January 23, 2014

January 23, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Although the experiment with different letter types is officially over, this writer today chooses to write with the letter type “Old English Text” because he hadn’t yet used it. In terms of how letter types determine what one writes, this is an interesting and unexpected addition to the previous experiment. Writing with different letter types led to the observation that what one writes is a function of multiple discriminative stimuli: writing is preceded by antecedent stimuli (the letter type) and followed by consequences (what is written). Initially, the experiment was based on an accidental discovery that there was a difference between when this writer wrote with a pen and when he wrote with keyboard. This discovery was emphasizing the consequence.

Because the experimentation was experienced as reinforcing, this writer came to recognize a difference in the content between what was hand-written with a pen and what was key-boarded and put in a file called “Typed Journal.” Because he felt so familiar and comfortable with writing with a pen, he was more inclined to write in his hand-written journal. While experimenting, he discovered, however, there was not only a big difference between what he had written with a pen and key-boarding, but but also between the parts of his journal that were written with a pen and those parts that were written with a pencil. Witnessing this huge difference was so inspiring that the author became curious about what he would write with different letter types. 

In the beginning, he preferred his handwritten journal over his key-boarded journal, but this changed during the experiment because he realized there were many letter types to choose from on his lap top computer. Due to his positive experience of key-boarding, this writer began to like his key-boarded journal so much that he gave up on his hand-written journal. Moreover, he became much less apprehensive about his writing. He had always felt uncertain about his writing, but during this process of experimentation, this uncertainty dissolved. This happened, as stated, due to the   reinforcing and revealing consequences of his writing, which kept his exploration going. This writer wrote with many different letter types, each time anticipating a different outcome. His prediction worked, but only up to a point. The experiment came to an end when choosing a new letter type became a boring routine for him.

Actually, the experimentation only momentarily came to an end. It continued, but in a different manner. After he noticed that choosing a different letter type, which had been a stable variable in his experimentation, was no longer reinforcing, he didn’t like the pressure which seemed to come with writing with a new letter-type. He felt this pressure because he wanted his discovery to be consistent over time. Consequently, his writing had become a function of the thoughts that had been preceding his writing. Thus, a change in the consequence, which was no longer reinforcing to him, had led to a change in the antecedent thought processes that preceded his written responses.

When this writer decided this morning that he didn’t have to choose a new letter type, he felt immediate relief. Because of this reinforcing consequence, his writing was now preceded by verbal self-talk stimuli of being off the hook. By recognizing, while writing about it, how consequences affect his preceding self-talk stimuli, it became apparent that, even though writing had happened as a response, it had not gotten much attention. What had been written at one moment as a function of antecedent stimuli was written at another moment as a function of post-cedent consequences. 

What was written or said can only be considered after it was written or said. Writing about writing happens after writing and speaking about speaking happens after speaking. Besides, speaking about speaking can only happen after if there was listening, and writing about writing can only happen after there was reading. Before writing there was no writing and nothing to be read. Before speaking there was no speech and nothing to be listened to.  This is not to say that nothing happened before speech or that nothing made speech happen. Life in the verbal community was already happening before we individually learned how to speak and write. Language was taught to us by competent members of our verbal community. Their knowledge and skills in speaking and writing preceded our knowledge and skills in speaking and writing. We can only begin to talk and write about that after we have learned how to talk and after we have learned how to write. We will not be inclined to talk much about talking if there was not much talking about talking in our verbal community. We will not we be inclined to write much about writing if there was not much writing about writing in our verbal community. Such constraints affected our reading and listening, because we were conditioned by talking, which didn’t involve much talking about talking and by writing, which didn’t involve much writing about writing.