Download Seminar: Skinner`s Analysis of Verbal Behavior

12/29/2015
Seminar: Skinner’s Analysis of
Verbal Behavior
PRIVATE EVENTS
Dr Emily Kerwin
Regis College
Private Events in a Natural Science
• Behavior analysis seeks to explain behavior by
identifying environmental variables
functionally related to behavior
– Variables are often publicly observable events
– Accessible not only to the behaving individual but
to others
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Private Events in a Natural Science
• Skinner stated:
– the environment includes “…any event in the
universe capable of affecting the organism”
– Includes universe outside the organism and small
part of the universe enclosed within the
organism’s skin
Private Events in a Natural Science
• Environment includes:
– Public stimulation
– Private stimulation
• A complete account of human behavior must
consider private events and the role such
events play within a natural science
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Private Events vs. Mentalism
• Inclusion of private events in explanations of human behavior
common in traditional forms of psychology
– Appeal to the inner causes of behavior
– Events within the nervous system
– Mental processes
• Mentalism
– Behavior caused by phenomena that exist within a dimension inside of
the individual
– Dimensions may be:
•
•
•
•
Psychic
Mental
Cognitive
Spiritual dimensions
Private Events vs. Mentalism
• Radical behaviorism rejects mentalism
– Objection is not that phenomena within other dimensions
cannot be objectively observed and measured
– Refute that such internal dimension even exist
– Leads to the search and acceptance of erroneous
conclusions about causes of behavior
• Behavior is explained by identifying the functional relations
between behavior and environmental conditions
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Private Events vs. Mentalism
• Moore (2008)
– Three major differences between the position on private events for radical
behaviorism and mentalism
1. Private stimulation occurs within a behavioral dimension
as compared to some alternative dimension inside the
individual
2. Private forms of stimulation occur within a behavioral
dimension and are therefore functionally related to the
environment
3. Radical behaviorism argues that when behavioral events
occur, private forms of stimulation are not necessarily
functionally related to the behavior.
Within a Behavioral Dimension
• Skinner (1945) “The Operational Analysis of
Psychological Terms”
• Some behavior is partly controlled by a set of
conditions accessible only to behaving individual
• “There is nothing mysterious or metaphysical about
this; the simple fact is that each speaker possess a small
but important private world of stimuli”
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Within a Behavioral Dimension
• Verbal Behavior (1957)
• “It does not follow that this private world is made of
any different stuff—that it is in any way unlike the
world outside the skin or inside another’s skin”
• Private events may be uniquely related to behavior
due to limited accessibility, but are not assigned
special qualities
• No assumptions that the control exerted by such
stimuli is different from that of public events
Functionally Related to the
Environment
• Mentalistic orientations suggest that private
events exist in another dimension (the mental,
psychic, spiritual, etc.) and therefore occur
independent of the environment
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Functionally Related to the
Environment
• To support his objection to the traditional
view of private events, Skinner (1953)
provided the following example:
–
“Similarly it has often been argued that the conditioned reflex is inadequate
because it omits mention of a link traditionally described as the ‘association of
ideas.’ To report that a man salivates when he hears the dinner bell may be to
overlook the fact that the dinner bell first “makes him think of dinner” and
that he then salivates because he thinks of dinner. But there is no evidence
that thinking of dinner, as that expression has been defined here, is more than
a collateral effect of the bell and the conditioning process. We cannot
demonstrate that thinking of dinner will lead to salivation regardless of any
prior event, since a man will not think of dinner in the absence of such an
event (p.279).”
Functionally Related to the
Environment
• Radical behaviorism
– Private events take place as a result of the history
of the individual’s interaction with the
environment
– Do not occur beyond environmental events within
some internal dimension
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Not Necessarily Functionally
Related to Behavior
• Moore (2008) stated, “…the private forms of
stimulation are only contingently effective, rather
than necessarily effective” (p.216).
– Private forms of stimulation may not be functionally
related to behavior
– If they are functionally relevant contribute to
discriminative control
• In other words, an analysis of private events is
not necessary to account for behavior
Not Necessarily Functionally
Related to Behavior
• Mentalism
– Causal relationships between mental phenomena & behavior
– Private events play a necessary & independent role in the
occurrence of behavior
– Appeal to mental phenomena is required to adequately explain
behavior
– Any explanation of behavior which omits the function of such
phenomena is incomplete
• Skinner (1953)
– “But the private event is at best no more than
a link in a causal chain, and it is often not
even that” (p. 279).
