June 18, 2014

RE: Response to two papers by Per Holth that were published in the European Journal of Behavior Analysis: 1) “What is a problem? Theoretical conceptions and methodological approaches to the study of problem solving” (2008) and 2) “Different sciences as answers to different Why Questions” (2013).

June 17, 2014

Chico, California, USA

Dear Per,  

I have, of course, read the paper you send to me. Thank you very much for that. Before I read that paper, I had already read the one on problem solving to which I will also respond. I just got done staining the fence of my yard and I turned on the TV to watch the World Cup Soccer match between Algeria and Belgium. I will start on my new full time job next week and I have for the first time in years a week off. In this new job I will support individuals who are released from prison back in society, an interesting assignment for a behaviorist, since these are different environments requiring different behavior repertoires. 

I will be teaching classes to stimulate ex-convicts to maintain positive family relations, find employment and cope with a variety of mental health issues. I tell you about this so that you can get a sense of what I do.  In my previous two part-time jobs I was a mental health worker at a group home for mentally ill clients and a psychology instructor at the local college. To pay the bills, I will continue teaching an evening class in addition to my new job. 

You are probably too busy to read all this, but I am pretty sure you will make time, because not that many people write a response to your papers to begin with, let alone a response like mine. I don’t mind writing to people from whom I got a lousy response (like yours) or no reaction at all. I am used to it and I have come to expect it. Rarely do I get in touch with someone who is willing to speak about what they have written. Since that does happen, however, I am intermittently reinforced and I keep trying until someone is available. Behaviorists who respond by talking with me find that we have a lot in common.  

Before I will go into responding to your two papers, I want to thank you for how you have already contributed to my work. Your stern opinion informs me about the punitive historical contingencies that must have shaped most of your authoritarian behavior. I am quite familiar with the rigidity which speaks from your writings. I recognize in its forcefulness the establishing operation, which in my case set the stage for the exploration of reinforcing effects afforded by the knowledge of behaviorism. It is uncommon for scholars to responds to each other personally, but that is what I am into.  Perhaps you can one day do the same with me?

To me, you are just another person and I talk with you in this writing, because you don’t want to speak with me. Although you may be put off by this, I am sure you can handle it, because you have already proven to be well-practiced in dismissing what someone else says. People like you miss out on the acknowledgment which they have worked so hard to obtain. Just as Skinner made something available that wasn’t there, I too make something available which wasn’t there. By doing so, I extend Skinner’s as well as your view. I say this as a fact which is confirmed by virtually everyone I have ever worked with. 

I shall shortly turn to your paper about problem solving. Probably, it helps me more to respond to you in writing than in a conversation. Focusing on these written words forces me to make sense of what I am saying. In spoken communication we seem to be constantly struggling and disagreeing with each other about “What is the problem?” How can we even begin to solve problems of spoken communication if we can’t even agree on what the problem is? Defining the problem certainly is in itself also a problem. In fact, defining the problem is the problem. 

If, during our spoken communication, we can leave our problems undefined, we can explore what a communication is like that is without problems. To achieve Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is something we are not used to. We are conditioned by a spoken communication in which we struggle to define the problem. Such a communication is called Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) for no other reason than that it just sounds terrible. The voices of the speakers who are involved in NVB grab, stab, choke, punch, push, tear, pull, drain, irritate, hurt, coerce and threaten. 

Defining the problem is, of course, never itself the problem, but the struggle to define the problem, while we speak, is definitely a big problem, which prevents us from seeing how we each, depending on our own unique behavioral history, define the problem very differently. In our written treatises it becomes more difficult to decipher that our different theoretical writings are, more often than we are capable of recognizing, a function of NVB, in which the struggle and demand for attention is audible in the sound of the voices of those who do all the talking. 

Defining the problem in writing is not the same as defining the problem while speaking. As stated by this writer in previous writings, written versions of the problem of spoken communication did not and could not advance human relationship. It is only a different kind of spoken communication which will do that. To have SVB, we must talk and stop predetermining what is said by what was written. Only during SVB can we change and talk spontaneously. 

Now that this author has made these preliminary remarks, he is ready to give his response to the paper “What is the problem? Theoretical conceptions and methodological approaches to the study of problem solving.” What this paper describes very well is how we have come up with all sorts of problems (Duncker’s candle problem, string problems of the Maier type, Luchin’s water jar problem, Tower of Hanoi problems, and Missionary and Cannibals problems), which, since they don’t describe our communication problem, lack ecological validity. If it is our goal, however, to “develop structural classes that correspond to functional classes of problems” the distinction between SVB and NVB makes perfect sense. 

