I have now read both published works of B.F. Skinner on the topic of Verbal Behavior: Verbal Behavior based on the William James Lectures (1948) and the seminal Verbal Behavior (1957) (called his magnus opus in Schlinger (2008)). Comments in this post mainly concern the preceding work. As a preliminary remark, I must say that even in it’s earlier form, the material presented in the lectures is outstanding and much of it remained intact and expanded until it was finally published in 1957.

This post may not be the easiest to understand without prior acquaintance with verbal behavior, especially without experience of radical behaviorism. But as Skinner himself said:

It is the difference between the systematic simplicity of science and the easy comprehensibility of the layman’s account. Newton’s Principia was not simple to the man in the street, but it was simpler than everything which the man in the street had to say about the same subject matter. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 42)

In the document (available online), one finds a plethora of interesting material:

1. A scientific outlook on human behavior

The speaker as a causal agent has no place in a scientific account of verbal behavior. The control always goes back to the environment and to the history of the organism. Those activities which seem at the moment to exemplify control are in themselves only another kind of behavior, which we have

a reasonable chance of accounting for as a science of verbal behavior is further developed. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 114)

2. Defiance of other “scientific” work

Psychologists have not developed a workable conception of verbal behavior because they have, continued to accept a formulation which involved a fictional explanation of the data. No matter how adequate an account may be given in the non-verbal field, in the field of verbal behavior psychologists, like everyone else, have continued to explain the activities of the physical or biological organism by appealing to the behavior of an inner agent. (p. 5) Most of the material of linguistics, for example, is not relevant to our major problem, no matter how secure or fascinating the facts may be. (p. 18) B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures

3. The probability of behavior as the basic unit of study

Hence we take, as our immediate datum, not the response itself, but its tendency to occur, or its probability of occurrence, or, in a word, its “strength.” B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 13)

4. The definition of verbal behavior

Verbal behavior is impotent in the physical world alone. When we behave verbally someone must intervene if we are to achieve an effect. This simple fact, as obvious as any fact can well be, provides a useful preliminary definition: verbal behavior is behavior which is reinforced through the mediation of another organism. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 20)

After this, 14 characteristics of verbal behavior are provided which will not be listed here. Because over 70 years have passed after the publication of the definition given above, I believe it’s useful to provide a recent refined definition:

Verbal behavior is behavior that (as a real stimulus event) evokes another organism’s responses that mediate—as in provide—the reinforcers for the first organism’s behavior, after verbal–community contingencies have conditioned such mediating behavior, and where typically both organisms are verbal community members. Ledoux (2014) – Running Out of Time: Introducing Behaviorology to Help Solve Global Problems (p. 443)

Skinner notes an interesting implication of the definition:

The behavior of the listener is not essentially verbal at all. When the listener is also behaving as a speaker, his behavior is verbal because it has consequences which bring it within the scope of our original definition, but listening, as such, is not covered by the definition and differs in no important way from responses to nonverbal stimuli. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 115)

This has been disputed, e.g. in Schlinger (2008) – Listening Is Behaving Verbally. Even though I find some of the statements far-fetched, the basic conclusion sounds:

Following Skinner’s lead in Verbal Behavior, in the present article I have also suggested that there are linguistic features common to both speaker and listener, but the commonality is that both individuals engage in verbal behavior. Henry D. Schlinger (2008) – Listening Is Behaving Verbally (p. 158)

In any case, when speaking about verbal behavior we have to remember:

Ironically, however, Skinner’s unique contribution to the study of language as verbal behavior was that it is not fundamentally different from other operant behavior. Henry D. Schlinger (2008) – Listening Is Behaving Verbally (p. 147)

