December 12, 2013

December 12, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

As his private speech became more under control of his knowledge about behaviorism, this writer first began to write and then to say things differently. The change in his private speech had occurred due to his study of behaviorism, due to what should be considered public speech. However, the change in this writer’s public speech proved to be a complicated matter. After he had read many works of behaviorists, he felt an enormous urge to talk with them. As he attempted to contact them, it became clear, however, that none of them was willing to talk with him. Although he had a couple of brief phone conversations with some of them, these interactions were a great disappointment to him, because spoken communication was not seen by them as something  that we needed to engage in, in order to find out the contingencies of reinforcement that made it possible. 

Almost all the people he interacted with said the same boring thing: write about it! Although this writer had attempted to write to them, he had always remained reluctant about his own writings, because he wanted to talk with them. To him, spoken words were infinitely more important than written words, but to them, written words, or rather, the publication of papers in peer-reviewed journals, was the only thing that really mattered. Because of this difference in focus, this writer went on with what was reinforcing to him and lost all interest in trying to reach these behaviorists. He had never really been interested in writing papers and he reasoned that he would only accept a Ph.D. from an institution that would arrange an examination committee that was willing to engage in a dialogue, so that they could talk together about his thesis of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and thus could explore and verify his findings. 

To this very day this writer’s thesis remained unchanged. He believes that SVB, which extends the work of Skinner on operant conditioning, must be investigated while we talk, because it cannot be investigated by reading someone's writing. Those who know operant conditioning - the way in which behavior operates on the environment - must be able to accept the obvious fact that contingencies of reinforcement pertaining to spoken language are not the same as those pertaining to written language. This should be enough reason for behaviorists to be willing to talk with one another, but it is not. It is evident to this writer, that, unlike Skinner, the spoken verbal behavior of most behaviorists is not under control of behaviorism. 

Behaviorists can often be heard lamenting among themselves about why radical behaviorism isn’t catching on more rapidly in academia. Although it is our biggest unresolved issue, spoken communication is, of course also behaviorism’s elephant in the room. Their refusal to talk with each other has caused them to write repetitive, tedious papers, which hardly anyone wants to read. A comparable process seems to have occurred in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, in which individuals fight within their own group for recognition of their own uniqueness, while outwardly, politically, they want “hearies” to have more understanding about them and get more recognition for the fact that they are different as a group. Like those in the deaf culture, behaviorists, due to their history of reinforcement, have difficulty acknowledging that their degree of deafness determines their preference of communicating. That we can remove ourselves from human interaction, by replacing our spoken with written language, has had many devastating consequences, only one of which is ignorance about and misrepresentation of behaviorism. 

   

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) brings life to behaviorism, because it makes us talk about what has been written. Skinner’s empirical work and the work of many other behaviorists will only find its way to a broader public when it is talked about. Naturally, such talking is teaching. The link between talking and teaching is of paramount importance. Since talking requires very different skills than writing, these skills will often develop at odds with each other. This writer, who earlier in his career was involved in acting, singing and poetry, knows for a fact that his talking had developed at the expense of his writing. 

However, there is nothing unique about lopsidedness. For many academics the opposite seemed to have occurred. Their ability to write scholarly papers became more important to them than their ability to speak.It must be emphasized that the competition and struggle for recognition in academia causes Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). To get a teaching position at a university, one must have published. On the other hand, it is nowhere a requirement that one must have spoken. It would make sense to have such a requirement, but only if we knew what that means. We all know what it means to publish a paper. We can look it up in our data base, we can find the paper and read it. As of yet, however, we do not know what it means to actually communicate. Our opinions about what that is lacks objectivity. It therefore appears to most scientists that our talking is mainly a subjective affair. 

By becoming aware of the great difference between SVB and NVB, we  become objective about our subjective communication experiences. Behaviorists should be capable of admitting that we are, when we speak, each other’s environment. Their inability to acknowledge this during their conversations with others should fail them as radical behaviorists and brand them as mentalists.  We are to some extent influenced by others and we are to some extent also influencing others. As verbal behavior, as Skinner has said, is behavior that is reinforced by others, there is no difference between SVB and NVB in that both are equally reinforced by others. What is reinforced only becomes clear if we analyze our behavioral repertoires. The spoken behavior to be modified requires a functional analysis. Enough has been written about how verbal behavior is reinforced by our environments. Once we speak about this matter, we will be stimulated to take note of the kind of behavior that is enhancing and enriching to us versus the behavior that is coerced and forced upon us. Only while we speak will we be able to acknowledge that SVB and NVB are universal response classes, which are mutually exclusive. 

SVB is the kind of communication which is recognized as reinforcing. NVB is also interpreted as reinforcing, but once the distinction between SVB and NVB has been made, it will be no longer viewed that way. It is this lack of comparison, which made us accept our NVB as normal, but once we can compare it to SVB, we recognize how deeply problematic NVB is. It makes biological sense that SVB is reinforcing for everyone, but that NVB is not. In SVB there is no activation of fight, flight or freeze response. In SVB there is no aversive stimulation. This means that in SVB we experience peacefulness, playfulness, relaxation and rejuvenation. The arousal of our nervous system in NVB is different because we are agitated, fearful, angered, aroused and anxious. We produce and use language differently under both these conditions.