February 13, 2015

February 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer realizes, because of this writings, that his discovery of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) permanently changed him. Without writing about it, he wouldn’t have been able to acknowledge this fact. Initially, his discovery made him speak more, because SVB changed the way he spoke and the way he wanted to speak. Now that he has explored all that and experimented with that, he is no longer so eager to speak about it. Writing about it now has a self-reinforcing effect.  

It is strange to recognize this is happening. This writer has been against writing for so long, but now writing seems more advanced than speaking. While reading what he is writing, which is like listening while speaking, he finds that his attention is drawn more and more to reading than writing and this is beginning to affect his writing. It is almost like playing a melody, which sounds beautiful and effortless. 

By writing this writer becomes silent and meditative. While waiting for words to appear, he experiences calmness, carefulness and satisfaction. His ability to write about this relieves him from all he hasn’t achieved and couldn’t achieve. By writing about this he is able to let himself know that it is okay. He hasn’t done a very good job at that. He has not been very good at soothing himself, but because of his writing he is getting better at it. 

This writing brings acceptance of his life as he is living it, as only he can live it. At this moment it is early in the morning 4:00AM and Kayla the cat was making noise in the hall by knocking around a pencil over the wooden floor. When he opens the door, she comes in and takes place on his lap and looks at him with her head tilted in a sweet and adorably way.  

At a moment like this, this writer is not bothered about behaviorism or with what he is trying to accomplish. This coming to his senses is new in that he has not written about it, nor has he given himself a chance to enjoy it. Currently he is having the flu and that slowed him down enough to make this simplicity possible. The cat is licking herself. 

No complicated thoughts or trying to think about things, just sitting, writing and letting the process take over. Looking at the cat cleaning herself reminds him that he also needs to take care of himself. This writing is a form of self-care. It is self-explanatory and it allows for things to come together. It is needed and appreciated by the reader. 

This writer just realized that he is more inclined to write from his writer’s perspective than from his reader’s perspective. By recognizing this, he is allowing himself to become more of a reader. He often noticed, while reading, that he is too much in a hurry to read what he reads and to be able to understand it. He reads quite slowly and is easily distracted. He understands what he reads only when he takes time and slows down. 

When he paces himself, he can understand what he reads, but when he goes too fast, his comprehension diminishes. He gets easily bored with what he reads and most of what he reads he finds uninteresting. Only sometimes he finds something that is worthwhile reading and it seems to him as if too much must be read just to get to it. He would rather get to it right away. This is also true for spoken communication. 

In this writing, he can get to it right away and in SVB he can get to it right away too. He can always get to it right away, but others, most of the time, can’t and don’t know how to. He knows what is important to him, but others don’t know what is important to them. They may think they do, but their knowledge of themselves is often quite superficial. This writer knows about SVB, about what is important to all of us. Consequently, this writer continues to discover new things.

This writing is dedicated to the reader. The reader has no trouble reading this. The reader takes a break from the writer, just as the listener takes a break from the speaker. This reader is just beginning to discover that reading, like listening, always continues. Now it is clear that the writer was dominating the reader, as the speaker was dominating the listener. 

The reader changes as the writer changes, but the reader also changes regardless of the writer. The change in the reader without the writer is a change we haven’t read about. This reader is recognized for the very first time and has been waiting for this moment. This reader is coming alive and is ready to read about other readers. 

When this reader reads about this reader, it seems as if this reader is less important than this writer. It almost seems like breaking through an ancient taboo that this reader claims its presence. Once this reader begins to assert himself, he realizes how little he knows about himself. 

One thing is clear: the reader is here and is not having any fear. The reader is happy. The reader is free. The reader is me. At long last, the reader is praised and honored. The reader has never gotten the attention like this and is full of positive energy. This reader is reading in a different way that he was reading before. This reading is ecstasy. This reader wants to read and likes to read. This reader has an epiphany.

This reader didn’t know that he could be so happy by himself, with his own writing. This reader smiles for no other reason than to read. Something so precious became available because he reads. The reader is so responsive and is getting so much out of these precious words. The reader can finally be alone and undisturbed. The reader’s reading took him home. The reader wasn’t lost in the words, but he was found back in the words.

February 12, 2015

February 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a fourth response to the paper “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. By looking for similarities and differences between Skinner’s work, these authors and his own, this writer explains Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), a distinct, but not yet understood or validated construct by most behaviorists. 

If verbal behavior “is behavior that is effective only through the mediation by other persons” and “has so many dynamic and topographical properties, that a special treatment is justified, and indeed, demanded” (Skinner, 1957, p.2), we must also account for the enormous amount of ineffective verbal behavior that has obviously not been mediated. This is exactly what the SVB/NVB distinction makes emphatically clear.

