimuli. Skinner has labelled this as “Type S Conditioning”.