Stimulus, Response & Consequence

Dear Reader,

The reason that you are, like everyone else, in spite of what you ‘think’ you know, mostly engaging in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and NOT in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), is because you are mainly reinforced for the former, but seldom if ever for the latter. It is very important to fully understand and acknowledge that your verbal behavior, which is speaking, listening, but also writing and reading, is operant behavior, it is evoked by stimuli in your environment. The following comments will be accompanied by the (sometimes lengthy) quotes from the exquisite writing of Lawrence E. Fraley “On Verbal Behavior: The First of Four Parts” (2004).

To understand operant conditioning, you first need to know about the three-term contingency, which consists of 1) a discriminative stimulus (Sd), 2) a response (R), and 3) a consequence (C). When R is positively reinforcement and C follows R (which happened in response to Sd), then R is more likely to happen in the future if Sd is contacted again. Behaviorist don’t say R is caused by Sd, but R is a function of Sd. They address the likelihood that R will happen in the future; the probability of R increases depending on C (reinforcement) received for R in the past. I happen to know that there is what they call the Matching Law, which basically states that as the reinforcement increases the response increases.

SVB and NVB are categories which depend on the sound of the speaker’s voice. In other words, the SVB speaker sounds totally different than the NVB speaker. The SVB speaker’s voice is said to be a discriminative stimulus (Sd), which sets the stage for an different kind of conversation than the NVB speaker’s voice. Once we know about the great difference between SVB and NVB, we are wondering, why we should still call NVB a conversation, which it is NOT, since the NVB speaker ALWAYS negatively affects his or her audience. The sound of the speaker’s voice sets the stage, sets to tone for how we interact with each other. Depending on the outcome of our conversation (the reinforcing consequence), we will be talking that way in the future more often.

Sd --------------> Response---------> Consequence
Speaker’s voice-> SVB-> Reinforcement/Equality
Appetitive stimulus----> SVB-----> Collaboration
Sounds Good------> SVB-----------> Togetherness

Sd --------------> Response---------> Consequence
Speaker’s voice---> NVB--> Hierarchy/Inequality
Aversive stimulus--> NVB----> Superior/Inferior
Sounds Bad-----> NVB-------> Struggle/Isolation

Fraley wants his readers to “consider two aspects of an instance of operant conditioning: (a) the momentary structure of the body that is being conditioned—a structure that, at any given moment, is determined by the prior operant conditioning of that body along with a variety of other physiological factors, and (b) the structure of the environment of that body, structured as it is at that same moment. Whatever verbal behavior then occurs to that body is simply the natural and inevitable reaction of that bodily structure to that environmental structure as energy from the latter impinges on the former.” I want my reader to carefully reread especially this last sentence, as it so poignantly describes the unequivocal fact that we are ALWAYS only able to react in the way that our body allows us to. In other words, our individual conditioning history determines how we behave and NOT some inner, willful, autonomous, behavior-causing ‘self’. As nobody knew about the SVB/NVB distinction as accurately and scientifically as we know now, SVB was NEVER deliberately, skillfully and continuously reinforced and, thus, we have been bound by consequences of NVB!

The aforementioned should also be described as our failure at predicting behavior. “Failure to predict accurately an impending behavior is not evidence that nature is capricious, but rather that the sets of variables that respectively define the body and its environment at that moment have not been subject to a full accounting.” Our NVB would NEVER fully account for the “sets of variables that respectively define the body and its environment” as it didn’t allow us to express and explore in conversation the tremendously important fact that we are indeed each other’s environment and we are affected by each other. Due to our NVB, we have remained oblivious about many scientific facts of human behavior.

Here follows a well-worded description of our urgent need to prevent our biases, which are all maintained by NVB. “Failure to render accurate predictions measures the ineffectiveness of the behavior of the person who predicts, not lapses in the functional aspect of nature. Given an instance of verbal behavior, we can always ask meaningfully what controlled it. The question pertains to its antecedent (i.e., evocative) environmental stimuli.” Addressing the negative effects of the sound of the (NVB) speaker’s voice has ALWAYS been a taboo, as by doing so we are questioning authority. “If our inquiry is informed by a philosophy of naturalism, we anticipate that a valid and reliable answer is possible in terms of measurable variables, and we tend to look for those behavior–controlling antecedent stimuli.” Although behaviorists are better at predicting behavior than anyone else – as they acknowledge the lawfulness of behavior – they have NEVER applied their knowledge to the destructive way of talking (NVB) that is common in every part of our world and may very well bring life on earth to an end. While behavior analysts are capable of teaching autistic children how to become verbal, they have NOT been able to accurately address the reason why we keep being engaged in NVB.