Since SVB is a function of bi-directional spoken communication in which the speaker can become the listener and the listener can become the speaker, since NVB is a function of uni-directional coercion, which prevents spoken communication, because it doesn’t stimulate the speaker to become a listener and it prevents the listener from becoming a speaker, the SVB-NVB distinction is closer to the facts of real life and explains what happens in everyday human interaction with verbal acrobatics, theoretical, methodological or on any other level. This is where the verbal rubber hits the nonverbal road. Since only “real-life problems are considered to occur in a meaningful context and perceived as worth solving” we should aim to empirically recreate these contexts. By going back and forth between SVB and NVB, we experience novelty in the former, but we get totally stuck in the latter. 

This author feels grateful to Holth for retrieving Skinner’s (1966) words: “behavior which solves a problem is distinguished by the fact that it changes another part of the solver’s behavior and is reinforced when it does.“  This is exactly what people who achieve SVB have repeatedly described. Since they are not only describing the novelty, but are also actually experiencing it,  people who listen to them and speak with them, reinforce these new behaviors, because they too experience this self-evident improvement. While they see “that it changes another part of the solver’s behavior” they also realize that it changes a part of their own NVB behavior in which they are no longer stuck. 

Thanks to Holth, this author also read the following quote which illustrates how Skinner himself (1966) viewed the basic processes in the analysis of problem solving; “Since there is probably no behavioral process which is not relevant to the solving of some problem, an exhaustive analysis of techniques would coincide with an analysis of behavior as a whole.” That Holth, and many others, who are conditioned by NVB, only seem to be able to consider a problem  “unless some sort of obstacle arises” contrasts with Skinner (1988), who matter-of-factly stated “there are easy problems and there are hard ones, and they are both problems.” 

Unlike SVB-Skinner, NVB-Holth requires “a consideration of what characterizes a minimal problem, because problem solving would otherwise actually coincide with the whole field of operant behavior.” (!?)  Even prominent behaviorists such as NVB-Donahoe and NVB-Palmer (1994) needed more rather than less of a problem and subsequently included into their definition “the requirement that a solution must be possible for the subject.”  Since Hayes (1978) had already come up with the observation that there are occasionally “problems for which there is no solution, although proving that there is no solution is sometimes then itself the solution”,  inclusion of the capability of solving the problem did not solve the problem of how to define the problem and so the issue of “novelty” was brought by Saugstad (1977). Although “novelty” was initially meant to help define problem solving, the problem had now become how to define “novelty.” 

What Skinner said about the analysis of problem solving is still a problem.  If behaviorists were more pragmatic, they would already agree “there is probably no behavioral process which is not relevant to problem solving.“ Moreover, the “analysis of behavior as a whole” is, of course, especially a communication problem. If this problem was solved, then  other problems would find a solution. However, many years went by and many papers were written. More was written, but nothing more was said about “novelty.” If more had been said, it would have been written. But, basically, what had already been said was said again. Many papers were written in which what was said was simply restated by different authors. 

Nowhere is it more painfully clear that we are having the same old stupid, blunt conversation in which nothing new is added than in our everyday communication. Although he defined verbal behavior as behavior that is mediated by others, even Skinner (1935) thought it was “very difficult to find stimuli and responses which maintain precisely the same properties upon two successive occasions.” Skinner’s voice had a certain tone and rhythm, which are interesting, because, like this author, he was able to produce behaviorism, that is “stimuli and responses which maintain precisely the same properties upon [many more than] two successive occasions.” 

Since his unusual speech was of course a function of his radical behaviorism, his important book “Verbal Behavior” (1957) shouldn’t be considered as a descriptive or theoretical work. The amount of experimental work that preceded the writing and publication of “Verbal Behavior”, should have made behaviorists more confident that this book was indeed, as he himself had said, his most important work. “In accord with Skinner’s work” Catania (1973) noticed that “the operant grew out of a correlation between two response classes, one descriptive and one functional.”

SVB involves both descriptive and functional classes. This author believes that Skinner unknowingly embarked on SVB. Skinner was so innovative because his work was precisely about “the lines of fracture along which new instances actually emerge in the repertoires of organisms in the absence of intermediate behavioral events.” Although it may sound audacious, this is exactly what happens when people engage in SVB. The proof is in the pudding. 

