February 27, 2016
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer
Dear Reader,
In “Verbal
Understanding and Pavlovian Processes” by Tonneau (2004) the author states that
“Verbal understanding has not been explained convincingly with Skinner’s (1957,
1969) traditional operant framework.” Indeed, Skinner never mentioned what will
one day be considered the two most important response classes: Sound Verbal
Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB)! These universal response
classes have not been accounted for, because “verbal understanding, which
concerns the behavior of the listener (Parrot, 1984, 1987)has been neglected or
addressed in a deficient fashion.”
When we are being told
that “swimming in the river is dangerous” or “the pie is delicious”, we may
“avoid swimming” or “order a slice” because “exposure to an organized set of
verbal stimuli (including words such as “river” or “pie”) later leads to a
change of behavior with respect to their nonverbal referents.” As we can tact
the words “river” and “pie” the aforementioned remarks effortlessly lead us
avoid danger and order that delicious pie. We are familiar with such immediate
changes in nonverbal behavior due to verbal messages.
Since we don’t
know the terms SVB and NVB, we don’t pay attention to how good it feels to have
SVB or how terrible it feels to have NVB. The reason we don’t differentiate
between these response classes is because we don’t listen to how we sound while
we speak. If we would listen to how we sound while we speak, SVB and NVB would
become apparent. The purpose of this writing is to make us listen to how we
sound while we speak. The instruction is repeated a couple of times as this
will shape the behavior of speaker-as-own-listener.
Tonneau states“There
is a great difference between “directly
reinforced” and “derived
behavioral functions.” He writes “until recently, basic behavior-analytic
research dealt almost exclusively with the former case, the study of which
(Skinner, 1938) was taken as a model for the explanation of verbal behavior
(Skinner, 1957).”
Considering the
aforementioned difference that Tonneau is trying to address it is no wonder
that the distinction between SVB and NVB was never mentioned in behaviorist literature
as most behaviorists have mainly focused on “directly reinforced” behavioral functions.
As SVB and NVB are
best explained by Pavlovian processes, they fall into the category of “derived” behavioral functions. More
precisely, “The response distribution observed conditionally on A arises from
reinforcement in the presence of stimulus B distinct
from A (and entertains no formal similarity with A)(italics added).” In other
words, the “response distribution observed conditionally on A arises from
reinforcement in the presence of stimulus B distinct
from A” as it can be traced back to the history of the nonverbal stimuli
that were experienced by the listener during his or her spoken communication.
We
accept NVB as normal since we were often in environments in which it was
reinforced, but we will consider it as abnormal once we have been more often in
environments in which SVB is reinforced.
Once we can tact
these universal response classes, we can finally call a spade a spade as we then
differentiate between genuine and pretentious communication. When we have been
introduced to the SVB/NVB distinction we realize that SVB is “functionally
equivalent” to the communication in which the speaker has an appetitive effect
on the listener and NVB is “functionally equivalent” to the interaction in which
the speaker has an aversive, coercive effect on the listener.
I have pointed out
this distinction to all of my students and can tell you without any trace of
doubt that “the functional equivalence between verbal stimuli and their
referents” is as solid as a rock. Students tell me again and again their
exploration and knowledge of the SVB/NVB distinction has positively changed and
continues to change their lives. The construct
gives meaning to experiences they previously couldn’t understand. Like Tonneau,
I think that Pavlovian conditioning can answer the important question “what
produces the functional equivalence of verbal stimuli and their referents?”
Verbal stimuli of the speaker have a sound that always affects the listener.
The speaker who
induces SVB in the listener has a voice which is distinctively different from
the speaker who induces NVB. The stimulus which sets the stage for SVB is Voice
II and the stimulus which sets the stage for NVB is Voice I. Unless we are able
to discriminate, decrease and, ideally, completely extinguish the latter, we
cannot explore the former. As this was never our objective, we have not been able
to achieve this. However, with the SVB/NVB distinction in place, this is an
achievable, replicable and tremendously enjoyable objective.
The functional
equivalence of SVB and Voice II and NVB and Voice I becomes apparent when speakers are stimulated
to listen to their voice while they speak. When this happens, Voice I is
described as threatening or imposing by the listener, but Voice II is experienced
as comforting and soothing. Of course, each listener is changed by the extent
to which he or she has been exposed to Voice I or Voice II.
“Another way to
develop a non-mediational, Pavlovian account of verbal understanding is to
adopt a direct-memory standpoint (e.g. Marr, 1983) and replace covert mediators
by features of the environment defined over an extended time scale (Tonneau,
2001, pp. 21-23)”. “Understanding a language” not only “requires a history of
correlation, however indirect, between components of this language and the
nonverbal world”, it requires in my opinion SVB. “Absent such grounding, no
verbal understanding would be possible (Staats & Staats, 1959.” I insist
that our NVB always impairs and in the worst case, completely prevents our language
development.
“Extending
behavioral effects from one stimulus to another (or promoting functional
equivalence) is basically what Pavlovian conditioning does.” We have yet to
acknowledge that in NVB the listener will pair the noxious-sounding speaker
with the unequal, uni-directional relationship in which the speaker forces the
listener, while in SVB, the listener will pair the good-sounding speaker with equal,
, bi-directional relationship in which the speaker takes turns with the
listener. NVB and SVB are described by the listener as the difference between when
the speaker is talking_at or talking_with the listener.
