June 26, 2015

June 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). When I reread what I wrote yesterday I was surprised how pleased I was. I had thought yesterday’s writing was too chaotic, but when I reread it  it made perfectly sense and I am glad I wrote it the way I did. In recent times, I have also had more moments in which I was glad I said things the way I did and did things in the way I did. 

While reading a paper it is a matter of taking from it only what I can use. “The emergence of Naming from intensive tact instruction appears to be a function of the implicit rotation of speaker and listener opportunities found in the intensive tact instruction, but further analysis is needed.” It sure it is! I think these researchers are on the right track. They address the need for explicit rotation and think that “the process of learning tacts involves the children echoing the tacts initially, because they must learn to say or echo the word in the process of learning the tact, until the child emits the tact without echoic instruction” (underlining added). However, if instruction is given in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the child will echo the words in a NVB manner, but if the instruction was given in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the child will echo the words in a SVB way. 

The words which are echoed in NVB are often elicited, while the words which are echoed in SVB are mostly emitted. Our different ways of talking didn’t come about magically, but were learned due to threatening or safe environmental events. Moreover, the author’s emphasis on echoing, on saying words out loud, paves the way for the joining of the listening and speaking repertoires.


The authors write precisely how this can come about: “As the children received stimulus-stimulus pairings they began to echo, suggesting that the procedure facilitated echoics that in turn resulted in automatic reinforcement.” Thus, on both sides of the talking spectrum, people with more SVB as well as those with more NVB are automatically reinforced for their SVB or NVB. However, only in SVB speaking and listening repertoires are going to be joined, but in NVB speaking and listening become more and more separate. This concurs with “Stemmer’s proposal that Naming emerged from a history of second-order classical conditioning (Stemmer, 1973, 1990, 1994, 1996). 

Teachers of children with language delay probably already do this, because they support language development, but it must be SVB instruction, not NVB instruction. “If children are missing the echoic as a conditioned reinforcer, then stimulus-stimulus pairing experiences may provide the necessary prerequisite.” NVB instructions are going to be ineffective and harmful. It is quite likely that our high rates of NVB cause language deficits. 

What now follows is my paraphrasing of a presentation “Introduction to Verbal Behavior” by Tracy Vail, which can be googled on internet. By looking closely at behavior of autistic children, behavior analysts identified the cycle that perpetuates aberrant behavior: absence of alternative behaviors leads to an increase of stereotypy, which impairs learning and in turn results in fewer acquired new skills. Normal people can learn from the treatment of autistic children. How do these children learn to talk? This is accomplished by increasing motivating operations (MO). This is not done by making them fearful, by punishing or by coercing them, but by reinforcing them. 


If they are still nonverbal, we have to start with the nonverbal and then move slowly to the verbal. It is important to take note of how the child responds to the environment, to the analyst and to prevent aversive stimulation. By being playful with the child the MO for verbal behavior is established. If the child begins to anticipate what is going to happen next, doing something unexpected can bring more enjoyment. As the play progresses routines can be created, which also can be gradually changed over time. The analyst must maintain his or her connection with the child and must be sensitive. Moreover, he or she must pair his or her talking with the reinforcement. His or her way of talking must be reinforcing to the child. This is exactly how SVB works! 

In SVB the speaker is the reinforcer. The speaker in SVB does exactly what the behavior analyst does to the autistic child: he or she teaches errorless, fades demands, teaches to fluency, prompts quickly, fades the prompts, makes sure all questions are answered, finds numerous reinforcers, corrects errors and has fun. The behavior analyst wouldn’t gain any ground with the autistic child if he or she would follow negative behavior with reinforcement; remove the child from a reinforcing activity to begin teaching; give directions to do things which he or she couldn’t prompt; give directions without getting compliance; and, kill reinforcers by placing too many demands. This exactly describes NVB! In NVB the speaker is the punisher.

In NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with and aversive contingency. It works the same for autistic children as for normal people. Teaching language skills to autistic children informs us about our adult way of communicating, which is mostly aversive and which is therefore problematic. Moreover, the key to successful language teaching is to pair sounds and to make talking fun. Specifically therapists must be pairing their sounds with fun. In SVB we listen to ourselves while we speak and we find out that we are having fun while we are talking and that talking is both interesting and reinforcing. All the positive experiences of the speaker-as-own-listener reinforce our SVB. 

If NVB is produced by a parent, the child will imitate this sound and unconsciously identify it for what it is. Regardless of what sound is produced by the speaker, all sounds are analyzed. Soon the child-listener, who becomes a speaker, will be able to recognize SVB and NVB. SVB is learned as it is reinforcing, but NVB will give rise to stereotypy in autistic children. Stereotypy are a form of counter-control. These stereotypy must be replaced by SVB. Even if a mistake is made something new is learned. Making mistakes is needed to recognize NVB as NVB as SVB as SVB, and the better a person gets at recognizing NVB as NVB, the better he or she gets at recognizing SVB as SVB. 

One becomes the stepping stone for the other. Unless we recognize NVB as NVB we cannot move to SVB. Similarly, the autistic child at some point recognizes that there is reinforcement available in the verbal realm, which wasn’t available in the nonverbal realm. NVB keeps us trapped in nonverbal behavior, in negative feelings of being threatened, intimidated, coerced, attacked, mistrusted, isolated, abandoned and dismissed. 

Even if we produce NVB, the vocal attempt must be reinforced, because it is better than no attempt at all. Every step of the way needs to be shaped. Once errors have been corrected then more reinforcement will follow. As this is done with positive feelings, it reminds us and will be linked to all favorite activities which we find reinforcing. Learning starts with NVB, which is more nonverbal, but during SVB we become fully verbal. Teaching a new behavior can only built on behavior that is already there.  

 

Old NVB, which happened under threatening circumstances, is likely to be repeated even under circumstances in which there is environmental support. Under new positive SVB circumstances  old NVB will be highlighted and recognized. The prompts that enable the speaker to switch from NVB to SVB are gradually faded once the speaker is able to continue with SVB. As in teaching language skills to autistic children, new learning is built on old learning and SVB is built on NVB. When each instance of NVB is corrected there will be errorless learning. 

If the speaker produces NVB it needs to be simply stated that this is an incorrect response. The teacher must of course be able to produce SVB as a discriminative stimulus for the student. He or she demonstrates SVB and models what the student would sound like if he or she would have SVB. The student hears in the teacher what  he or she would sound like if he or she produced the correct response. The student echoes what the teacher just said. 

Repetition of the discriminative stimulus, called Voice II, the voice which produces SVB, gives the student the opportunity to echo back the sound which was produced by the teacher. If done correctly, the teacher acknowledges this and when the student experiences the reinforcing effects of his or her own SVB, he or she realizes that by manding or asking, people will do things for him or her; by tacting or naming, he or she can label things in the environment under a variety of conditions; by listening, he or she can follow directions and do what others tell him or her to do; by imitation and by echoics, he or she can do or say what others do or say; by having intraverbals, he or she will know that what he or she says is dependent on what others say or have said, but is not the same. 

Teaching SVB deals with the fact that in NVB even verbally skilled people remain stuck with nonverbal discomfort. The voice that produces NVB is called Voice I as it must be discriminated before we can switch to Voice II, the voice of SVB. Since we can’t produce these two voices simultaneously, we can only produce one or the other successively. Although the switching between Voice I and II can happen rapidly, this will decrease once the speaker experiences Voice II as reinforcing and Voice I as punishing. 

In dysfunctional environments in which SVB was punished and NVB was reinforced, the child has repeatedly echoed NVB and is automatically reinforced by his or her NVB private speech. SVB leads to intraverbal revelations; the adult speaker recognizes that his or her negative self- talk or NVB private speech, was produced by NVB public speech. By learning about SVB, he or she knows that positive self-talk or SVB private speech can only come from SVB public speech. SVB will transform a person’s sense of self, in which he or she sees him or herself as a product of how others are and have been talking with or at him or her. As listening to ourselves and others becomes important, our sense of self becomes more fluid and flexible as it always reflects our environment.