June 30, 2015

June 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The following writing is a response to “What do animals mean?” by Rendall, Owen & Ryan (2009). This paper explains that human vocal verbal behavior, speaking, is embedded in and inextricably connected with our nonverbal vocalizations, which, rather than carrying information, induce affective responses in the listener. Although, like the authors, I will mention “sensory and physiological processes that support signaling and responding in listeners”, I will mainly focus on our vocal verbal behavior in which a speaker affects the body of the listener. 

The sound of the speaker is a stimulus, which always has only one of two effects: it can affectively or appetitively influence the nervous system of the listener, which increases the listener's approach behavior, or it can negatively, aversively or noxiously affect the listener, which will increases escape and avoidance behaviors. By studying how animals influence each other, we get a more realistic perspective on how humans influence each other with vocal verbal behavior. The fact that humans have language doesn't mean that they don't do exactly the same as animals. We too affectively influence each other with the sound of our voice. 

With Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), however, a speaker increases the probability of a listener’s approach behavior, but with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the speaker increases the probability of escape and avoidance behaviors in the listener. The two different sounds involved in SVB and NVB result into different behavior. 

The authors, who study animal communication, are against the term “information” because it is “inadequate for many of the problems in behavioral ecology.” Skinner is for the same reason against any kind of mentalist concepts, which really don’t explain anything. In his book Verbal Behavior (1957), he introduces new terminology that refers to environmental variables which make our language possible. Humans should know that animal and human communication “suffers from the lack of clear and rigorous definitions of information, yet nonetheless affords the construct a central explanatory role.” 

As the definition of verbal behavior is itself a verbal activity, it remains easy to get carried away by the very words which are used to describe the verbal behavior. Wittgenstein has called this a ‘language game’. For radical behaviorists words like 'verbal behavior' are meaningful as they are part of a community that regularly uses those words. Mentalists don't think these words are meaningful as they are not involved in this 'game’. If we would consider words as tools, we would have a better chance of using them in ways which are agreed upon and therefore useful. 

My point is that animal communication is as impaired by the words that we use as human communication. It doesn’t even matter whether we use words like “information” or “influence”, as it takes away our attention from the fact that the speaker either appetitively or aversively influences the listener. In the former, which is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the speaker and the listener are equals and they take turns, but during the latter, turn-taking is absent because one is more important than the other. Moreover, the latter is based on the continuation of negative emotions, but the former involves positive emotions. 

By looking at and listening to animal communication, we are  able to admit that it applies equally to human interaction and that “informational focus, whether explicitly articulated or unknowingly adopted, unduly narrows the focus of study and limits the range of questions asked and problems investigated”.

The authors state “burden of communication falls squarely on the disembodied ‘packet of information’ encoded in the signal flowing from signaler to receiver. “ What do humans have in common with “taxa as diverse as primates and frogs and signaling phenomena as diverse as predator alarm calls and mating displays?” I think that nonverbal animals have more in common with our spoken communication than we, who are both  verbal and nonverbal, are capable of admitting.

We have anthropomorphized animals, but when we, due to the great work of these authors, finally stop doing that, we are left with a new way of looking at how we as humans talk; we have an observable, measurable behavioral account. Moreover, this account is extended by the two vocal subsets: SVB is bi-directional, reciprocal and onto-genetically determined (learned during our life time) and NVB is hierarchical or uni-directional and phylogenetically determined (genetically determined behavior).

In spite of the common belief that “listeners responded to such vocalizations in equally appropriate and specific ways as if semantic information had been exchanged” (underlining added), mentalist researchers couldn’t help but notice that  “some vocalizations in animals were found to be produced in specific contexts, such as when encountering predators of food.” This was, however, again interpreted in a mentalist fashion, as if these “outcomes suggested that some animals might use vocalizations in a representational fashion, similar to the way humans use words.” What was missed and distorted by this mentalist account was that these so-called ‘representations’ are inferred from what animals do and don’t explain anything. Mentalist inferences take our attention away from what animals do - in order to refer to ‘representation’ as if animals somehow prove that humans “use vocalizations in a representational fashion.”(!)

