March 5, 2016

March 5, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifth response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Skinner also distinguished two types of behavior that corresponded to the two types of conditioning.” Just as nonverbal behavior precedes developmentally our verbal behavior (phylogenetically as well as ontogenetically), so too respondent behavior precedes operant behavior.

“Pavlov’s procedure could be applied only to behavior that could be elicited, prior to training, by a specific stimulus.” As Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) occur in response to a stimulus (Voice II or Voice I, respectively), both categories should be seen as respondent behaviors in the pre-verbal stages of speech development. 

Even in utero babies can distinguish between the sound of the voice of the mother or the father. It isn’t until infants begin to speak their first few words that they enter the operant chamber, the verbal community. It can only be said about a rat, not a human baby, that “for behavior like bar pressing, no equivalent stimulus could be found.” The first words of a baby are always echoics which only later become conditioned as tacts. 

Only certain echoics are reinforced as tacts, and, given the different rates of SVB and NVB in the speech of parents, certain sounds will lead to the development of an entirely different language in children who have experienced more NVB than those who were conditioned by more SVB. Stated differently, the baby is biased to certain sounds and when exposed to those sounds he or she will either produce NVB or SVB. The bar press is a stimulus to which the rat was not exposed, but the baby is already familiar with the sound it hears first.