August 15, 2014

August 15, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist 

Dear Reader, 

Yesterday, this writer had a wonderful skype conversation with his Colombian friend Arturo about SVB. They explored together the workings of SVB and came up with a couple of basic principles which need to be further expanded so that a paper can be published which captures SVB in purely behavioristic terms. At this point this writer is absolutely sure that this paper is going to come about. He was pleased with Arturo’s ability to let him speak and explain. From what he said, Arturo selected certain sentences, which he repeated back to him and then he asked, if he agreed with it. This interview technique worked really well because it put SVB in the perspective of the speaker and the listener. Moreover, it led to a discussion about whether we were going to talk about SVB topographically or functionally.

Although previous conversations had been about topographic indices, today’s talk made clear that SVB is a listener’s, or rather, a functional perspective of spoken communication. This author noticed something about Arturo he hadn’t noticed before. Arturo has great analytic skill in transcribing what what this writer says in behaviorist terms. He made a remark about not having to be too hung up on what anybody had already said or written, when this writer was trying too hard to reiterate something Skinner had said. Also, he urged this writer to focus on the basics of SVB and describe in as simple words as possible to him how it works. 

This writer, who was inclined to use the word verbalizer, instead of speaker, had a change of mind, because the speaker is more common and more widely understood.

Another aspect about the developmental path towards speaking is that listening comes first. Before a child learns how to speak, it listens to how the members of his or her verbal community produce sounds in the presence of certain objects. It is only after echoing these sounds and being reinforced for these sounds that at some point the child learns how to tact or mand. Words are sounds and it is the reinforcement of sound, which puts the attention on the listener, who reinforces the speaker’s sound, which produces the speaker’s words. Verbal behavior then is really about the sound of the speaker, which is mediated by and reinforced by the listener. 

  

The dependent variable is the listener’s experience of the sound of the speaker and the independent variables are SVB and NVB. An example that was given by Arturo, which brought home the power of this phenomenon, is the teacher, who is doing all the talking in front of a class full of students who are all listening. Depending on how the teacher sounds to the students, his lecture is going to be perceived as interesting or boring. If the teacher is not appealing to the students, he or she is producing NVB, but if he or she is getting everyone’s attention and is considered to be interesting to listen to, only then is he or she producing SVB. 

The speaker can also be alone with him or herself and talk out loud with him or herself. While doing so he or she can determine whether he or she sounds good or not. If he or she sounds good, he or she produces SVB and if he or she considers him or herself as not sounding good, then he or she is producing NVB. During the process in which the speaker is only his or her own listener, it is easier for the speaker to determine whether he or she sounds good then when the speaker is in front of listeners that are other than him or herself. It is easier because he or she is not distracted by others and is able to focus on his or her own sound. While alone, the speaker can simply speak for the sole purpose of listening to his or her own sound.

When in front of others, the speaker has to ask the listener’s approval to be able to listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. In doing so, the speaker and the listeners are tuned into the speaker’s sound, which is adjusted to the listener. Because of the feedback, the reinforcement, which the speaker receives from the listener about how he or she sounds, the speaker continues to remain in touch with  his or her audience. However, he or she may be reinforced for his or her SVB or NVB. 

During NVB the speaker doesn’t ask or care about the listener’s feedback. Thus, during NVB the speaker is reinforced by the subservience of the listener. The NVB-speaker is allowed to keep on speaking, because he or she has the power to do so. He or she is the authority and the listener, who has been conditioned to listen to this authority, is reinforcing this NVB-speaker not for how he or she sounds, but for what he or she says. This verbal fixation is crucially important: in NVB the listener is required to focus on the verbal and to completely disregard the nonverbal.

Reinforcement for SVB is nonverbal which always includes the verbal, but reinforcement for NVB is verbal which excludes the nonverbal. The fact that NVB is more often reinforced is a consequence of our evolutionary history. During NVB, we produce a sound which intimidates, scares, upsets, distracts, stresses, coerces, dominates, pushes, pulls and demands. However, during SVB, our voice relaxes, comforts, induces safety, invites conversation, approach, social behaviors and stimulates creativity, elaboration and aesthetics. Human beings have a long phylogenetic history with fighting, fleeing and freezing, but have a relatively short ontogenic history with verbal behavior, which cultivates the inhibition of these tendencies. SVB, like math or biology, is something we are capable of learning, but which can only become clear if we create the right kind of circumstances.

In his book Verbal Behavior on page 20, Skinner writes “What is needed is a unit of behavior composed of a response of identifiable form functionally related to one or more independent variables. In traditional terms we might say that we need a unit of behavior defined in terms of both form and meaning.” This writer believes that Skinner here is also referring to the SVB/NVB distinction. 

Skinner goes on to say on page 21 “A long-standing problem in the analysis of verbal behavior is the size of the unit. Standard linguistic units are of various sizes. Below the level of the word lie roots and affixes or, more rigorously, the small ‘‘meaningful’’ units called morphemes . Above the word come phrases, idioms, clauses, sentences , and so  on. Any one of these may have functional unity as a verbal operant. A bit of behavior as small as a single speech-sound, or even a pitch or stress pattern, may be under independent control of a manipulable variable”. 


The two quotations from Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (1957) came from the paper “Linguistic Sources of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior”, by Maria Amelia Matos (2006) and her student Maria de Lourdes R. da F. Passos. In this paper, they compare the work of the linguist and early behaviorist Bloomfield with Skinner, who clearly was influenced by him. 

This writer, whose writing is now under control of behaviorism, loves how Matos compares and contrasts Bloomfield and Skinner. Her work is useful in elucidating SVB. She describes Skinner’s linguistic analysis as follows : “The contingencies of reinforcement that install and maintain the various verbal operants act on the form of the response, which is, therefore, an important defining element of the operant class and not of the topography of the response.” Skinner was stimulated by Bloomfield to look at linguistics from a functional perspective.


Matos goes on to make the case that “Each emission of a linguistic form (e.g. saying ‘flower’) will generate a unique pattern of sounds (Anttila, 1989), corresponding thus to the behavior-analytic concept of ’topography of the response.’ The form itself includes all the slightly different patterns of sounds that are recognized as being the ‘same’ by speakers and listeners (Bloomfield, 1933/1961) and corresponds better to the behavior-analytic concept of ‘operant class of responses.’” Unless we focus on the "topograhy of the response" we will not pay any attention to how we sound and we will not discriminate between SVB and NVB.