  

What we could learn from “signaling primate species closely related to humans” is there is “a surprising absence of the intention by calling animals” (underlining added). Why was it surprising? It was surprising as humans expected it. However, in humans there is also no such a thing as intention, which is a fabricated construct. Mentalist animal researchers have continued to interpret their findings as ways of proving that humans are very different from animals as they have language.  

Although humans, as listeners, also “sometimes respond to vocalizations ‘as if’ they contain semantic information, callers [speakers] prove to be fundamentally unaware of the information value of their own signals.” This is a illustrative  reference to NVB. In NVB, the speaker doesn’t know that he or she is negatively influencing others by how he or she speaks. When a NVB speaker is interrupted by someone, he or she almost always immediately reacts aggressively. This response is automatic and below the level of awareness. It only reaches the level of awareness if the environment supports SVB, but, most environments only support NVB. Moreover, emphasis on the so-called information is always used in NVB as an end which justifies the means, to coerce the listener to do whatever the speaker wants him or her to do. “Data on the neural control of [animal] vocal production” suggests that “it primarily involves involuntary processes.”

As mammals humans have different brains than many other animals. Birds and lizards, for instance, depend on brain structures that are much older than, and therefore hierarchically below, the neocortex, which is unique for mammals. In humans, the neural control of the neocortex made possible complex forms of behavior such as social behavior, which led to tool making and to language and consciousness. Stephen Porges (2001) argues that from ancient brain mechanisms such as the brain stem and the limbic system, which facilitate immobization and mobilization responses during threatening situations, the most recent structure of the neocortex emerged, which mediates our social engagement. His Poly Vagal Perspective (2001) states we instantaneously revert to these older embedded brain structures which activate our visceral or autonomic response. Thus, in a case of a threat, our neocortex shuts down and we immediately revert back to mobilization, that is, to fleeing or fighting and if that isn’t possible, we freeze and immobilize, in order to not be seen by the predator. Porges’ Poly Vagal theory basically explains that we can’t talk as long as we are fearful, aggressive or frozen. 

This is additional evidence for SVB, in which there is no aversive stimulation and no need to freeze, flee or fight. Furthermore, Poly Vagal theory also explains why Social Engagement is impossible as long as our mobilization or our immobilization responses are triggered; we have NVB as long as that happens. 

In terms of signaling, an animal’s sense of safety is of utmost importance. Misinterpretation of a threatening signal can mean death. The details of a signal can only become important when they are safe. The fact that “more recent findings highlight an informational disconnect between signalers and perceivers” seems to “suggest they do not share the same representational parity that characterizes human speech.” This seems to be another misinterpretation. What can be learned from animals is that if we listen to how someone sounds, we accurately determine if he or she is threatening us or making us feel safe and we can learn to differentiate between SVB and NVB. 

“Vocal verbal behavior [in animals] is modulated primarily by involuntary processes involving sub-cortical brain structures, such as the limbic system, the mid-brain and the brain-stem. In contrast, language production in humans involves a variety of sub-cortical circuits but relies importantly on volitionally controlled processes in temporal –and frontal-lobe cortical regions” (Lieberman, 2002). Sub-cortical regions are involved only to the extent that they mediate safety and well-being as that activates the temporal-and frontal-lobe cortical regions.  

June 29, 2015

June 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

There is support for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)from the field of evolutionary anthropology. The Affect Induction Theory argues that instead of sending and processing information, which is an anthropomorphic, agential, mentalistic account,  nonhuman primate vocal behavior is about influencing others. 