In conclusion, this writer will now briefly comment on the “few things” which, according to Holth “will have to be seriously considered.” One wonders how many people have actually read his final recommendations? This writer is certainly one of them. 1) “The common finding that people learn more from positive instances than from negative ones, even when they are equally ‘informative’ [certainly] poses a particular problem for information processing theories” but, it also raises questions about what has taken behaviorists so long to hone in on what is actually involved in talking about these positive instances from which people learn more? This is a reference to SVB. Let’s forget about the so-called “informative value of stimuli” because it is the reinforcing value of SVB stimuli that “needs to be considered.” 2) Also, the interpretation of imaging, image tracing and mental rotation can occur “in the absence of the thing seen” (Skinner, 1974) because “nothing is ever seen covertly which has not already been seen overtly at least in fragmentary form.” We have already had SVB every time we were with a friend, when we were safe and when we could be our genuine selves in our communication with others.  If anything went right at all in our upbringing, if there was any love, affection, care and bonding, we have already heard and seen SVB, so we don’t need to imagine it. 3) Regarding to the “interpretation of introspective data and verbal protocols” it is obvious that “awareness of private events depends on some sort of correspondence between private and public events – accessible to the verbal community.” How else then by talking with each other are we to know about all of this? However, the aforementioned correspondence is only there during SVB, but not in NVB, because in SVB our public speech includes our private speech, but in NVB our private speech is excluded from our public speech. Moreover, since SVB public speech results in SVB private speech and NVB public speech results in NVB private speech, we now have a more objective way of dealing with our so-called subjective experiences. Surely “this is actually an exciting view, because it suggests that the covert actions performed during problem solving, for instance, can be taught at the overt level.” In other words, we can talk about them. 4) As for the “reinterpretation of ‘cognitive’ findings” in terms of verbal behavior it is, in the absence of SVB, still not clear at all, in spite of the “impressive bodies of research on complex stimulus control, multiple exemplar training, rule-governed and contingency-shaped behavior” what are the “characteristics of ‘expert behavior’ of variables that influence transfer of problem solving skills across tasks.” No matter how parsimonious the behavioral formulations are, “transfer” depends on how things are presented. Behaviorism continues to be neglected because in NVB powerful nonverbal stimuli take the listener’s attention away from “the basic knowledge of behavioral principles.” 

This writer will now respond to the paper “Different Sciences as Answers to Different Why Questions.” If one can read between the lines, one realizes that the abstract is telling the reader that the title for this paper might as well have been: “One Last Swing With My Club” or, perhaps; “One Last Hair to Split” or simply “Channeling Skinner.” People have lived and died to defend  theories and Holth sounds like a worn out warrior. The paper is obviously aimed at the enemies of behaviorism, who probably never read this and its tone is punitive and boring. Of course, criticism like this can be put aside as an hominem attack. However, when one considers that anyone, who addresses the verbal behavior of someone who  is stuck in a particular repertoire, can be accused and dismissed this way, one may pause and think perhaps there is a need for a more personal approach to science, so that we can shine the light on the scientist’s ability to barricade him or herself. 

Let’s be clear: neither behavioral nor cognitive explanations have anything to “say” about “the internal workings of organisms.” Only organisms themselves, people, individuals, scientists, have something to say, but theories don’t talk. The idea that theories exist without our way of talking is ludicrous. It is not unusual that even experts like Holth, although they are writing papers about category mistakes, get carried away. The question why this happens remains unanswered. We have not yet talked constructively about the fact that “different types of explanations correspond to different Why questions” because we don’t realize at all that our over-emphasis on the verbal disconnects us from the nonverbal. (Yes, reread!) 

 

SVB is inclusive, but NVB is exclusive. While in the former communicators will be able to have the conversation in which “different types of explanations lead to a recognition of different research areas as separate fields of inquiry”, in the latter they will inadvertently keep focusing their attention on “the different types of explanations as if they were answers to the same Why question.” 

The aforementioned is similar to what has been described in social psychology as the ‘fundamental attribution error’. What should interest behaviorists is Why this error is still made - even by them - even when people know that they are making it? With regard to others (cognitivists), we (behaviorists), in spite of our knowledge of behaviorism, still have the same tendency as everyone else to place an emphasis on internal characteristics to explain their behavior instead of considering the external, environmental factors. Yet, when it comes to our own behavior, we are more likely to take situational factors into consideration. 

The ‘fundamental attribution error’ makes total sense in the light of the fact that each of us only individually has access to that part of the universe which is within our own skin. As whole organisms, we always find ourselves in a situation, but when we see or hear others, because we have limited or no access to their private events, we see them as separate from the environment. Thus, it is only the quality of our interaction that will determine whether this error will be dissolved.  