Most of our verbal behavior is NVB, that is, non-mediated operant and respondent behavior. Only a small portion of our verbal behavior is SVB, “behavior that is effective only through the mediation of other persons.” 

When one thinks of the very few people who are capable of mediating the verbal behavior of B.F. Skinner, one gets a sense of the true proportion of SVB and NVB, that is, of mediated and non-mediated verbal behavior.

Since even among behaviorists there is no mention of this distinction, the non-mediated verbal behavior is just as common among the behaviorists as it is among the non-behaviorists. 

 

The reason this distinction is continuously overlooked is because people write rather than talk about it. Although writing about it is surely more reinforcing, it actually prevents us from understanding the importance of talking about it. Moreover, writing can’t and it doesn’t affect and hasn’t affected our way of talking in any significant way. NVB is everywhere. 

Although bi-directional, mediated SVB, because most people don’t know how it really works, to this day is still rare, this writer has faith in this “postcendent selectionist relation.” Ever since the stimulus response formulation has been replaced by Skinner, non-mediated, uni-directional NVB has been on its deathbed. This writer, who is a  behavioral engineer, subscribes to the aim of Skinner, Beacon and Mach: “The proof of a valid and viable science was its useful outcomes.” 

SVB always yields useful outcomes. Moreover, SVB is “a naturalistic approach” in which “variables of which verbal behavior is a function are analyzed in terms of the conditions which lead to the emission of verbal behavior” (Hefferline Notes, p.2). From the intertwinement of Skinner’s work on mediated and non-mediated relations, it should be clear that both are needed for a complete account of verbal behavior. 
 

The authors comment on the Hefferline Notes that “there are a few differences in content” between them and the later volume of Verbal Behavior (1957). However, “The topics dropped or changed may be the most interesting.” Interestingly, the Notes also reflect the transition of Skinner’s analysis from spoken to written form (Knapp, 2009). 


What was dropped and left out was considered to be unnecessary by Skinner. On the final pages, Skinner once again explains that mediated, verbal behavior is always embedded in and arising from un-mediated, nonverbal behavior. He says “There is nothing exclusively verbal in the material analyzed in this book. It is all part of a broader field” (Skinner, 1957, p. 452). His functional account is definitely going to improve our way of communicating once we begin to acknowledge the nonverbal embedded nature of our verbal behavior. 


Although Skinner’s analysis didn’t include the SVB/NVB distinction, this was not because he was unaware of it. He wanted to “bridge the gulf between the verbal and non-verbal, or between verbal and the vestigial remnants of a dualistic system” (Skinner, 1947, p. 76). Verbal Behavior only fits with SVB, but NVB is not mediated by other persons in the way Skinner described. 

In NVB the listener defers to the speaker, because the speaker is not allowing the listener to become a speaker. This has consequences for both the speaker and the listener. The speaker who is deferred to is not stimulated by the listener to become a listener either. In other words, in NVB the speaker and the listener get deeper entrenched in their roles.

In a conversation between a speaker and a listener, we can only engage in SVB, if the speaker becomes the listener and if the listener becomes the speaker. This is more complicated than is usually believed. Neither the speaker can easily become the listener nor the listener can easily become the speaker, as SVB deals with much more than that.

For SVB more is needed than the turn-taking between the speaker and an the  listener. For SVB there must be turn-taking between the speaker as-own-listener and the-listener-as-own speaker. In other words, the speaker must take turns with him or herself and listen to him or herself. This listener learns to speak only if he or she is listened to...

Once the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she is no longer the same and can never be like the speaker, who didn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks anymore. In SVB, the speaker is permanently changed and becoming interested in listening. Also, the listener who becomes a speaker is instantly transformed.

Listeners who become speakers, play different roles than speakers who become listeners. All this goes on within just one person. The speaker who became a listener becomes capable of saying things which he or she couldn’t say before and the listener who became a speaker is capable of hearing things which he or she couldn’t listen to before. 


SVB first changes how a person talks with him or herself and then it will change how he or she talks with others. Likewise, SVB first changes how a person listens to himself and then how a person listens to others.  In SVB we listen to others and we can hear if they are listening to themselves.

