May 19, 2015

May 19, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Today’s writing is my second response to “Behaviorism and the Stages of Scientific Activity” by J.Moore (2010). My writing yesterday only led me to the second page of the paper. In the Psychology classes that I teach, I cause Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Although the results I get with my students are  not always the same, SVB is repeatedly achieved and acknowledged.  One student beautifully described SVB as “bringing a positive mood into the room.” He is the caretaker of someone, who waited for the doctor in the hospital and was assigned to watch over this schizophrenic patient. While talking with this patient he realized the regulating response he created in that patient with the sound of his voice. “When we have discovered the laws which govern a part of the world about us, we are then able to deal effectively with that part of the world. By predicting the occurrence of an event we are able to prepare for it. By arranging conditions in ways specified by the laws of a system, we not only predict, we control: we “cause” an event to occur or to assume certain characteristics (Skinner, 1953.)” Thus, SVB absolutely qualifies as a “scientific conception” which is “not passive knowledge” and “is not concerned with contemplation.” It is practical and important in interaction, because it produces “reinforcers from nature”, that is, a natural response of a body due to an appetitive stimulus, a voice. Although I can’t always precisely predict this response with each student, I can so to speak plant a seed, which over the course of a semester begins to grow and which often manifests in their papers, in which they then tell me how much they are affected by SVB. 

“The first step in building a theory is to identify the basic data” says Skinner (1947/1972), who was inspired by Mach. The basic data are Voice I, the sound we have when we produce NVB, according to the listener, or Voice II, the sound we have when we produce SVB, according to the listener. It is the listener’s perception of the speaker which determines whether it is SVB or NVB. If the listener says it is NVB, it is also NVB to the speaker, but if the listener says it is SVB, then and only then, is it SVB to the speaker. The speaker doesn’t determine whether it is SVB, although the speaker can learn to have SVB more often by having listeners acknowledge and reinforce it.  

As we have not considered these crucially important universal subsets of vocal verbal behavior, we have arrived at the second stage of theory building, which supposedly involved the relations among data, but which was based on the exclusion of the most relevant data, that is, how we sound while we speak. According to Skinner, the science of mechanics could only get off the ground, because Galileo was “restricting himself to a limited set of data.” It is just as hard for us today to restrict ourselves to Voice I and Voice II, while we talk, as it was for Galileo to be only concerned with “the positions of bodies at given times, rather than with their color, hardness or size.” This was of tremendous importance in the process of theory building, because then, and only then, was Galileo able to proceed “to demonstrate the relation between position and time – the position of a ball on an inclined plan and the time which had elapsed since its release. Something else then emerged – namely, the concept of acceleration. Later, as other facts were added, other concepts appeared – mass, force, and so on.” Since it is so easily dismissed, disturbed or made impossible, we have not continuously and deliberately explored what talking would be like when we are and remain at ease with one another. 

The third stage of theory building, as Skinner has argued “are something more than the second-stage laws from which they are derived. They are peculiarly the product of theory-making in the best sense, and they cannot be arrived at through any other process.” I have come to these products of theory-making by continuing SVB and by learning to control and decrease NVB. How did I see NVB was caused and maintained by overestimating the importance of writing and reading and by underestimating the importance of speaking and listening? How was I able to recognize that SVB is scientific vocal verbal behavior and NVB is pre-scientific vocal verbal behavior? How did I know to give my students the instruction to write a paper, which had to start with the sentence “when I listen to the sound of my voice while I speak, then..”, and they would produce a profound paper? How is it that students, due to this assignment, in which they experimented with listening to themselves while they speak, by themselves, attained “a new conception of the individual as a locus of a system of variables” and were able, at least temporarily, to “abolish the conception of the individual as a doer, as an originator of action” and found this not a difficult, but an enjoyable task? I predicted it! 

In my first stage of theory building, I restricted myself to only two subsets of vocal verbal behavior: SVB and NVB. These are my data. In each verbal episode, in each conversation, meeting or lecture, instances of SVB and NVB alternate. Most important aspect about the relationship between SVB and NVB is: they are mutually exclusive. The second stage of theory building involved a continuing going back and forth between SVB and NVB and the inevitable realization that we are momentarily overtaken by something as long as we are engage in NVB and we are coming to our senses, we become conscious only in SVB. When Skinner states “psychologists have never made a thoroughgoing renunciation of the inner man”, he was saying they have not yet renounced NVB. Since Skinner was very aware of what was reinforcing to him and what was not, he was continuously managing his environment and thus he was an advocate of SVB. This is audible in how he sounds. I like to listen to Skinner as he produces much higher rates of SVB while he speaks than anyone else. 

In my third stage of theory building, I mapped SVB and NVB on human development, which ranges from a nonverbal, womb-like sense of safety to a verbal, but mentalistic way of talking, due to which even behaviorists still maintain a belief in a self. It is only in writing that behaviorists have been able to renounce the self, but in talking they have remained as involved in NVB as everyone else. SVB and NVB are “scientific statements” that “are derived from contact with events and are ultimately applicable to events.” To reiterate, SVB and NVB are not just hypothetical constructs, but are “anchored to human behavior.” My first stage of theory building is based on the fact that Voice I is the independent variable, that causes and maintains the dependent variable NVB and Voice II is the independent variable that causes and maintains the dependent variable SVB. If circumstances are such that SVB is reinforced, NVB will not be reinforced; if circumstances are such that NVB is reinforced, then SVB will not be reinforced. Second stage makes clear that SVB and NVB cannot be simultaneously reinforced; from moment to moment, one or the other is reinforced. At the third stage of theory building SVB describes a  new sense of order, which we may have already noted and tried to talk about, but which eluded us due to our lack of knowledge about how to maintain SVB.