October 11, 2015

October 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my fifteenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). It is very enjoyable to read my own earlier writings. I have come to like it just as much a listening to old audio recordings of myself. It is the subtlety of my explanations which are like music. I am happy that my writing is having this effect on me as it tells me it might have this effect on others as well. Yesterday’s discussion with my students was delightful. One female student had read her paper about what it is like for her to listen to herself while she speaks. It affected everyone and there was a lot of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). When the class came to an end a couple of students remained behind who still wanted to talk with me some more. They were all women. I praised them and told them that women have always been more open to SVB than men. 

The speaker’s voice is an unconditioned reinforcer that “strengthens the” listener’s “responses that precede them.” Listener’s responses are the responses of the listener who is not the speaker and responses of the listener who is also the speaker. “Second, at the same time that environment–behavior relations are strengthened, synaptic efficacies are being increased along other pathways leading from frontal cortex (and neostriatum) back to VTA (LCB, pp. 96–101; Donahoe, in press-b). As these feedback pathways are strengthened, the stimulus paired with the unconditioned reinforcer becomes able, by itself, to activate the VTA.” The voice of the speaker, experienced by the speaker-as-own-listener, comes to have an automatically reinforcing effect.

The voice of the speaker-as-own-listener is like the music being played by a violinist. The violinist or any other musician for that matter, listens attentively to how he or she sounds, and by perfecting his or her sound, he or she enjoys his or her play even more. Stated differently, the sound that is produced by the musician is self-reinforcing. This is possible because “the conditioned reinforcers exploit feedback pathways to activate the VTA.” Similarly, the voice of the speaker becomes a conditioned reinforcer for the speaker-as-own-listener. Speakers other than the speaker-as-own-listener can also become conditioned reinforcers, but start out as unconditioned reinforcers.

“Once these feedback pathways become functional, both unconditioned and conditioned reinforcers cause dopamine to be liberated and synaptic efficacies to be changed via a common cellular mechanism.” I have listened to myself often enough to make these “feedback pathways become functional” as I experience SVB on my own as well as with others. When I can’t have SVB with others I continue to have it on my own. Kudos to the authors, who, with a simple drawing, beautifully explain that the “Synaptic efficacies are strengthened along two sets of pathways: (a) those mediating reinforced behavior and (b) those leading back to the VTA (curved line with two right arrows). During the course of conditioning, these feedback pathways become capable of implementing conditioned reinforcement. After Donahoe and Palmer (1994).”

Interestingly, these authors have identified the neural mechanism of SVB, yet they do not recognize it at the behavioral level. May be when they read this, they are willing to explore and verify SVB with me and take time to talk about? In spite of much rejection and the ubiquity of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I was stimulated to continue with my exploration of SVB by speaking out loud and by listening to myself. Each time when I was frustrated with NVB, I withdrew from it and found SVB on my own. While sitting alone and listening to my own sound, while talking out loud, I attained the SVB again, which previously wasn’t possible. By going back and forth between the situations in which SVB could or couldn’t occur, I came to terms with the fact that I was the only one capable of maintaining SVB; I had been changed by “feedback pathways” which “are said to implement internal reinforcement.”

Discovering SVB was initially a very difficult experience for me. I knew that I had found something which only I knew and the more I talked about it with others the more this became apparent. Initially, I had no behaviorist knowledge at all to explain the workings of SVB, but in spite of that my explanations of what I called listen-while-you-speak were validated more and more often. Currently, in my function as psychology instructor, I am in the lucky position to work with groups of students for the duration of a whole semester. This gives me the ample opportunity to explain and verify the SVB/NVB distinction with them. Moreover, I have given many seminars for faculty and staff members of Butte College, who have given me the highest approval and appreciation.

This paper, which addressed the “unified reinforcement principle,” educates me about why this was possible. My explanation is about what happens at a verbal behavioral level. There can only be SVB in the absence of aversive stimulation. This is not some imaginary ideal to be strived for, but a reality which can be experienced and maintained. We can only talk, that is, have SVB, when there is nothing to fear. Behaving verbally, which is, phylogenetically, newer behavior than fight, flight or freeze responses, could only emerge in the absence of these responses, that is, in safe and stable environments. “Because feedback pathways from the cortex and neostriatum to the autonomic system appear to be absent, the inability to engage the internal-reinforcement mechanism may account for the failure of autonomic responses to be conditioned with operant contingencies: The delay between the occurrence of the autonomic response and the occurrence of the external (unconditioned) reinforcer may exceed the temporal requirements of the cellular mechanisms of reinforcement.”

No amount of artful sophistication of musicians or conductors can undo the disturbing effects created by someone who is crackling with a bag of potato chips or someone who is having his or her phone go off during a classical concert. Likewise, while we are talking together, no amount of self-reinforcement makes the reinforcement by others no longer needed.  Just as music can be disturbed by noise, so can SVB be intruded by NVB.