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Dialogue on Private Events
Debates
Palmer
McDonough
Layng
Verbal Responses to Private Events
• Two challenges to a functional analysis of behavior as
a result to privacy of some stimulation:
– Access to private stimulation is inaccessible to individuals
other than the person behaving, cannot point precisely to
the controlling variables necessary for prediction and
control
– Even without access to the controlling stimuli, individuals
still learn verbal response to such stimulation
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Verbal Responses to Private
Stimulation
• Skinner (1945) offered an interpretive analysis of
how the verbal community generates responses
to private events without direct access to the
controlling stimuli
• He proposed four possible ways in which this may
occur
–
–
–
–
Public Accompaniment
Collateral Responses
Common Properties
Response Reduction
Public Accompaniment
• Private events may be accompanied by some
public event in the presence of which person
is taught to tact a private event in agreement
with the usage of the community
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Public Accompaniment
• Example: Child scraps knee that then bleeds
• Blood = public accompaniment
• May exert control over an adult’s verbal response “That
hurts” or something similar
• Both public and private stimuli are available to the child
• Private stimuli may be more salient and therefore
become the controlling stimuli for the child’s tact “That
hurts” she scraps her knee in the future
Collateral Responses
• Collateral responses are elicited by the same
stimuli but not taught through environmental
contingencies
• Collateral responses generally unconditioned,
non-verbal responses from which the
community infers private stimuli
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Collateral Responses
• Example: Holding the stomach when having a
stomach ache
• As a result of these collateral responses the community
may infer a private event and make a related verbal
response (for example, “stomach ache”).
• The salience of the private event for the speaker may
be stronger than the collateral public response and
come to control relevant verbal behavior in the future
Common Properties
• Verbal responses may be taught related to
public temporal, intensive, or spatial
properties of events
• When private events occur with similar
properties, a verbal response may take place
as a result of stimulus generalization
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Common Properties
• Example: “Throbbing”
– Learned to call some public stimulus that
oscillates in intensity “throbbing”
– A headache that oscillates in intensity may also
evoke the response “throbbing” (Peterson, 1978)
Response Reduction
• When the speaker is describing his or her own
overt behavior, the verbal community supplies
reinforcement based upon the observable
properties of such behavior
• Likely that additional private stimulation
occurs in connection with the public behavior
• Verbal community sets up the reinforcing
contingency based upon the external behavior
but private stimulation also acquires control
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Response Reduction
• Skinner (1957)
– “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, the 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” (p.
133).
Response Reduction
• Covert responses may be operant responses
which have receded in magnitude or intensity
to a point that they are no longer publicly
observable
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Response Reduction
• Example: Silent reading (Moore, 2008)
– Behavior first taught to occur publicly to public stimuli through
reinforcing contingencies arranged by the verbal community
– Once public behavior taught, reading may become private
– Not the result of a mental act or processes
– Result of additional contingencies arranged by the public
environment
– Social community may punish reading aloud
– Responses are eventually reduced in volume until they are no
longer detectable
– Advantages to reading silently such as increased rates of
responding and decreased response effort
Response Reduction
• Example: Thinking (Moore, 2008)
– Skinner (1957): covert verbal behavior that
automatically affects the behaver and generates its
own reinforcement
– Speaker serves as his or her own listener
– Skinner (1953):
• “Verbal behavior, however, can occur at the covert
level…Moreover, it may remain effective at the convert level
because the speaker himself is also a listener and his verbal
behavior may have private consequences. The covert form
continues to be reinforced, even though it has been reduced
in magnitude to the point at which it has no appreciable
effect on the environment (p.264).”
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Verbal Responses to Private
Stimulation
• Significance:
– Methods provide a means by which the verbal
community avoids the problems presented by
private stimulation
• Limitations:
– Precision of responding to private stimuli does not
match responding to public stimuli
– Contingencies that establish verbal behavior
under the control of private stimuli are defective.
• Skinner (1957) “Everyone mistrusts verbal responses
which describe private events”
“Strangely enough, it is the community which
teaches the individual to ‘know himself’”
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Feelings
• How does Skinner describe feelings in
general?
• What are the specific behavior analytic
descriptions he gives of:
– Love
– Anxiety
– Fear
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