Editing Verbal Behavior (section)

==Audiences==
Audience control is developed through long histories of reinforcement and punishment. Skinner's [[Applied behavior analysis#Discriminated operant and three-term contingency|three-term contingency]] can be used to analyze how this works: the first term, the antecedent, refers to the audience, in whose presence the verbal response (the second term) occurs. The consequences of the response are the third term, and whether or not those consequences strengthen or weaken the response will affect whether that response will occur again in the presence of that audience. Through this process, audience control, or the probability that certain responses will occur in the presence of certain audiences, develops. Skinner notes that while audience control is developed due to histories with certain audiences, we do not have to have a long history with every listener in order to effectively engage in verbal behavior in their presence (p.&nbsp;176). We can respond to new audiences (new stimuli) as we would to similar audiences with whom we have a history.

===Negative audiences===
An audience that has punished certain kinds of verbal behavior is called a negative audience (p.&nbsp;178): in the presence of this audience, the punished verbal behavior is less likely to occur. Skinner gives examples of adults punishing certain verbal behavior of children, and a king punishing the verbal behavior of his subjects.