December 15, 2014

December 15, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is a response to “Verbal Behavior in the Measuring Process” (1996) by L.E. Fraley. Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are mutually exclusive response classes, which occur in different environments. The former only happens in a controlled environment, in a safe and stable laboratory environment, which is a necessity for operant learning, while the latter occurs in a chaotic, aversive environment, in which our course-grained respondent behaviors limit the development of fine-grained behavioral repertoires and thus prevents investigation of what is actually happening while we talk with one another. Only during SVB can the communicators measure, that is, verify that a person’s private speech produces novel stimuli, which evoke new ways of talking. In NVB, by contrast, measuring will not and cannot occur, because the expression of the verbalizer’s private stimuli is considered to be a weakness. 

Every human being hypothesizes privately, subvocally, about the situation he or she is in. This doesn’t mean, however, that an inner agent is at work, but that due to previous exposures to similar environments, behaviors, such as measuring, become possible or impossible. Any hypothesis usually has its origin in what we say to ourselves privately, or, in what happens endo-environmentally. We  have a hunch about how something might work and then we set out to test our hypothesis.  

The transition involved in moving from our private speech to public speech is often overlooked in the course of hypothesis testing. Generally speaking, we would only express publicly, in writing, what has been empirically validated. Usually, we only want to express that about which we are absolutely certain. That about which we are uncertain is not to be emphasized, it makes us look incompetent. Yet, it is our ability to admit to ourselves that we are uncertain, which leads to the kind of private speech in which we might say to ourselves: maybe it is like this? What makes us measure that?

Fraley correctly makes the observation that “If we can already respond effectively and sufficiently to a situation, it tends not to stimulate measuring.” Ironically, in NVB all the communicators will make it seem as if they “already respond effectively and sufficiently to the situation”, while in SVB they are not. In SVB, which is the language of science, we speak with caution. NVB is the language of bias. “Ineffective behavior” creates the establishing operation that evokes measuring behavior.