August 10, 2016

August 10, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twelfth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). I agree with Day who states “the power of simple description as a method for generating knowledge appears to have been grossly underestimated.” I feel very close to his description. 

“Of course, nothing in the Skinner system requires that the observer restrict his talk to the emission of descriptive statements.” The same can be said about the Peperkamp “system” of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). However, I don’t myself call it a “system” as I think that description of SVB and NVB alone is sufficient. 

“Once the observation of behavior has taken place”, once our way of talking has been carefully listened to, “the observer should be encouraged to talk interpretively about what he has seen.” The listener is stimulated to become a speaker and to engage in SVB, that is, talk about what he has heard and is hearing and “not necessarily restricting himself to the identification of controlling variables.” The restrictions Day is talking about are only part of NVB, during SVB such restrictions don’t exist. 

“To be sure, the radical behaviorist recognizes that the particular interpretation that he makes will be a function of his own special history, and clearly interpretation guided by extensive observation is to be preferred to speculation by the novice.” My interpretation of the SVB/NVB distinction is more than a function of my own unique history. 

All my students and mental health clients continuously validate my interpretation with their “extensive observation.” Without a trace of doubt “very special circumstances” have been created “that contribute to my “psychological” theory”. Day writes about “standard machinery of experimental method in psychology”, which, at some point, requires that subjects “do at least something which is capable of being seen.” 

This description of visual stimuli doesn’t represent vocal verbal behavior as it requires the subject say something which is capable of being heard. We only do this in SVB. Day wonders “How often does the psychologist actually watch his subjects in action, hoping simply that what he sees will lead him to talk more informatively about what he is investigating?” 

If the psychologist is investigating vocal verbal behavior, there is much to be heard, but not that much to be seen. And, if the psychologist talks with the subject about what he hears, he should not only listen to what others say, he should also listen to himself as a subject. If he doesn’t listen to himself as well, he will engage in NVB, but if he listens to himself while he talks with his subject, he will engage in SVB. 

The question should be: how often does the psychologist actually listen to himself while he speaks with his subjects? There is no need for him to hope that what he hears will lead him to “talk more informatively about what he is investigating”, as his involvement in SVB would demonstrate that he is talking very informatively now about talking. 

People who are engaged in SVB agree that they are having a meaningful conversation. How different is such an involvement from “the principal investigator of a research project”, who “merely surveys an orderly collection of numbers, usually purported to be “composite” measures of something or other?” It is clear that “an orderly collection of numbers” is not going to make us listen to the sound of our voice while we speak. 

Even the “more fortunate graduate student”, who wrote down these numbers and “presumably had at least the opportunity to observe the relevant behavior as it actually took place”, may have listened to the subject, but chances are very small that he or she listened to himself.

August 8, 2016

August 8, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my tenth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Another defining criterion of radical behaviorism is “The focal awareness of the importance of environmental variables.” Sunday we spend the whole afternoon sitting next to Deer Creek. The creek is cold and clear and the rush of water was like music to our ears. I kissed my wife Bonnie when we arrived and we both felt loved by nature. We gently rocked back and forth in our hammock in the shade of the trees that were hanging over the water. 

On Monday I saw five patients who suffer from a variety of problems. At the end of the day I also saw two children, a boy of eight and a girl of six years old. Their parents are going through a divorce.  Especially the girl was very restless. I wasn’t able to get much leverage with them as they bounced back and forth through my office, but it was very interesting to see that they did whatever they felt they had control over. They dragged the pillows around and spread them on the floor. 

I let them crawl underneath the chair and they went into the cabinet under the table. The spaces could barely hold them, but this was where they chose to be. As they tried to be in the small cabinet they slammed the doors shut, I began to worry they might hurt their little fingers. 

They weren’t listening and were so wild that I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want anything harmful to happen and prevent them from climbing into the cabinet. Although I managed to get them out, it wasn’t easy. I made them count to ten with a serious and funny face. They succeeded and I applauded them. I was exhausted when the session was over.

As these different environments of which only a few aspects have been described illustrate, my behavior was very different on Sunday than on Monday. While Sunday had been a day full of peace and rest in nature, Monday was a busy and stressful day full of mental health problems. 

My Monday had started by not finding my keys and by thinking that I had lost them, which luckily turned out not to be the case. It ended with the treatment of these anxious, needy, but lively children and trying to talk with their frustrated, conflicted and troubled parents. 

Indeed “a great deal of behavior is to some extent under environmental control.” Much of that control is not as conspicuous as we might want it to be. I was thinking of the influence of these arguing parents on these innocent children. It made me think how I grew up in a dysfunctional family in which there was often a lot of screaming and frustration. My behavior as a child had sometimes been exactly like these two children. 

I was like that boy, who tried to find safety by crawling underneath the chair and I was also like that little girl, who desperately tried to elicit my approval. It was alarming to see how this non-stop talking girl attracted so much of my attention with her restless behavior. The few moments of calm, which were clearly appreciated by the boy, but disturbed by the girl, didn’t give him the chance to get his bearings.

  

I concur with Day, who states “It is not so obvious that the grain of the environmental control of behavior is much finer than is commonly appreciated; the slightest difference in stimulating conditions (which the experimenter is often not prepared to appreciate) may lead to very gross differences in behavior.” The children asked to listen to their favorite music and were mesmerized by video I showed on my laptop.

When I spoke with them while the music was playing the girl became more responsive to me. As the experimenter, I was not immediately prepared to appreciate that difference in stimulus condition; I wanted them to pay attention to me rather than to the disturbing video clip.

August 7, 2016

August 7, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my ninth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). The distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) can solve problems which otherwise cannot be solved. Radical behaviorists have railed against mentalism, but weren’t successful in changing old beliefs. 

