March 31, 2015

March 31, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday, I wrote a text for a song based on the second melody of the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, which is my mother’s favorite music. It came out beautifully and it transcends the problems of the years that have gone by. I still need to practice singing it because it is a rather difficult song. Just now, I read B.F. Skinner, who said that “Many instructional arrangements seem “contrived,” but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher’s function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student’s life.” (1973). I will let my students read and respond to the article from which I took this quote. Also, I downloaded “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2008), a paper by the brilliant neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp. His Affective-Neuro-Science and Skinner’s Operant Conditioning, but also Vivaldi’s magnificent music, are proof there is such a thing as Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We have an innate tendency to be social. Also, I read about Irène Deliège, a music expert from Liege. The clock in my house was made in Liege and I have been in that town in Belgium. To me all these happy things somehow connect with SVB.

March 30, 2015

March 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Today it is my mother’s birthday, but I am not in contact with her anymore. I think of her and wish her well. I have broken off all contact with my family as I kept feeling negatively affected and wanted it to stop. It has stopped. To my surprise, I am happier without them. The suffering involved in dealing with my family has finally come to an end. I never thought I would do such a thing, but, although I have been going back and forth on this issue numerous times, by now I haven’t contacted anybody of my family in years. 

It feels like I am living my own life now. I wasn’t able to do that when I was still in thinking of them. I hope that they have a similar experience of relief, but I doubt it. My family wants me to be something which I am not and blames me for creating problems. I have been struggling with this for almost 55 years. Only in recent times I feel I'm coming into my own. 

I don’t have any hard feelings towards anyone. Also, I don’t regret that it went the way it did. In fact, I am pleased with where I am at. Now that I am feeling this way, there is really not much to think about anymore. This is what was needed for all of us. It has been very difficult, but things are calm and peaceful now. I sit here and I think with love of my dear mother and father. I don’t miss them anymore and I accept that we have drifted apart. I wish my mother is not too unhappy about this, because I know that she is.

March 29, 2015

March 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Every day I am getting more ready to write. Much of my writing is a preparation. These are days I have lots of time. As I like to write more, my writing gets better. As I read behaviorist literature, my writing comes under control of behavioristic principles. However, I am still trying to make sense of the behaviorist tenet that “truth and meaning of verbal behavior lie not in their correspondence to the world but their effects” and that “effects of verbal behavior occur primarily in the behavior of other people” (Guerin, 1992) (italics added). I agree that “truth and meaning of verbal behavior” lie in “their effects, and the effects” in “the behavior of other people”, but I want' to say something about “truth and meaning of verbal behavior” in correspondence. 

Certainly, the truth and meaning of “give me your money or I’ll kill you” is the effect this sentence has on other people. “In this sense, such verbal behavior repertoires are maintained, and thus are “true” only to the extent that they get someone else to do something” (Guerin, 1992)(italics added). My question is, how do we get each other to do something and how we affect others? “This is my gun” is true only in the sense that saying it functions to change the behavior of someone else and strengthen a class of verbal responses” (Guerin, 1992). Although, to safe ourselves, we may pretend to have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), it is the verbal response class called Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and not SVB, which will be strengthened under such coercive conditions. 

The reason there is so much more NVB than SVB is because we are constantly threatened. In other words, more often than we acknowledge, there is correspondence between how the speaker sounds and how the listener responds. Stated differently, hostile environments maintain NVB non-verbally.  

March 28, 2015

March 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

In our garden, the former owner of our house used to have a small patio where she would sit on rectangular tiles. When we took out the big Ash tree, we had to break up that patio, which was right underneath it. Ever since, the tiles had been stacked on top of each other behind the house. Yesterday, because my wife was complaining about the ants that are coming into our kitchen, I looked at these tiles and lifted one up. As I suspected, there were thousands of ants underneath these tiles. With each tile I lifted up, I saw thousands of eggs and ants. No wonder we had been plagued by ants with these tiles stacked just below our kitchen window. 

This gave me an idea to use the tiles to build a pyramid for the little Buddha statue which someone had given to me as a birthday present. Not knowing what I was doing, I started stacking the tiles on top of each other. First, I made a platform. Then I added another layer and then another one, and so on. It fitted together perfectly and I used the tiles to make the steps that were leading to the top of the pyramid, where I made a small temple in which I placed the statue. The structure looks beautiful and when the sun is setting, the rectangular shapes throw nice shadows. It is so satisfying to have used these tiles for this purpose and to have created such a pleasing result by just rearranging what was already there. Plus, the ants are gone now that this unusual temple has been created. The place where the pyramid was build is where the patio used to be.

March 27, 2015

March 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

 

I recently read somewhere that it is important to challenge you, dear reader, so that you will pay close attention to what you are reading. This doesn’t mean I should make it difficult for you, but that I should write in such a way that you can understand what I say. Things are clear to me, which, I think, are not clear to you and that is why I write in this way. 

This writing is about how we talk with each other. I want you to know about two subsets of vocal verbal behavior: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In SVB we realize that we talk the way we do because of the environment that surrounds us, but in NVB we think that stimulus control and the history of stimulus control resides within each person and is the expression of an inner agent, a self or an idea. 

SVB and NVB imply two types of contingencies. There can be (but often isn’t) correspondence between the contingencies which are described by our vocal verbal behavior and the occurrence of these contingencies in the moment that we engage in vocal verbal behavior. Correspondence between our verbal and nonverbal behavior is present during SVB, but is lacking in NVB. It is impossible to have correspondence between verbal behavior and the objective world in NVB. That this is not seen as an immense problem is because, in spite of all its negative emotions, NVB is reinforced. Moreover, NVB is reinforced since generally this is how we get others to do things. 

Coercive behavioral control is communicated by means of NVB. We have so much NVB because forcefulness is still our main way of behavioral control. We continue with this because we don't know how to implement positive behavioral control. We can only learn about this by talking with each other. To stimulate, shape and maintain behavior by means of positive reinforcement requires us to talk differently; it requires us to have SVB. SVB is a different way of talking, which in and of itself is a different way of behaving. SVB is not a way of talking which presumably leads to doing; SVB is doing. 

NVB, on the other hand, prevents action, because it separates the speaker from the listener. The listener remains inactive in NVB and thus in NVB, we are neither listening to others nor are we listening to ourselves. It is only in SVB that we realize that in NVB nobody is listening to anybody. Moreover, in NVB we maintain the illusion together that we are talking with each other and that we are listening to each other. This illusion is maintained by our talking and not by our listening. In NVB talking is more important than listening.