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.