Today’s writing is a response to “An Affect-Conditioning Model (ACM) of non-human primate vocal signaling” (1997) by Owren and Rendall. “Callers are suggested to use vocalizations to elicit affective responses in others. Responses are either unconditioned being produced directly by the signal itself, or conditioned, resulting from past interactions in which the sender both called and produced affective responses in the receiver through other means.”  This conditioning paradigm, which was discovered by Pavlov, gives a scientific account for why SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) occur. It explains why there is more NVB hierarchical signaling and little SVB, signaling based on ontogenetic instead of phylogenetic development. 

No matter how fancy we get with our language, all of our vocal verbal exchanges are rooted in our evolutionary history and are oftentimes completely impaired by it. "In this view, the social relationship between the sender and the receiver is an important determinant of what sorts of responses can be elicited and hence, which calls are used.” What matters for SVB is that the ACM functionally explains the behavior of the sender. In doing so ACM identifies that the speaker either evokes an appetitive response in the listener with SVB or he or she elicits an aversive response in the listener with NVB. These different responses tell us about dominance and hierarchy. 

“For instance, a sender that is subordinate to, or otherwise has little power over a given receiver also has little opportunity to use its calls as predictors of negative affective responses.” What this means for human interaction is that the SVB speaker doesn’t and can’t threaten the NVB listener. “It therefore relies primarily on vocalizations that have unconditioned effects. We refer to these calls as squeaks, shrieks, and screams, and propose that sounds of this general type should occur in acoustic variable streams – thereby maximizing unconditioned affective responses in the receiver while minimizing habituation effects.” 

We readily habituate to SVB, but not to NVB, because the sounds of the SVB speaker are subtle, sonorant, smooth, connected and rounded, while the sounds of the NVB speaker are harsh, jagged, fractured and coercive. The unconditioned effects of “squeaks, shrieks and screams” in nonverbal organisms are analogous to some of our troublesome songs, poems and stories.

In science nothing can be forced on the reality. In NVB, however, the speaker constantly forces the listener. NVB is inherently  biased. Science requires SVB, which can be verified by everyone, but NVB resists any kind of accountability because the speaker can get away with his or her forcefulness. “If the sender is dominant to the receiver, in contrast, it has ample opportunity to pair threatening calls with negative outcomes and can routinely induce and subsequently elicit conditioned affective responses. Such responses result from experiences in which the sender has produced individually distinctive vocalizations prior to attacking or otherwise frightening another animal. As a given receiver routinely hears many such calls, the identity of the sender is the most important predictor of upcoming events and this animal’s individually distinctive acoustic cues play a primary role in mediating any conditioning that occurs. Vocalizations used as conditioned stimuli must therefore carry salient, discrete cues to individual identity.” Here we have a description of NVB, in which everybody dances to the tune of those who can dominate and aversively control the conversation. 

In SVB, by contrast, such hierarchical differences don’t occur. Moreover, in SVB there is a total absence of aversive stimulation. “We argue that individually distinctive cues based on vocal-tract filtering are best suited for this role, and refer to such sounds as sonants and gruffs. Sonant and gruff calls should also be used by both dominant and subordinate senders in order to elicit positive conditioned responses.” These “sonants and gruffs” are analogous to the languages we speak, that is , in both  SVB and NVB we use language, but in the former our words are evoked, whereas in the latter, they are elicited. Another way of saying this is that in SVB verbal behavior is conditioned operantly, whereas in NVB, verbal behavior is conditioned respondently. 

“Such calls might occur, for instance, when an animal approaches a subordinate individual for grooming and attempts to decrease its fear during the approach. A subordinate animal should pair such calls with grooming or other positive outcomes when interacting with a dominant, thereby being able to elicit positive conditioned responses in that individual on other occasions.” This is a description of NVB as it is obviously a function of different status. The NVB dominant one switches to SVB and the subordinate one is no longer fearful and produces SVB too. However, the hierarchy remains and the dominant one always gets what he or she wants from the subordinate one. If the subordinate one is not giving what the dominant one demands, the dominant one will immediately switch to intimidation and threats and then subordinate gives in or he or she makes a lot NVB noise to distract the dominant one or to put him or her off.

