The Role Of The Listener In Skinners Verbal Behavior Psychology Essay

The Role Of The Listener In skinners vocal port Psychology Es scanAbstractThis paper examines skinners compendium of the lineament of a bewarg unmatchedr in a loud free-spokenizer system- attendant vocal incident as a mediation of strengthenment for the communicatoryizers demeanor. Reinforcement as a mediation is an important component yet at the analogous meter it is insufficient translational aspect concerning the role of the hearer. As the conduct of the tender is more complex and needs to be considered more fully. Moreover, the concept of chthonianstanding and comprehend be examined. As mule skinner assumes a person who listens and does non react effectively that means he does non generalise and therefore he does non consequate the vocal deportment of the verbalizer. Nevertheless, a person might listen and understand plainly he deliberately doesnt want to comply to the vocalizers vocal fashion.Introduction mule drivers (1957) book, Verbal behaviour, primary focuses on the appearance of the speaker stainlessly he doesnt neglect the style of the auditor. As skinner explains that, an adequate enumerate of communicatory manner need cover alone as more of the way of the attender as is needed to explain the manner of the speaker ( muleteer, 1957, p. 2). Language, for skinner is a learned look under the functional potency of environmental contingencies. This whitethorn be evident when a man speaks or responds that becomes a question about human behavior and in its kink a question to be answered with adequate concepts and techniques of psychology as an experimental science of behavior (mule skinner, 1957, p. 5).Verbal operant units, on the other hand, are determined by identifying functional relations between verbal behavior and the environment. For exemplification, mand is controlled by motivational operations (MOs), the tact is controlled by discriminative stimuli (SD) in the var. of objects or dis mantlets, other forms of verbal operants are echoic, intraverbal, textual, and autoclitic behavior are controlled by (SD ) in the form of prior verbal stimuli and on the whole verbal behavior comes under the discriminative control of an earreach composed of a hearer or audience, including the speaker himself.Skinners Account of the Role of the ListenerSkinner defines verbal behavior as a behavior reinforced by dint of the mediation of other persons (Skinner, 1957, p. 2). We notice that at this initial definition of verbal behavior Skinner does not give much attention to the role of the tender, despite the fact that there would be little verbal behavior to consider if nearone had not already acquired special responses to the patterns of energy generated by the speaker. As a result, this omission can be justified, for the behavior of the listener in mediating the consequences of the behavior of the speaker is not necessarily verbal in any special sense (Skinner, 1957, p. 2). Sk inner considers the listeners essential role to be the development and mediation of reinforcement for the speakers behavior. In other rowing, the listeners role is to physically act upon the world and to reinforce the verbal behavior of the speaker.Skinner, however, states that the presence of a listener is necessary for a verbal episode. Hence, the behaviors of a speaker and a listener lendn together constitute a verbal episode, upon which Skinner emphasizes that together they compose what whitethorn be called a total talking to episode. Since there is nothing in such an episode which is more than the feature behavior of two or more individuals and consequently nothing come ins in the social unit. The speaker can be studied while assumptive a listener and the listener while assuming a speaker (Skinner, 1957, p. 2).Skinner in addition considers the speaker to be his own listener, as in many significant instances the listener is behaving at the equal fourth dimension as a speaker. Since the speaker and the listener may reside deep down the same skin. Thus, some of the behavior of audition resembles the behavior of speaking, mainly when the speaker understands what is said, this could be hush-hushly seen in verbal operants as echoics, mands, tacts, intraverbals and autoclitics. At this smear the speaker may serve as his own audience. As Skinner believes that an analysis of the speakers verbal behavior is determined by the establishment of a verbal repertoire of the listener without which there will be no verbal behavior.The listener plays a significant role according to Skinner in consequating the speakers behavior this could be seen when the listener provides a suit equal to(p) direct of attention as an eye contact, head nods, praise or even in the way he is standing face forward. This would give in its turn social reinforcement the speaker is hoping for. Also, responding to the speakers mands. This may be in the form of getting things, opening doors, and other nonverbal behavior. Another form of verbal behavior that is probably important in listening is echoic. As we covertly echo what we hear. Echoics are vocal responses that have excite-to-point correspondence with the vocal emissions of other speakers and that come to serve verbal functions (Skinner, 1957). A child may point to a toy and attempt to gain access to it. If a parent holds the toy while saying toy and the child indeed says toy in order to gain the toy, this is an example of an echoic response, in that the copying moves to a mand function. Listening, therefore is conceptualized as an operant behavior kept up(p) by the consequence of what is heard.A