Please calmly read this long quote, which depicts the ‘confidence’ of a knowledgeable behaviorist. “In the past, under similar search conditions, we have so often discovered functional antecedent controls in proportion to the effort expended to discover them that our behavior to reveal such environmental evocatives for a specified behavior now tends to continue unabated (or, as it may be stated in terms of popular fictional constructs, our current expectation that precise controls exist to be discovered is much strengthened). Here we describe a philosophical contribution to scientific activity (i.e., the proposition that measurable functional antecedents of a detectable event always exist to be identified). In this case the relevant philosophy informs a typical kind of analytical activity in the field of verbal behavior—namely, the search for functional antecedent variables.” The sounds of the voices of the speakers are the discriminative stimuli, which precede our verbal responses and are called “antecedent variables.” As stated, it is the sound of the speaker’s voice which sets the stage for how we talk together: in NVB speakers speak AT each other, but in SVB they speak WITH each other; NVB speakers set themselves apart from their listeners, while SVB speakers connect and unite with their listeners.

With the correct knowledge, we can decrease our NVB and we can happily engage in SVB: “That scientific activity has potentially important technological implications pertinent to verbal behavior: Once those antecedent controls on some verbal behavior are identified and their functions have been delineated precisely, we can then manipulate those antecedent variables to gain control of the kind of verbal behavior that is dependent upon them.” Regardless of whether that NVB speaker is someone else or that we ourselves are that speaker, we just don’t like to listen to him or her. Only if we realize this, will we be able to stop our NVB and engage in SVB.

“In the context of this discussion, the important relation is between (a) the nature of the prevailing philosophy and (b) the ultimate realization of the useful technological capacities (i.e., the capacity to control the kind of verbal behavior in question). In general, the basic assumptions with which one begins one’s efforts to cope will indirectly determine the ultimate quality of life that is realized as a benefit of the scientific activity that those assumptions have informed. Better philosophy informs more effective science, which, in turn, yields more effective technology (i.e., environment–controlling arrangements). Those qualitative implications that inhere in these general relations remain valid when verbal behavior happens to be the kind of environmental event upon which the science is focused.” I love the way in which Fraley describes those “qualitative implications” of “effective technology (i.e. environment-controlling arrangements).” In that sense, it needs to be stated squarely that SVB is, of course, the ONLY way in which there can EVER be such a thing as scientific interaction. I believe that the “quality of life” depends on SVB.

It is precisely because they account for every aspect of verbal behavior, that behavior analysts are able to teach nonverbal children, from the bottom up, to become verbal. They can, and, in my opinion, should, also teach people to engage in SVB instead of in NVB. “When we are under general contingencies to account for a statement in its totality, we may inquire about the nature of the controls on that particular sample of verbal behavior, as when we ask why a given person would have just said that “a car will soon arrive at that intersection.” Was that statement controlled by a visual contact with an approaching car? Has the person perhaps only heard the sound of a distant car? Was it merely a probability statement based on the distribution pattern of passing cars during a preceding interval? We may also ask such questions about the elements of the statement: Why did the person say “a car,” and why a car instead of another kind of vehicle? Why was the word soon included? Why say that intersection instead of this intersection, or the intersection? Not only does the statement in general have its environmental controls, each formal linguistic nuance of its structure also results from controlling factors that can be identified. An old piece of wisdom asserts that there is a reason for everything, and that is certainly true when applied to verbal behavior and its elements. An important implication is that grammar or syntax should be taught in terms of the functional controls on linguistic forms rather than in terms of rules that prescriptively describe but cannot account for acceptable forms.” The difference between SVB and NVB only becomes apparent if we begin to pay attention to functional control. By asking the simple question: of what sound is our way of talking a function?, we will finally be able to actually hear that NVB is ALWAYS based on a speaker’s voice, which, if given the choice, we really don’t like to listen to, while SVB is based on a speaker’s sound we like to listen to. In effect, we are going to have more SVB as the consequences of SVB are incredibly reinforcing.