October 29, 2014

October 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It has often come to this writer’s attention that people who criticize behaviorism, for the most part, don’t understand what they are talking about. In a similar way we hear many students who blame math for being too difficult. People say something about behaviorism without even having mastered its basics. The more vehemently they want to argue against behaviorism, the more they must know about it and when they bring up what they think they have learned, it is clear to those who really know about it, that they have learned anything, but have dropped out of the class. 

The fact that many people are put off by behaviorism doesn’t stop them from adhering to a contextual perspective. As far as they have taken note of the complexity of human behavior, they usually understand that something is fatally flawed with the common notion that individuals cause their own behavior. They actually agree with behaviorism’s contextual approach and they can’t resist the intellectually satisfying temptation to jump on the environmental bandwagon. 

However, their words can’t affect behavioral change. Words affect behavioral change only if they are uttered, repeatedly and deliberately, under the right circumstances. Written words don’t impact us in the same way as spoken words. This difference is apparent only when we talk about it, but it seems to magically disappear when we keep writing and reading.   

Given the high rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) responding, it is clear that contingencies of reinforcement currently seldom reinforce Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Contingencies that maintain NVB neither stimulate nor support us in our exploration of how language actually works. The "language games" Wittgenstein (1953) wrote about must be talked about before more writing is going to make sense. Most writing doesn’t make sense because it is based on NVB. Only the writing which is based on SVB makes sense. Neither in spoken nor in written form does NVB make sense. SVB, however, makes sense in written and in spoken form because it bridges writing and speaking. NVB doesn’t make any sense because it separates and distances writing from speaking, but SVB connects these two.