5. Introduction of new vocabulary for verbal behavior

Mand

Tact

Intraverbal

Autoclitic

6. Use of “discrimination”

This term still is widely used, but useful to note other suggestions for the same process – the suggestion is evocation. An evocative stimulus (or, as we used to say, a discriminative stimulus) is a stimulus that discriminates occasions when a reinforcer follows the evoked response. In this case a stimulus is “doing” the discriminating rather than an inner agent, which some folks might see as an improvement. But no such thing happens, in either case; neither stimuli nor inner agents discriminate. Stimuli are just stimuli; they neither change nor discriminate. Any changes happen at the physiological level inside the skin.But traditional cultural conditioning evokes inappropriate inner–agent–account responses when we go inside. If the stimuli are not discriminating, then surely the inner agent has this job. But inner agents lack status, so they cannot discriminate either. Ledoux (2014) – Running Out of Time: Introducing Behaviorology to Help Solve Global Problems (p. 286)

7. Negative reinforcement used as punishment

Today the term negative reinforcement is restricted to escape contingencies. In Skinner’s early work he used the term to mean punishment. Note by David Palmer (2009) in B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 180)

8. No mechanism of obtaining verbal behavior for private events

One difference between the 1948 and 1957 Verbal behavior versions is the explanation how verbal responses are formed regarding private events. In the William James lectures this topic is only tangentially discussed while in Verbal behavior four ways are identified:

(1) A common public accompaniment of the private stimulus which eventually controls the response may be used. <..> (2) A commoner practice is to use some collateral response to the private stimulus. <..> (3) A third possibility is that the community may not need to appeal to private stimuli at all; it may reinforce a response in connection with a public stimulus, only to have the response transferred to a private event by virtue of common properties, as in metaphorical and metonymical extension. <..> (4) When a response is descriptive of the speaker’s own behavior, there is a fourth possible way in which a private stimulus may acquire control. The original contingency may be based upon the externally observable behavior of the organism, even though this stimulates the speaker and the community in different ways. If the behavior is now reduced in magnitude or scale, a point will be reached at which the private stimuli survive although the public stimuli vanish. In other words, behavior may be executed so weakly or so incompletely that it fails to be seen by another person, although it is still strong enough to stimulate the behaver himself. B. F. Skinner (1957) – Verbal Behavior (p. 166-168)

9. Translations from common to radical behavioristic language

Arguably the most useful and interesting practice in the Verbal Behavior series is the restating of commonly heard/read sentences into scientific verbal behavior form. Some examples:

Crying is not voluntary – or, in technical terms cannot be conditioned as an operant. (p. 55) The generality is clear in the report, “I tried desperately to think of something to say.”This might be translated, “I was moved to say something but no responses were strengthened by the situation.” (p. 39) In any determined system there is no difference between “can” and “will” except that “can” implies a set of circumstances which must be specified in the case of “will.” The fact that a person “can say Beaver” is simply the fact that there are circumstances under which he will. (p. 40) When we say “He reminds me of so-and-so but I don’t know why”, we are saying essentially ‘He leads me to say “so-and-so” but I can’t identify the controlling feature of his appearance.’ (p. 98) B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures

10. Humor

One curious, yet difficult issue concerns humor. What is funny? In what conditions do we laugh? It should be obvious by now that the answer will fall under the topic of verbal behavior and Skinner once again provides guidance:

But wit, as a form of verbal play, is still unaccounted for. This “effect upon the listener” involves his latent verbal behavior. The supplementary evocation of a very feeble response, for example, is generally funny. The original controlling variable may be vague, the metaphorical or generic relation far-fetched, or the intraverbal sequence unusual. (p. 140) It is not essential that a funny remark be illogical; many examples simply show weakness. <..> Humor is an almost inevitable by-product of multiple causation. (p. 141) According to the modern taste a pun is good if both variables are relevant. Otherwise it is aptly called far-fetched. (p. 80) B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures

So, the cocktail of humor seems to include multiple causes for saying something, one of it of small strengh (aka small probability). A funny example illustrating that verbal behavior may have multiple different effects on behavior:

A distinguished scholar frequently acknowledged a complimentary copy of a book by writing to

the author I shall lose no time in reading the book you have sent me. With respect to one audience this was synonymous with I am going to read it as soon as possible. With respect to another audience, of

which the scholar himself was a member, it was synonymous with I can’t waste my time on such stuff. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 77)

11. Consciousness / Self-awareness

The topic of consciousness is perhaps the most mystified, incomprehensible and fruitless in common language and “science” without radical behaviorism. Here we encounter such terms as “qualia”, “subjective experience”, “panpsychism” etc. Therefore, this section deserves a post of its own. For now however, some comments from the lectures shall suffice:

They do not use it consciously” would become “It is not conditioned as a verbal response”… (p. 36) We engage in such secondary behavior, aside from any interest in a science of verbal behavior, because it is important to the verbal community and well reinforced. It answers questions like “What did you say?” and “Why did you say that?” and the answers are as important to the community as the primary behavior itself. One of the curious consequences of this fact is that we develop a sense of awareness because it is important to someone else. For social reasons, our behavior becomes important to ourselves. (p. 96) Whether the speaker or writer is aware of a relation will be important in the making of sentences. It is essentially a question of whether the relation itself enters in as a variable in the control of other behavior. (p. 81) B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 77)

What Skinner drives at that consciousness or self-awareness is socially conditioned. Humans are conditioned to respond to behavior because it is significant for the social community.

12. Drives

This term appears multiple times throughout the lectures. It has to commented upon because for an avid reader of B.F. Skinner, this usage appears most unusual. Furthermore, the drive theory was bitterly criticized in Noam Chomsky’s review of Verbal Behavior (1959) – this was misleading because in the critiqued Verbal Behavior (1957) the usage was discontinued.

First of all, we have to mind the environment the 1948 text was composed in. The publication is based on verbally delivered William James lectures:

But a series of lectures is not the place to develop a new vocabulary. The lecturer determines

the pace and the listener cannot review the use of a term at will. I shall therefore keep unfamiliar technical terms to a bare minimum. B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 17)

Perhaps Skinner was influenced by the audience’s greater acquaintance with the term. Nevertheless, a clarification is provided at the end of the text:

A term like “drive” has been used merely as a shortcut to refer to specifiable operations which alter the strength of behavior through deprivation and satiation. “Ideas” and “meanings” were attacked simply to make way for “causes.” B. F. Skinner (1948) – Verbal Behavior: William James Lectures (p. 165)

Going further, in Skinner’s Science and Human Behavior (1953, 5 years later) drives are disregarded and in Verbal Behavior (1957, 9 years later) almost completely omitted:

It is simpler to omit any reference to a “drive” and say that the probability of the response Water! can be changed through these operations. B. F. Skinner (1957) – Verbal Behavior (p. 65)

Current state of the science of verbal behavior

Common knowledge / psychology:

As is usually expressed in this blog that contemporary psychology is not adequate, widespread parlance regarding the topic of verbal behavior is little different. Without going into much detail, people are still misled and in the futile search for “ideas”, “meanings”, “minds”, “biological/genetic theories of language development”. Without the spread of proper behavioral science, little progress can be made and what awaits are only dead-ends.

Radical behaviorism:

A fascinating graph explaining the basic relationships of verbal behavior is published in Ledoux (2014) – Running Out of Time: Introducing Behaviorology to Solve Global Problems (p. 452-453). The same graph can be found online:

Worth a mention, as well, is the recent second edition of 2020 of the Operants magazine published by my beloved B.F. Skinner Foundation available here. The theme of the edition closely relates to verbal behavior as it concerns private/inner events. I believe (the probability is high) that I shall return to today’s topic based on this edition of Operants.

I want to state that having read B.F. Skinner and being acquainted with radical behaviorism, almost all other theoretical positions regarding human behavior seem primitive, boring, unenlightening, misleading – therefore I could not stronger recommend having a go at reading some of Skinner’s works. To end this post, a very fitting and optimistic statement was given by Skinner in the lectures, regarding the progress of science: