October 12, 2015

October 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my sixteenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). The reader should know that I only review this paper to explain the importance of the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction. The link between behaviorism and neuroscience was never a concern of Skinner, who was not going to wait for neuroscience to explain what behavior really is. Moreover, he was very clear about the fact that neuroscience and behaviorism are two separate subject matters and didn’t consider it the behaviorist’s duty to bring them together in a third discipline. The authors, however, are trying to create this link, but they are not successful as they don’t have any knowledge about the SVB/NVB distinction. There hasn’t been, isn’t going to be and cannot be an adequate conversation between the disciplines as long as NVB isn’t analyzed first and changed into SVB.  

No amount of neuroscience can educate us about the fact that NVB is a response to a stimulus, that is, how we speak with others is determined by how others have spoken with us. The voice of the speaker induces positive or negative affect in the listener, who, as speaker will express SVB or NVB. I agree with Skinner and these authors that consequences are more important than antecedents. Yet, the rejection of behaviorism by psychology, and by academia at large, is a consequence of NVB. Consequences become antecedents and this is especially true for how people interact with each other. The authors have absolutely no clue about the extent to which their verbal behavior is determined by NVB.

Their verbal behavior is not an actual conversation, only more writing about more writing. “A number of commentators raised questions about the treatment of aversive stimuli within the context of a unified reinforcement principle (viz., Dworkin & Branch; Field; Vaughan).” In fact, their paper-writing-verbal-behavior signifies their isolation, which is caused by the absence of conversation. As such it is a product of NVB. Stated differently, these authors, who presumably are so scholarly busy trying to fill the gap between behaviorism and neuroscience, don’t make any difference as their work doesn’t and can’t produce SVB. If they had asked their questions while they were talking, they might have identified the difference between SVB and NVB, but they are only concerned with written verbal behavior and so they write: “How can the same principle be consistent with both response strengthening (reinforcement) and response weakening (punishment)?” The great difference doesn’t seem to bother them the least and they proudly argue in favor of a theoretical construct, the “unified reinforcement principle”, which at the same time reinforces and punishes a response.

In NVB, the listener is often not even allowed to become a speaker and thus he or she is punished by the speaker for speaking. It could be said that this reinforces the listener’s private speech, which, covertly, may go something like this: ‘I can’t speak with you because you won’t let me, but I can talk with others with whom I can have SVB. Moreover, I am not interested in your NVB anyway as I know from my previous experiences that talking with someone like you has not worked for me.’ While SVB is always punished by NVB speakers, they also inadvertently reinforce it as they motivate the listener to be have SVB with those with whom it is possible. Avoidance and decrease of NVB makes increase of SVB possible. However, there is no aversive stimulation, no punishment once we have SVB. The authors, who are conditioned and intellectually impaired by NVB, are unfamiliar with this kind of interaction. Although they write about the “unification principle”, such writing prevents them from SVB, from talking about it, and, more importantly, experiencing it.

Once we are familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction it will become clear that NVB should no longer to be considered as communication. In NVB the voice of the speaker is experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus. “Aversive stimuli are stimuli that, by definition, evoke escape or withdrawal responses.” Whether we acknowledge this or not, it will happen anyway. Thus, in NVB the listener separates him or herself from the speaker. The phony oneness of the speaker and the listener in NVB is always based on the fact that the listener is intimidated, overawed, forced, overwhelmed and sold by the speaker. None of this is the case during SVB, which requires the total absence of aversive stimulation.

Read carefully what these authors have written as it will help us to clarify the SVB/NVB distinction. “Recall that reinforcers have two effects with operant contingencies in our formulation: (a) Reinforcers lead to the acquisition of both the operant (R) and the reinforcer-elicited response (UR). (b) The conditioned response (CR) is acquired before the R. In the case of an aversive eliciting stimulus, the UR is withdrawal and successfully competes with the operant, thereby preventing the operant from being strengthened by the aversive elicitor, which would otherwise be the case (LCB, pp. 114–115).” This  tells us why NVB pushes out SVB. Let me re-word what the authors write: insensitivity disregards sensitivity. Because of their awareness about how environmental variables cause behavior, behaviorists are more sensitive than those who don’t view behavior that way. Also, as  they don’t assume inner agents to be causing our behavior, behaviorists are considered threatening by to those who believe in this superstition. All of this has increased NVB responding. “According to the proposal, punishment is produced by the more rapid acquisition of conditioned withdrawal responses than operants.” NVB prevents SVB, but only SVB can extinguish NVB.