February 11, 2015

February 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is a third response to “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. Before he wrote what he considered to be his most important book “Verbal Behavior” (1957), Skinner had a table discussion about “the merits of behaviorism” with the famous mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. This authoritarian man conceded that “behaviorism might deal effectively with all the aspects of behavior with the exception of one, language.” It makes no sense that, on the one hand, behaviorism “might deal effectively with all aspects of behavior”, but, on the other, wouldn’t be able to deal with verbal behavior. Such a statement is as obviously wrong as asserting that behaviorism might account for chess playing and singing, but not for riding a bicycle. 

The special place historically given to language has prevented us from understanding it as not in any way significantly different from other behavior. Moreover, arrogant people like Whitehead, engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). He verbally attacked Skinner by presuming that he couldn’t account for the negatively-loaded nonsense-sentence “No black scorpion is falling on this table.” There was definitely an explanation for his domineering, bombastic, intimidating way of communicating: Skinner’s radical behaviorism exposed and demolished his fictitious explanations! 

This writer’s extension of Skinner’s work with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) involves the exploration of situational variables that set the stage for optimal communication and analysis of NVB, that is, how we maintain superstitions, ineffective, hierarchical and problematic communication. In SVB we can say and understand more in a shorter time than in NVB.

Skinner’s linguistic labor involved primarily writing. Although he spoke a lot, his emphasis was not, like this writer is, on speaking. While working on his book, he wrote “I think the subject had better be experimental.  I couldn’t say enough on language in an hour to get the point of view across” (Skinner, March 15, 1935). Skinner here states that he needs more time to say what he would like to say. The lack of time he is referring to is characteristic for NVB, which was, and still is, our dominant way of communicating. In SVB, however, we have all the time in the world, we give each other time and we are able to take time to speak. Although this writer recognizes that Skinner was aware of these constrains, it was not Skinner’s goal to do anything about it.  He had other 'operant' fish to fry.

The experimental exploration of the SVB/NVB distinction involves speaking and listening. This writer agrees with Skinner that reading and writing are not sufficient in “getting the point across.” What Skinner’s statement addresses is what this writer calls verbal fixation. In NVB we talk mainly about what we say and not about how we say it. We get too wordy and have no sense of our body in the here and now while we speak. 

In SVB, by contrast, in which we embody our sound, we enhance the positive experiences of our body by the way in which we speak. Instead of getting stressed, frustrated, fearful, tense, angered and irritated, as we always do in NVB, our sound, which is in the here and now, makes us more aware of our relaxed body from which it emerges. What makes SVB possible is: listening to our sound while we speak. It makes us attentive and capable of understanding each other. 

When Skinner states “the subject had better be experimental” what he is indicating is more attention needs to go to nonverbal phenomena, to what affects us directly. This is what happens in SVB. By paying attention to how we sound, we become attuned. Skinner writes “Underneath what seems like a lot of complexity (which is really only novelty) there lies an immense simplification”(Skinner, June 21, 1935). Then he invented “a rather elaborate apparatus for experiments on humans“, the “Verbal Summator” (Skinner, September 25, 1935). With this apparatus participants would listen to meaningless, nonverbal utterances until they thought they understood what was being said. 

Each speaker is, of course, him or herself a Verbal Summator, who is only understood to the extent that the listener is capable of making sense of his or her sounds. It is easy to recognize the importance of nonverbal aspects of spoken communication when we compare English and Chinese, because they sound so different. However, within the English and the Chinese verbal community there are two other communities: the SVB and the NVB community, who also speak two entirely different languages.

Although we may verbally speak the same language, this prevents us from recognizing that nonverbally, that is, in how we sound, we often are not attuned and incapable of understanding each other. As long as our indirect verbal behavior doesn’t accurately express our direct nonverbal behavior, we remain entangled in our own and in each other’s verbal behavior. Only in SVB we can disentangle, because in SVB there is alignment between our verbal and nonverbal expression. In NVB such alignment isn’t possible. 

Skinner made the hard-headed “strategic decision” to ground “his highly theoretical and sure-to be controversial analysis” of verbal behavior in his basic operant research. He openly admitted in a letter to his friend Fred Keller “I’ve had a long run and tiring run of experiments” (Skinner, December 6, 1936).  This writer has done the opposite of Skinner. He refused for years to write about SVB and NVB and insisted we should speak about it. What he now writes about it is born out of his interactions.


His decision to write about it grew out of his slowly evolving understanding of radical behaviorism and more recently, behaviorology. There really is no need for experimental validation of SVB and NVB, because these response classes are already accounted for. What is needed is writing which makes speaking more likely. If this writing has that result then we can verify the importance of the SVB/NVB distinction. Darwin’s theory of natural selection doesn't depend on approval by creationists; the “analysis of verbal behavior rests on the foundations of analysis of operant behavior.”