Tonneau states
that “A Pavlovian account of verbal understanding must assume that human
behavior is sensitive to pairings between verbal and nonverbal stimuli, but
also to pairings between verbal stimuli and relational properties of the
environment (such as the property to-the-left-of), and to pairings between
syntactical relations among words and such environmental properties.” I urge
people to focus on the pairings between how
they sound and what they say. The
former is a nonverbal stimulus and the latter is a verbal stimulus.
This paring of
stimuli is apparent in SVB as the pleasant-sounding voice of the speaker goes
together with a sense of wellbeing that can only be experienced when verbal and
nonverbal stimuli are aligned and when there is a connection between the
speaker and the listener which is maintained by turn-taking. In NVB, by
contrast, a very different kind of pairing occurs. In NVB, the noxious-sounding
voice of the speaker is paired with the absence of turn-taking and the lack of
contact between the speaker and the listener due to the separation of the
speaker and the listener. Indeed, the NVB speaker presumably is hierarchically above
the listener and such a speaker’s voice is always paired with the experience of
social inequality.
When the listener
is given permission to speak by the NVB speaker, he or she is only allowed to
do so with a submissive sound. The NVB speaker immediately shows the listener,
who becomes a speaker, his or her place, when such a speaker speaks in what is
called a wrong, impolite or disrespectful tone of voice. The argument that
operant processes are more complex than respondent processes is false. This
becomes especially clear when we explore the SVB/NVB distinction.
We can engage in
SVB only as long as the speaker’s voice is not perceived as an aversive
stimulus by the listener. SVB is a much more complex and refined phenomenon
than NVB. The bluntness of NVB is paired with a certain tone of voice, while
the fine-grained precision and focus of SVB can only be achieved and maintained
by a voice that sounds good to the listener. “The complexity of a phenomenon is
no argument against its being governed by Pavlovian processes.”
Tonneau writes “Clearly,
words and their nonverbal referents often fail to be functionally equivalent.
Yet, the most central features of verbal understanding seem to require function
transfer from nonverbal to verbal stimuli and vice-versa.” Lack of such “transfer
from nonverbal to verbal stimuli and vice-versa” is due to NVB, the way of
talking which can’t facilitate such a transfer. Only the SVB speaker moves
flexibly between nonverbal and verbal stimuli.
NVB speakers are always
fixated on verbal stimuli. Moreover, they force the listener to disconnect from
their nonverbal experience. “It should be possible to increase the degree of
functional equivalence between words and objects by providing behavioral
supports and manipulating contextual stimuli.” SVB does exactly that; what we say is easier to be understood due
to how we say it. It is the voice of
the speaker which provides behavioral support for the listener and thus
increases “the degree of functional equivalence.”
In NVB there is no
support for the listener coming from the speaker. The NVB speaker owns the
contingency and forces the listener into submission. Thus, meaning is dictated by
the NVB speaker. It should be noted here that the NVB speaker doesn’t even have
the skill to “explain how verbal stimuli themselves acquire meaning.” The NVB
speaker is per definition completely oblivious of how his or her own verbal
stimuli correlate to the nonverbal environment, to the listener, as he or she
is NOT listening to him or herself while he or she speaks.
Without “Pavlovian
processes verbal stimuli would be meaningless”, but as long as NVB continues, the
issue of meaning remains out of our hearing range. My response to Tonneau should
make behavior analysist think about why they “spent an enormous time studying
operant reinforcement”, but have ignored non-operant reasons? Due to NVB, which
is as high among non-behaviorists as behaviorists, behaviorists adhered to “a
science of behavior” that “is like a one-sided coin”; radical behaviorism only “focuses
on the maintenance of responding by its consequences, but does not examine the
provenance of the responses that reinforcement maintains.”
The SVB/NVB
distinction, which, once acknowledged, will reliably increase SVB and decrease
NVB, allows us to explore and explain “complex behavioral phenomena, such as
verbal understanding,” which “require complex principles of induction.” Without
knowing what sets the stage for SVB and NVB, we could not make progress in our
investigation of “principles of behavioral induction that address the origins
of novel environment-behavior relations (Stemmer, 2002).”
This lopsidedness
of behavior analysis, to primarily focus on operant processes, comes as no
surprise to me. I have argued all along that if the SVB/NVB distinction is
acknowledged then behaviorism will gain a more scientific status. Although
Skinner has talked about “ostensive learning” (Skinner, 1957) most behavior
analysists tenaciously steer away from the Pavlovian processes. However, Skinner
never pointed out that if we listen to ourselves while they speak then we
achieve SVB, but if nothing stimulates us to listen to ourselves while we
speak, we are bound to engage in NVB. The high response rates of NVB account
for the behaviorist’s denial of the place of respondent processes in verbal
behavior. There is a logical reason for that.
When someone like
me points out the difference between SVB and NVB behaviorists take this personal
as it is personal. The SVB/NVB
distinction can be pointed out only in a genuine conversation and most
behaviorists have no time for that. The acknowledgment that the Pavlovian
processes may play a bigger role in the conditioning of verbal behavior than
previously thought threatens existing beliefs.
The SVB/NVB
distinction exposes the fact that even most behaviorists unfortunately engage
in coercive NVB public speech. How can we acquire a satisfactory account of our
verbal behavior if we don’t even know that we as speakers aversively affect the
listener? All the things associated with SVB and NVB, such as positive and
negative emotions, jump at us once we begin to listen to ourselves while we
speak. If students in my college class can do this, there is no reason why behaviorists
can’t do it and improve their verbal understanding.