This author, who has given hundreds of seminars about the distinction between  SVB and NVB, disagrees with Skinner’s reasons Why “the general acceptance of the science of behavior as psychology” is still blocked. Instead of his “formidable obstacles” : “1)Humanistic psychology, 2) psychotherapy and 3) cognitive psychology”, which draw our attention to matters ‘outside of ourselves’, this author suggests three reasons Why communicators don’t listen to themselves while they speak and thus lose touch with themselves and with each other. 

We continue to maintain NVB because we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. In each seminar, this author demonstrates the three reasons Why we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, by putting three pins on a gong. With the pins on the gong, the sound of the gong becomes muffled. Without the pins on the gong, the gong sounds resonant. The gong is used to help people tune into their own voice. When participants hear the gong, they are, without any practice, able to emulate its sound with their voice. Their relaxed, peaceful voice allows them to effortlessly produce SVB. Similar to the change of the sound of the gong, once the pins are on it, is the change in the sound of our voice, once our speech is a function of three specific habits, which cause us to produce NVB. 

To produce SVB speakers must continue to listen to themselves while they speak. However, as soon as they are 1) Fixating on the verbal, 2) Becoming outward oriented and 3) Struggling for attention, they produce NVB again. The ‘pins on the gong’ need further explanation. When we 1) Fixate on the verbal, we disconnect from our environment, the nonverbal. In the most immediate sense, our environment is of course our own body and thus our verbal fixation makes us disembody our spoken communication. Consequently, there is no alignment between our verbal and nonverbal expressions. We communicate unconsciously because we disconnect from our nonverbal experience in the moment that we speak. Our sound is in the here and now and our listening brings us in the here and now as well. When we 2) become outward oriented, we only want others to listen to us. Outward-oriented listeners are trying to listen to others, but they are not listening to themselves. Due to the ubiquity of NVB, our ears are conditioned to listen to others and only SVB can stimulate us to listening to ourselves. Outward-oriented speakers are trying to control their environment and their speech is an attempt to dominate the listener. No matter whether others are listening to us, whether they obey, conform,  take ‘a therapeutic stance’, practice ‘nonviolent communication’ or Buddhist forms of ‘kindness’, we are not listening to ourselves unless an expert, someone, who knows about the importance of self-listening, is modeling it for us. When we 3) struggle for attention, communication is alternatively a function of different stimuli. Struggle, so apparent in most of our communication, manifests itself in different dichotomies: attention vs distraction, me vs you, private speech vs public speech, verbal vs nonverbal, descriptive classes vs functional classes, this topic vs that topic, cause vs effect, this theory vs that theory, oppressor vs oppressed, abuser vs abused, enabled vs enabler, and, speaker vs listener.  

When we engage in SVB, we listen to ourselves while we speak and we find that self-listening includes listening to others. By contrast, in NVB, which is based on outward orientation, our listening to others excludes self-listening. In NVB, we speak at each other and this is audible in the way we sound. In SVB we speak with each other and our sound is totally different. This sound also indicates that in SVB we are listening to ourselves. In SVB, self-listening makes possible the inclusion of our private speech into our public speech. In SVB, attention for and expression of the sensations we perceive within our own skin, opens us to our environment and to others who are in it. Thus, during SVB, inwardness enhances outwardness. However, in NVB our outwardness prevents and disconnects from our inwardness. Also, in SVB, attention to the nonverbal makes us more verbal, but in NVB, fixation on the verbal disconnects us from the nonverbal. When verbal and nonverbal are not aligned, the nonverbal will distract us from the verbal.  In other words, our fixation on the verbal makes us more and more nonverbal. 

The above described phenomena are the reason Why there is not yet any “general acceptance of the science of behavior in psychology.” When behaviorist learn about the SVB/NVB distinction, many positive effects will occur. The schism between behavioral and cognitive psychologies is unacceptable. Holth writes that “in spite of all the exchanges, with arguments and counterarguments, its hard to find, even a single instance, in which a behavioral analyst has been convinced by the arguments, or even the [so-called] empirical ‘evidence’ of cognitivists, or visa versa.” The “numerous debates” were always based on NVB. We would have found common ground if there was SVB, but there wasn’t any SVB. Those who claim that we are dealing with “incommensurable conceptual frameworks” (Dougher, 1995) or “world hypotheses” (Hayes, Hayes & Reese, 1988), are ignorant, arrogant scientists, who will never engage in SVB. 

