July 27, 2016

July 27, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Here is my first response to “Verbal Behavior” by B.F. Skinner (1957). I comment on this book because as it helps people understand the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In the foreword Jack Michael quotes Skinner, who  “described the content of his fifth book Verbal Behavior as “an orderly arrangement of well-known facts, in accordance with a formulation of behavior derived from an experimental analysis of a more rigorous sort.””(p.11) Unknowingly we are already familiar with SVB and NVB, but we never analyzed these universal response classes in terms of how vocal verbal behavior is determined by environmental variables. 

We are unfamiliar with Skinner’s “concepts and principles of operant conditioning.” In spite of our everyday exposure to these forms of language behavior, we remained oblivious of a “behavioral understanding of language.” Michael’s short overview of “Skinner’s explanatory system which consists essentially of a definition of verbal behavior, a description of several elementary verbal relations, plus four conceptual tools for extending the analysis in the direction of increasing complexity”, is useful in that it stimulates me to point out to the reader that a fifth conceptual tool is needed without which “extending the analysis in the direction of increasing complexity” is impossible. 

Neither Skinner nor Michael knew about the SVB/NVB distinction. Both men would have written very differently if this had been the case. I am very grateful for their work, as the SVB/NVB distinction is explained by and becomes plausible due to what they have investigated.

Michael gives a brief description of the five parts of Verbal Behavior. When I discovered the SVB/NVB distinction, however, I didn’t know anything about radical behaviorism, let alone about of this phenomenal book, which Skinner considered as his most important work. You too can understand the SVB/NVB distinction, my extension B.F. Skinner’s work, without having any previous knowledge of radical behaviorism. 

Writing about his book gives me a sense of validation as it stimulates me to explain what I have found in terms of the science of human behavior. Just as Skinner had to come up with an acceptable definition for Verbal Behavior, I too had to define what I was talking about. I have used many different names and definitions for what I now call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I used called it: 1) The-Language-That-Creates-Space, 2) Honoring-Our-Voice-While-We-Speak, 3) Sound-Restoration-While-We-Speak, 4) Listen-While-You-Speak Technique, 5) Open Communication, 6) Resonant Communication, 7) Sounds-Good-Method, 8) Conscious Communication, 8) Meditative Communication, 9) Listener’s-Experience-Of-Speaker’s Voice, 10) Listeners-Becoming-Speakers-Communication and 11) Turn-Taking-Spoken-Communication. 

Skinner defines Verbal Behavior (VB) as “the behavior of an individual which achieves its effects on the world through someone else’s behavior. Its reinforcement is thus indirect, whereas nonverbal behavior achieves its effect by directly manipulating the environment.” Peculiar about this distinction is the omission that the speaker’s VB simultaneously has a direct as well as an indirect effect on the listener, but then again, Skinner’s definition of verbal behavior captures more than vocal verbal behavior. Initially, I only focused on our spoken communication, but as learned more about radical behaviorism, I realized the SVB/NVB distinction also deals with reading and writing.  

  

Verbal/indirect effects and nonverbal/direct effects, on the listener, occur simultaneously and must be considered simultaneously, by the speaker. Moreover, the listener who says about the speaker: it is not what you say, but how you say it! tries to explain to the speaker how his or her the sound interferes with what he or she is trying to say. 

In other words, the listener says to the speaker that he or she is directly affecting him or her with his or her voice and the words of the speaker are of secondary importance. Thus, the definition of verbal behavior as “behavior of an individual which achieves its effect on the world through someone else’s behavior” required a refinement.  

The definition was refined by Skinner with the “requirement that the other person must have been taught the repertoire that reinforces the speaker, because that repertoire facilitates such social control.”  I suggest a third refinement which specifies repertoire as SVB. Only SVB facilitates “social control,” but NVB facilitates anti-social control. 

Only SVB can be considered as what Skinner called “an extension“, that is, the “development of more complex behavior as verbal responses occur under novel conditions.” NVB neither allows for “more complex verbal responses” nor for “novel conditions.” Also, it is only in SVB that “the various controlling activities of the “self” are not considered as a form of autonomy, but are themselves analyzed in terms of the motivative and discriminative variables responsible for their acquisition and maintenance.” In NVB, by contrast, the “self” will dominate the conversation and always be falsely “considered as a form of autonomy,” which is not to be investigated or even questioned (our identity). 

Without question SVB and NVB result in different “covert behavior” and “private stimulation.” However, only SVB is “Strengthening the Verbal Behavior in the Listener (pp.268-280) and “permits a behavioral approach to the very intellectual and often private process of understanding or misunderstanding what one reads or hears.” 

Skinner’s way of talking is very refined. His speech is a fine-grained behavior. His SVB is absolutely necessary to articulate the “origin and control of a speaker’s verbal behavior by emotional variables in another” (pp.214-219). Most radical behaviorists, however, don’t know realize that their NVB is a coarse-grained behavior, which prevents the accurate description of “emotional variables in another.”