Thursday, June 16, 2016

February 10, 2015



February 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 


“Meaning is not a property of” Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), “of behavior as such, but of the conditions under which behavior occurs.”  This writing is a second response to the paper “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. From moment to moment, under different conditions, SVB or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) happen.  Verbally, the conditions of our interaction stay the same (we only speak English and don’t usually switch to another language), but non-verbally, our conversations change very rapidly and continuously. However, this change often goes completely unnoticed. 


The SVB/NVB distinction addresses these nonverbal and verbal changes. When we switch from SVB to NVB or visa versa, we are temporarily in different environments and we engage in different languages. Since our neural structures are affected by these changes, in the SVB speakers and listeners pay attention to their body, but in NVB meaning is lost because communicators are unaware of stimuli occurring within their own skin. 


“Technically, meanings are to be found among the independent variables in a functional account, rather than as properties of the dependent variable.” (Skinner, 1957/ 1992, p. 14) Embodied conversation is the dependent variable. SVB is meaningful, because we discriminate stimuli, independent variables, within our own body of our embodied conversation. When people loose meaning, they unknowingly refer to losing touch with their own body.


NVB is inaccurate in that it can’t and doesn’t identify the variables of which our talking, thinking and feeling is a function. The  environment within our skin is affected by the environment outside of our skin. Skinner suggests we need “a view of explanation and causation  wherein explanation is reduced to description (Skinner, 1930, p. 38). We will only have SVB to the extent that “all observed values of independent and dependent variables are provided and their paired relationships are specified.” 


This writer addresses the change which must occur in our way of talking as we substitute the concept of causation with the concept of function. That this transformation hasn’t happened is because it has not been  properly addressed. Certainly, people have argued about this matter, but their argument couldn’t lead to description of the SVB/NVB distinction. 

This writer discovered something which was so reinforcing that he was compelled to pursue it. He noticed by producing a particular sound that he was able to think and speak better. This sound energized him, calmed him and reassured him and made him feel good. He was able to continue to speak with this sound and discovered that SVB is based on sounding good. 


Others, to whom he explained this, felt the exact same way. They too were able to produce a specific sound which had a positive effect on them. Moreover, by simultaneously listening themselves and to each other they engaged in a form of communication, which was experienced as novel and beneficial. The simplicity and parsimony of SVB is powerful and elegant. 


To most of us it comes as a big surprise and relief that there is a way of communicating which is so completely effortless. It is apparent to all the communicators that they are authentic, that they are listened to and taken serious and that their ability to speak and listen is enhanced by their own sound. Many issues can be addressed while the topic of the conversation keeps fluidly changing. Everyone gains from SVB although not everyone will speak or needs to speak. In SVB things are said which need to be said, but which couldn’t be said in NVB.  In SVB we can finally say what we had wanted to say and feel confident about it and satisfied with it. In SVB we experience the positive consequences of real conversation. 
     
Two of Skinner’s findings coincide with this writer’s  work. For Skinner “A big step occurred when he automated the recording in a rectangular runway so that the organism, not the experimenter, initiated each run” (italics added). This writer realized it is not what he, an experimenter, does with the participant, but what “the organism” does by him or herself. 


When the participant “initiated each run” he is able to obtain accurate measurements. This meant the end of any attempt to change others. He lets them decide whether they join or not. As a teacher, he doesn’t try to get students to his class. They show up for the duration of a semester and he works with those students who respond to his SVB. This may sound strange, but the fact is that only positive reinforcement works and so NVB must be ignored. Although initially not everyone is equally involved, during the semester, more and more students get SVB and by the end of the semester, the entire class gets it. 


In the stable, reinforcing environment this writer creates, the different rates of responding of individual students become more harmonized over time. Another similarity with Skinner is that “the real power over rate of responding lay in its relation to how immediate postcedents were programmed.” Students who are anticipating reinforcement reinforce this writer, their teacher and this process is getting better and better as the semester progresses. 


Skinner’s contribution was that he differentiated postcedently controlled operant behavior from antecedently controlled reflexive or respondent behavior. A gradual shift of focus from respondent to operant behavior took place for this writer. This involves the replacement of NVB by SVB. This writer proposes the same shift to all his students and he engineers the classroom environment in such a way that it can and will happen.

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