If we are scientific, we must admit that all knowledge is somehow be connected. If these connections cannot be not made, something is wrong with our way of communicating. Why do we communicate in ways which keep us entrenched in our trenches? If what we say is verifiable, this should not be the case. Holth’s differentiation of different Why questions is necessary, but not sufficient. As long as we are communicating in NVB “understanding and respect across perspectives” is a pipe dream. Why don't we have SVB and why do we have NVB, is the question we should be asking. 

When we have SVB, we are communicating and reciprocating each other, but when we have NVB, we are NOT communicating, we are pretending to be communicating. In NVB, we are NOT communicating, we are coercing,  dominating, intimidating, manipulating, exploiting, frightening, antagonizing and humiliating each other. Holth’s Why questions, which are a function of “different conceptual frameworks”, are not asked in NVB. In NVB we are predetermined and we basically say the same things over and over again. When it comes to how we behave verbally, there is no difference between a person’s religious belief, political view, favorite hobby or preferred scientific theory, because they all determine NVB. We have accepted this as a given, but it can be changed and it must be changed. It changes during SVB.

Unlike mentalistic explanations, SVB and NVB can serve a “useful role in adding to the independent variables in an experimental analysis of behavior.” The dependent variable, the communication, is a function of two independent variables: Voice 1, which produces NVB, and Voice 2, which produces SVB. We cannot get to Voice 2 without first getting to Voice 1, which has to be stopped.. Only when we realize that we produce Voice 1, we have the opportunity to change to Voice 2. Why did we produce Voice 1? We don’t count, we are ignored, neglected, disrespected, abandoned, we are not listened to, we are not allowed to speak and we are punished. This makes us tense, angry, sad, jealous, tired, stressed or afraid. In other words, our so-called communication, NVB, is based on negative emotions. 

And, Why do we produce Voice 2? In SVB we feel positive emotions, because we are listened to, understood, affirmed, supported, reinforced, validated, bonded, reciprocated, safe, empowered and peaceful. To reiterate: NVB is our common communication, is based on the expression, exploitation and perpetuation of our negative emotions, but SVB is healthy, happy, wholesome, sensitive, authentic, open, creative interaction, because we express and enjoy our positive emotions. In SVB we can have many arguments and confrontations, but in NVB there cannot be any real argument or confrontation. In NVB people just pretend to be communicating. 

 The only relevant Why question for behaviorists to ask is Why is there so much more “production history” for NVB than for SVB? Why is human relationship and spoken communication more based on negative emotions than on positive emotions? And, Why haven’t changes in the variables that are “essential in all types of practical applications in the form of teaching, therapy and prevention efforts” not made as much as a dent in how human beings get along with each other? Why has our communication not improved? Why haven’t behaviorists addressed the “historical contingencies” from which SVB and NVB arise? Why is  “effective action” demanding a change in the way in which we communicate? 

The “serious illusion” pointed out by Holth that different Why questions can be answers to the same Why question, is maintained by NVB. Only during SVB will we be able to find out our Why questions have to do with “different perspectives” but these are NOT the same as “different sciences.” In NVB we keep fighting over different answers to different questions, but in SVB we become scientific about talking, because we are taking an environmental perspective. Without that we are NOT communicating. In SVB we are each other’s environment; we influence others and we are influenced by them. Rather than only publishing papers, scientists should be required to talk about their science with scientists from their own and other disciplines. This dialogue should be monitored and shaped by independent raters, who are familiar with the SVB and NVB distinction, who are allowed to stop any NVB conversation. When NVB is stopped we can continue with SVB. SVB doesn’t prevent content from being communicated, but because the focus is on the nonverbal, the verbal is embedded in, emerging from and staying connected with the nonverbal. This connection makes the what we say easier to be understood. This connection played a role in our phylogenic as well as our ontogenic development.  

Language is only a recent event in our evolutionary history and played no role in selection. Our nonverbal biology, our autonomic nervous system, responds to what we see and hear. Social interaction only becomes possible when we are feeling safe, but shuts down immediately with any aversive stimulation. When we feel threatened, we don’t talk, we can’t talk, we don’t want to talk. The fact that we are forcing each other to talk, even when we are experiencing negative emotions, leads to many complicated problems, which can be prevented if we communicate only when positive emotions are stimulated. We haven’t been able to do this because we aren’t familiar with the NVB-SVB distinction. I look forward to talking with you and I challenge you to verify with me if there is any validity to SVB and NVB. 

Kind greetings,

Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist