March 14, 2016

March 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Humble Behaviorism” Neuringer (1991) writes “discriminative responses to these “subjective” states would be useful in an experimental analysis of behavior.” He is referring to verbal reports about covert responses, such as “feeling depressed” and “having an intention or goal.” Then, he states that “Often the behavior analysist is not in a position to experience the conditions leading to the purported emotion, thought, rumination, feeling or the like.” The reason why most behavior analysists, but also everybody else, is often not in a position to experience such conditions is because of their way of talking, which limits their thinking. With Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) behaviorists will be able to gather more accurate verbal reports on human subjects, because they talk in a non-threatening way, but in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) speakers don’t empathize with the listeners and are not in a position to think about the contingencies that gave rise to the thoughts and feelings of the listeners. “Discrimination training” must happen on the side of the researcher: “Contingency thinking” involves practices in which researchers talk out loud with themselves and say “If my sound expresses stress and fear, then I acquire negative private speech” and “If this is true for me, then this is may also be true for others” and “If I bring out negative private speech into public speech, then I find what caused me to feel this way. Is this also true for others?”