Everyone believes the world is flat, that is, most people have continued to believe behavior is caused by an inner self. In their zeal to “discover the variables controlling what has been said” radical behaviorists have paid more and more attention to textual than to vocal verbal behavior. 

It has never occurred to anyone that being a radical behaviorist or a mentalist actually involves two entirely different ways of talking. I am a different kind radical behaviorist, as I couldn’t adhere to society’s hierarchy, which is maintained by NVB, the language of coercion. 

My discovery of SVB became possible, because, no matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t able to fit into a society in which behavior is generally controlled by forcefulness and effort. To the extent that radical behaviorists still go on believing in coercive behavioral control, they will not be able to have the SVB that is needed to practice their science. 

Day, who, like Skinner, had much more SVB than most other radical behaviorists, states “the meaningfulness of psychological and mental terms provides no insuperable problem, provided the verbal practices of both speaker and hearer have been shaped by overlapping verbal communities.” Although the speaker and hearer may speak the same language, they still continue to have different levels of SVB and NVB. 

The rates of SVB and NVB within one’s family sets the stage for how one later on experiences SVB and NVB in other families, school, the workplace and society at large. “Meaningfulness of psychological and mental terms provide no insuperable problem” as long as we are able to engage in SVB, but NVB is guaranteed to perpetuate mankind’s misery. 

The meaning of psychological and scientific terms cannot be clarified as NVB separates the speaker from hearer. Only during SVB can the speaker and hearer unify as they take turns and as their speaking and listening behavior remain joined.  Assessing “the observable (not necessarily publicly observable) events that act as discriminative stimuli in control of emission of the term” is only possible in SVB.

Accurate assessment of events which are only privately observable is made impossible by our NVB which excludes our private speech from our public speech. Private as well as public speech is viewed as caused by environmental variables while we engage in SVB. Consequently, there is no separation between our private speech and public speech in SVB. 

As our private speech is disconnected from our public speech in NVB, this private speech takes on a life of its own, stimulating the belief in the internal causation of behavior. Although most radical behaviorists have had the conversation in which the separation of private speech and public speech was temporarily lifted, they have never pursued this,  like I did, as an essentially important separate means of investigation. 

One of the things people, particularly those who are suffering from mental health problems, repeatedly say when they embark on SVB is that they find this very meaningful. “This kind of analysis is what Skinner has in mind when he speaks of “operational definition” (1945, p.271).” (italics are added as Skinner mostly had mostly SVB). 

To listen to our own sound while we speak is the operational definition of SVB. To explore SVB, we must let the listener speak and allow the speaker to listen. When we do that we realize that there is no listener and there is no speaker, but there is only speaking and listening. We discover meaning and agree with each other that meaning is discovered when each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks.

August 6, 2016

August 6, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Radical behaviorism is, as many opponents have written, “anti-ontological”, but non-behaviorists “resist such an anti-ontological outlook.” You could say they never learned the new language. They experienced “the formulation of a radical new epistemology” by the radical behaviorists as forceful and aversive. 

Non-behaviorists couldn’t feel comfortable with formulations which didn’t really address what they experience when they talk with each other. Skinner as well as other radical behaviorists didn’t know about the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction. This distinction addresses how the listener experiences the speaker. It also addresses how the reader experiences the writer. 

Yet, how the reader experiences the writer cannot address how the listener experiences the speaker. To analyze how the reader experiences the writer’s writing, the speaker must consider the feedback from the listener, who speaks with the speaker. In SVB the speaker and the listener take turns in an unstructured manner. This turn-taking is either completely absent or predetermined in NVB.

Without SVB “The analysis of the variables controlling the verbal behavior of whosoever uses the word knowledge” could not happen and is not ever going to happen. The strenuous focus on epistemology, on what they say, is merely an excuse for radical behaviorists not to pay any attention to how they say it. However, in SVB the speaker and the listener realize how they affect each other. In NVB, the speaker affects the listener with an aversive contingency. When such a listener speaks he or she is bound to respond with counter-control, with NVB.  

To teach radical behaviorism more emphasis must be placed on spoken rather than on textual verbal behavior. Moreover, as this is done, it is essential that radical behaviorism is taught by means of SVB. This can only be accomplished behaviorists differentiate between SVB and NVB.  

Radical behaviorism has been successfully taught only to the extent that SVB was used. As the SVB/NVB distinction was not yet known this couldn’t be the case. It is predicted this will be the case more often if radical behaviorists embrace this distinction. In the light of the SVB/NVB distinction Day’s writing attains new meaning. 

“Anyone is basically free to speak as he does. A man says what he can say; he says what he does say, and all this is in principle acceptable to the radical behaviorist, since whatever is said is as such a manifestation of complex human functioning and is consequently the object of behavioral investigation.” Interestingly, Day makes a distinction between what a man can and does say. As I just explained, although we may say a lot, we cannot say complex things in NVB. 

In SVB we don’t need to say much to say what we want to say. In SVB, we say more by saying less. Day states “In responding to professional language, the radical behaviorist has his own course to follow: he must attempt to discover the variables controlling what has been said.” Why didn’t the radical behaviorists discover the SVB/NVB distinction? Isn’t it important to know whether we respond because we are mutually reinforcing each other or we are affected by an aversive contingency? 

Behaviorists haven’t taken any notice of the difference between SVB and NVB and to my knowledge no papers have been written about how hierarchical ‘social structures’ are maintained by NVB. Day writes that “Even the most mentalistic language is understandable and valuable in this sense,” but he hasn’t made the difference between mentalistic and non-mentalistic talk, which is also the difference between SVB and NVB and between equality and inequality. One thing is for sure, without recognizing NVB first we are unable to recognize and engage in SVB.