June 28, 2015

June 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my eight response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). In Verbal Behavior (1957), Skinner writes about the speak-as-own-listener and yet most radical behaviorists are not even interested in having a real conversation in which they as speaker are their own listener. In effect, most behaviorists, just like non-behaviorists, adhere to the rules of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

NVB is and needs to be rule-governed, but Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is contingency-shaped. How can writing about a speaker make sense if it is not about how the speaker sounds and only about what he or she says? If a speaker speaks, he or she produces a sound and his or her voice is an independent variable which determines the kind of conversation, the dependent variable. What is a listener if writing is not based on what the listener hears, if it excludes the sound which is produced by the speaker? Writing about speaking and listening is meaningless as long as it fails to mention that how a speaker sounds is determined by whether the listener listens or is capable of listening. Speakers don’t determine their sound in the same way they don’t determine their words. The speaker’s sound can only be expressed if the listener is listing or mediating him or her.

A major point in Skinner’s theory is that “verbal observing (listening) and producing (speaking) relations have special functions that set verbal behavior apart, and that is the social mediating function of verbal behavior relative to nonverbal stimuli.” Nonverbal stimuli, by contrast, act directly on the environment, but verbal stimuli act indirectly, because they are mediated by others. “Thus, as one acquires increased verbal correspondence between what is spoken relative to other stimuli observed, one expands one’s options for reinforcement associated with the various motivational conditions or establishing operations that correspond to the use of names” (underlining added). Here the issue of correspondence only seems to refer to what is said, but not to how it is said. 


If a teacher teaches with a high rate of SVB the student will non-verbally corresponds accordingly. However, if the teacher teaches with a high rate of NVB, the student will non-verbally correspond to that coercive way of teaching. These two ways of responding may verbally be the same, but non-verbally they are of course entirely different. Moreover, NVB instruction will inevitably lead to negative self-talk or to private speech. SVB instruction, however, leads to positive self-talk or private speech. 

The authors write “one expands one’s options for reinforcement associated with the various motivational conditions or establishing operations that correspond to the use of names.” One wonders, however, how reinforcing one's negative self-talk can be? Negative private speech inevitably sets the stage for NVB. 

The authors “propose that when the joining of observing and producing responses have verbal ramifications, as in certain verbal categorizations, Naming is the facilitator”, but I want to  add that given the SVB/NVB distinction, we must engage in a case of “Naming”, which applies to adult talking. 


"Derived stimulus relations need not be verbal, as in the case of music, art and dance”, but distance themselves from “emergent relations that are in some way tied to evolved survival functions in nonhuman animals” as the reinforcement of art, music and dance “are not verbal.” They don’t consider the importance of nonverbal reinforcement due to the way in which we sound while we speak. Supposedly, the speaker doesn’t produce any sound and the listener doesn't hear any sound either. 

The authors hesitate, but mention “Perhaps creative performance in the arts or problem solving in nonhuman species involves higher order operant relations or emergent relations that incorporate joining of observing and producing responses such that novel and effective responding results.” One doesn’t need to turn to creative performances as the speaker-as-own-listener creates SVB which gives rise to these  “higher order operant relations that incorporate joining of observing and producing responses such that novel and effective responding results.”

SVB and NVB already existed before I discovered them, but now that we have given a name to these subsets of our vocal verbal behavior, it is clear why there was a “discrepancy in the stimulus equivalence literature in which some emergent behavior involves processes of observing and producing that are not essentially verbal.” There is not enough talking going on, that is, SVB, about these matters, as only academic writing and reading is reinforced. The authors write “Perhaps the contingencies of reinforcement are simply different, as when we discussed the different types of observing and producing responses and the distinction between the reinforcement for each.” Indeed, the contingencies of reinforcement for SVB and NVB are different. 