speaker and a listener may rotate responses turn-taking this is covertly observable. It is a dissolveicular type of interlocking verbal behavior units. As when both a listener and speaker responses are reinforced for an individual in a dyad involving turn-taking, it is an observable incidence of an episode in which both the speaker and the listener responses for each of the individuals are reinforced. In addition, there is another(prenominal) type of rotation as Skinner illustrates, the verbal fantasy, whether overt or covert, is automatically reinforcing to the speaker as listener. scantily as the musician plays or composes what he is reinforced by hearing, or as the artist paints what reinforces him visually, so the speaker engaged in verbal fantasy says what he is reinforced by hearing or writes what he is reinforced by reading (Skinner, 1957, p. 439). Therefore, this type of rotations between speaker and listener that occurs within the individuals own skin, which in some cases is covertly observable, is also reinforcing.The listener plays another important role as he can fix the speakers verbal behavior, he can also extinguish it. This could be evident in the social penalization delivered by the verbal community in the form of an audience. There control over the speakers verbal b ehavior may be emitted in the form of frowns, head nods or ignoring the speaker and not responding verbally or non-verbally to his verbal behavior. Therefore, in the presence of certain audiences whom the speaker has a previous register of being positively reinforced by a speaker may emit a certain response covertly while in the presence of a negative audience another form of response may be emitted that could be overtly or with low strength or a speaker may just stop talking. In other words, contrasting audiences will reinforce a single response differently, and for entirely different reasons (Skinner, 1957, pp. 230-232). Nonetheless, Skinner sums the cleverness of a listener to reinforce or punish a speakers verbal behavior that a listener must understand what the speaker is saying, to spang what the marrow of his verbal behavior is and to act strait-lacedly and effectively upon hearing the speakers verbal behavior.A Critique of Skinners Account of the Role of the ListenerIt seems as Skinner was progressively moving get on in Verbal deportment, he started to recognize some open frames in his discussions or in other lot some contradictions. But most of all he started to emphasize that the listener does hold an essential role in a speakers verbal behavior, he admits that it would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty of this subject matter (Skinner, 1957, p. 3). Skinner initially started with the notion that it will be helpful to restrict our definition by excluding instances of speaking which are reinforced by certain kinds of effectuate on the listener. The exclusion is arbitrary but it helps to define a cranial orbit of inquiry having certain unitary properties (Skinner, 1957, p. 224). Consequently, Skinner refined this further to say that the first restriction would be to limit the term verbal to instances in which the responses of the listener have been knowing. He then elaborates that if we make the further prep that the listener must be responding in ways which have been conditioned specifically in order to reinforce the behavior of the speaker, then we take our subject to be traditionally considered as the verbal field (Skinner, 1957, p. 224-225). Therefore, a listener according to Skinner is the individual who responds in a proper effective way to stimuli generated by a speakers verbal behavior. This takes us clog up to the point that a listener must understand first the consequence the speaker is talking about in order to be able to respond and to behave appropriately. However, a listener may in some situations understand what the speaker is saying or asking him to do but he doesnt want to do it or in other words comply to and follow what he is told to do.This could be examined in the following example when a parent may ask his grounded son to go and take the trash out. As a sign of anger the son does not comply to what his father asked him to do but at the same sequence he does understand what his father asked him to do take the trash out. This does not match Skinners previous assumption a listener who does not respond properly to the speakers verbal behavior does not understand what has been said. In another instance, a listener may echo a word in another language but he does not understand what it means the speaker may say heureux and the listener would say heureux. At the same metre Skinner explains that understanding something is to know what it means. The ability for a listener to engage in this behavior again in approaching analogous circumstances as a response to the proper stimulation under suitable circumstances is understanding. Since it does not involve any immediate natural action on the part of the listener (although responses of the other sorts already noted may take place concurrently), we detect the change single in his future behavior (Skinner, 1957,p. 357).A listener may say I understand only when he identified the variables which were mainly effective in lead story him to make the same response in another occasion (Skinner, 1957, p. 280). Yet, Skinners discussion on this part also lacks an explicit explanation for how a stimulus in the croak(prenominal) might bring behavior under the control of a stimulus in the present. This is also evident in the account of knowing which Skinner explains to be a hypothetical