The stimulus-stimulus pairing involved in “Naming” was called “ostensive learning” by Skinner (1957). He described it as the “pairing of a vocal stimulus (potentially a conditioned reinforcer) with another neutral stimulus, such as an action with an object.” His words indicate that he considered it as superficial learning. He emphasizes this by arguing that “children learn to become effective listeners through Pavlovian-type conditioning processes that set the occasion for the listener to respond to verbal stimuli with conditioned reflexes.” Skinner emphasizes operant behavior, not respondent behavior. 

The teacher who gives NVB instruction elicits behaviors in his or her students. but the teacher who gives SVB instruction evokes new learning responses in his or her students. As “echoics are foundational to the tact speaker function” there is a difference between pairings which occurred with SVB or NVB instruction. 


The authors write “perhaps, both the Pavlovian second order conditioning and the echoic are involved, but at different stages.” No doubt this must be the case. Moreover, Horne and Lowe (1996) suggest that a“the caregiver’s voice and sounds function as classically conditioned stimuli that have strong reinforcing effects on the child, so that when the child hear his or her own voice in the echoic, these sounds have reinforcing properties similar to those of the parents”. If the child was instructed by an abusive NVB caregiver, he or she will not be able to hear his own voice when he or she echoes what the parent is saying. He or she will echo the caregiver’s negative-sounding voice, which doesn’t allow him or her to hear his or her own relaxed positive-sounding voice. We can only hear our own voice during SVB, so only when the child gets SVB instruction, will it be able to hear his or her own voice. If the parents weren’t reinforcing the child with their instruction in the first place, the child will not be able to reinforce him or herself and consequently, as is always the case in NVB, he or she will demand from others that they reinforce him or her. Thus, the NVB the speaker aversively and coercively stimulates the listener and deamands to have his or her way.

The “correspondence between what has been heard and what is said serves as a conditioned reinforcer, and in typically developing children this occurs very early.” It should be clear here that this correspondence will only happen if the mother is healthy and happy and not depressed, fearful or stressed. In the former,  mothers would produce SVB, but in the latter they would produce NVB. During NVB, out of fear, stress, anxiety or frustration, we fake  correspondence between what is heard and what is said and such obedient responses are not emitted, but they are elicited. 

“In a study on very early development, Decasper and Spence (1987) reported that newborn children emitted auditory observing responses to their mother’s voices and not to other voices, suggesting that in utero conditioning of mother’s voices was responsible.” This also demonstrates that it must be SVB instruction rooted in love, support, care, protection and joy, rather than NVB instruction due to depression, impatience, despair, fear or frustration. “It does seem feasible that Pavlovian second-order conditioned reinforcement for the stimuli involved in the observation experience for Naming may be responsible for the prerequisite conditioning of the echoic as a reinforcer.” Certainly, without such conditioned reinforcement developmental cusps will be missed. If we are raised properly, with love and care, we learn SVB, but if we are neglected or abandoned, we will learn NVB.  

Parroting is not verbal, but “duplicating the sounds can initially reinforce speech sounds or singing, and hearing the sounds by speaker-as-own-listener results in automatic reinforcement.” And “Attending to the observed response that one [as a baby] produces results in within-the-skin listener reinforcement, perhaps because the correspondence between hearing and saying is already a conditioned reinforcer.”   

When we learn about SVB, that is, when we listen to ourselves while we speak, like nonverbal children, we first need to hear our own sound, without having to be concerned about what we say. When we hear whether we have SVB or NVB, we have mastered “Naming” the two subsets of vocal verbal behavior.  This will exponentially increase our chances for positive reinforcement, because being able to “Name” SVB and NVB, will allow us to have SVB and to prevent NVB. Also we can practice SVB on our own as speaker-as-own-listener and SVB will be automatically reinforcing to us. NVB doesn’t need to be learned, it only needs to be recognized and prevented. Extinguishing NVB is done by avoiding and escaping from the environments with people who maintain it. Only when another person as listener mediates our SVB as a speaker, will our SVB be reinforced and strengthened.