immediate condition that is detected only at a later date (Skinner, 1957, p. 363). In fact, at the last part of Verbal behaviour he argues that distant stimuli are lightheaded variables and contingencies that involve them commonly reinforce bridging behavior (Skinner, 1957, p.416-417). But, this means that behavior is disconnected and stopped at that point of time that needs to be bridged back. Yet, behavior is a continuous evolving interaction with the environment. Another point, there is no gap as Skinner assumes rather events are described in different ways and forms.Skinner considers understanding to be a covert beha vior as seeing and thinking. Yet at the end of Verbal Behavior Skinner states that there arent many differences between covert and overt behavior as the variables controlling them are the same. We cant really distinguish covert from overt behavior along functional lines. A person is an near listener for their own verbal behavior. Subtle behavior is easy for the listener to respond to when he is also the Speaker. Skinner elaborates further that thinking is most productive when verbal behavior leads to specific consequences and are reinforced as in the example of verbal daydreams. Skinner at the end of Verbal Behavior comes to the conclusion that thinking is behavior, overt or covert, verbal or nonverbal (Skinner, 1957, p.446-452).This takes us back to the very beginning of Verbal Behavior in which Skinner started by assuming that the behavior of the listener cannot be distinguished from behavior in general (Skinner, 1957, p.2). Yet, this makes us wonder why he tackled thinking to be a separate entity and the listener was marginalized. Is the listener a subject at the time Skinner wrote Verbal Behavior to be a complicated subject matter to a point he deliberately avoided discussing. If thats the issue why would Skinner take the speaker to be his own listener, and how the listener and the speaker are within one skin? Does this in its turn lead us to assume that the speaker is also a behavior? Of what we have discussed so far a solution might be in separating the listener and the speaker into two established individual entities and consequently to examine the listeners role in depth. Also, to explain further how understanding a verbal stimulus might be converted to a nonverbal response on part of a listener which Skinner does not give enough attention to in his discussions.ConclusionAs we have discussed Skinner explains that the essential role of the listener is in the development and mediation of reinforcement for the speakers behavior. But, at the same time com munication is regarded to be successful only if an expression has the same marrow for both the speaker and the listener. As numerous theories of meaning are usually applied to both speaker and listener as if the meaning operate were the same for both. Yet, much of the behavior of the listener has no resemblance to the behavior of the speaker and is not verbal according to Skinners definition (Skinner, 1957, p. 33).Skinner suggests that the behavior of the listener is more complex and needs to be considered more fully, as once a repertoire of verbal behavior has been set up, a number of new problems arise from the interaction of its parts. As verbal behavior is usually the effect of multiple causes in which separate variables combine to uphold their functional control, and as a result new forms of behavior emerge from the recombination of old fragments. Consequently, this has appropriate effects upon the listener. His behavior then calls for analysis oddly in the case that a spea ker is normally also a listener. The speaker reacts to his own behavior in several significant ways. The mere emission of responses is an incomplete characterization when behavior is composed. As another consequence of the fact that the speaker is also a listener, some of the behavior of listening resembles the behavior of speaking, particularly when the listener understands what is said. (Skinner, 1957, p.10) However, each person is controlled by a different history of reinforcement and controlling contingencies. That leads a speaker to self-edit his verbal behavior when he finds that what he said has a different meaning for the listener who in his turn is controlled by a different history of reinforcement and different controlling contingencies. Therefore, a speaker to avoid punishment he engages in a self-editing behavior.We notice that Skinners definition of verbal behavior still need further refinement to elaborate further on the nature and function of the role of a listener in a verbal episode. I find Skinners own comments on Verbal Behavior to be proper conclusion on the listeners role for the behavior of the speaker, as he states it forward to future critics that the issue of listener needs further examination.Most of my book Verbal Behavior (1957) was about the speaker. It contained a a couple of(prenominal) diagrams showing interactions between speakersand listeners, but little direct discussion of listening. I could justify that because, except when the listener was also to some extentspeaking, listening was not verbal in the sense of being effective only through the mediation of other persons. But if listeners are responsible for the behavior of speakers, we need to look more closely at what they do. (Skinner, 1989, p. 86)Skinner has tackled a very complicated subject matter, he might not dealt with all its aspects with the same level of cohesion and consistency but at the same time he has opened the door for future thinkers and critics to contin ue and press out on what he has established.