October 3, 2014

October 3, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer woke up from a dream in which he kissed his mother on her cheek while both were crying from happiness. They were walking outside and then went inside their home. They were in a spacious room in which this writer was to give one of his seminars. The room looked like an enormous classroom and the sound of his voice resonated. There was a girl who was attracted to him. They embraced each other and she wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t let her and said it was nice to feel the way they did without getting into anything. The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)seminar was about to get started and the room was filling up with people. Before he began, he went outside and met a former client, a lady, who was wearing a head-set and was smoking a cigarette. He greeted her, but she didn’t recognize him and seemed much bigger and stronger than before. They had always had a good connection with each other. When she recognized him, she didn’t engage in her usual loud behavior and calmly blinked at him with her big brown eyes. After she had left, this writer was able to take giant steps and he walked fast enough to keep up with the speed of cars. 

Besides having this dream, this writer also had a good sleep. He had gone to bed at 8pm and woke up at 4:30am, so he slept 8.5 hours, which is more than usual for him. Also, yesterday, immediately after his work, he had gone to the gym, where he swam 20 laps and sat in the Jacuzzi and in the sauna. This seemed to have had a good effect on his sleep. He had not done this for a while and felt sure that it was because of this that his sleep was so restful. Furthermore, at his work, this writer had been appreciated by his colleagues. He received approving emails. This too had made him feel satisfied and grateful. Another unusual event was that he had listened to an audio tape he had once made for a friend. On it he spoke with his friend, while he walked along the San Francisco Bay. It was relaxing to listen to that tape and his drive from Red Bluff to Chico had gone by quickly and smoothly because of that.

October 2, 2014

October 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

By speaking about behavior, not as caused by ourselves, by our beliefs, by our personalities, by our motivations, or, by the extensions of our idea of ourselves, our significant others, our authorities, our role-models, our leaders and our gurus, and not as caused by the group to which we supposedly belong, wish to belong or no longer belong, we begin to look at behavior objectively and we free ourselves from the way in which our language seemingly divided up the environment.

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) we come in contact with ourselves and each other and we recognize that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is a way of speaking in which we separate from ourselves as well as from each other.

   

When we feel safe, happy, supported, respected, accepted and acknowledged, when we experience and share positive emotions, our sense of self and isolation is temporarily lifted. This common truth shows that in, what should be considered our natural sense of well-being, our homeostasis, we feel connected to ourselves and to those who are in our environment. 

If our way of talking captures this, we are going find out how our behavior works. We have not done that and to the extent that we have done that, we realize that the presence of NVB brings an end to SVB. However, regardless of all our NVB, SVB  emerged. Regardless of our reflexive respondent behavior, operant behavior evolved. Indeed, respondent behavior doesn’t fully capture the complexity of our behavior. This was B.F.Skinner's great contribution; he discovered that the consequences of our behavioral response affects the future probability of that behavioral response.

While SVB clarifies the co-occurrence of and intereraction between respondent and operant behavior, NVB keeps us stuck with respondent behavior. The previously mentioned limitation, worded as the assumption that we cause our own behavior or that others are causing our behavior (which is an equally problematic version of causation), is more accurately described by how involuntary, respondent behavior constrains voluntary, operant learning. In SVB such constraints are decreased. The contrast between SVB and NVB illustrates this enormous important difference. Another way of saying this is that SVB is practical and experiential and not only theoretical. NVB wrongly makes us believe that theory is causing our behavior.

October 1, 2014

October 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer had a wonderful conversation with John Ferreira about adjusting how we  talk to behaviorology, the natural science of environment-controlled behavior. To speak more meaningful, more often and more accurately about behaviorology, we must adopt words which describe the operant process involved in our verbal behavior. 

Environmental antecedent and postcedent events which stimulate, shape and maintain our verbal behavior, occur within and outside of our skin. Ferreira refers to these as endovironmental and ectovironmental stimuli. It makes total sense to treat what is inside and outside the skin as one environment. Furthermore, it is of great importance that we acknowledge that part of the environment to which we only individually have excess, the endovironment and that part to which everyone has access, the ectoenvironment. Endo as well as ecto-stimuli simultaneously and alternatively determine our ecto and endo verbal behavior, public speech and private speech.  There is ongoing interaction between the endo and the ecto environment.  

   

To observe our verbal behavior, we must stop talking about my behavior, your behavior and even, our behavior. All of these are inferences about entities which supposedly cause behavior. Fact is, however, we neither cause our own nor each other’s behavior. One may ask: what then is causing our behavior? The answer to this question is that behavior isn’t ours. By rephrasing the question we become more accurate about behavior: what is causing behavior? It is likely that we still wonder whose behavior we are talking about? Since we have been conditioned to think in terms of my behavior versus your behavior, our behavior is often out of the picture, let alone all behavior, which includes, of course, animal behavior. 

The natural science of human behavior is part of biology, because it acknowledges the continuation of behavior across species. Said differently, human beings are part of the natural world in which environments select behavioral consequences.When we feel fearful, agitated, threatened or humiliated, when we are negatively affected by ecto – or endo stimuli, we get again and again stuck on this idea that we cause our own behavior or that we must do something to change. Even when we try to stop others from having a negative effect on us, we keep missing the point that neither we nor others cause their own behavior.  

September 29, 2014

September 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Now that this writer knows about behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, he is reassured about things he was unclear about when he began studying radical behaviorism. That most people don’t have a scientific account for behavior doesn’t mean that there is no scientific account or that there is no need for it. Yet, it occurs to this writer that even behaviorologists mistake what is written for what is said. The difference is huge, but not obvious. Similarly to the view that an inner mystical agent causes individual behavior, most people believe that what is written is causing them to talk the way they do. This troublesome falsehood is perpetuated by the fact that what is written is being reinforced much more than what is said.

We can’t become scientific about human behavior as long as we hang on to explanations which don’t explain anything and which only give us the illusion that they explain something. Skinner was right by asserting that the prediction and control of behavior is not enhanced by explanatory fictions. The same is true about our preference for written words over spoken words. It is not the proverbial child, who is thrown out with the bathwater, but the bathwater, the environment, is thrown out. Written sayings have turned things upside down. 

We are not going with the flow, but the flow is going with us. We are not going against the whole world, but the whole world is going against us. The notion that something written could explain how we speak has had disastrous consequences. We are at war with each other and we don’t talk because of what is written. What we say is limited by what is written, because we have lost our ability to reinforce it.

September 28, 2014

September 28, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Whether Russian or Chinese, every language consists of two languages. There is supportive, peaceful, respectful, sincere, reciprocal, positive, open, sensitive, kind, pleasant-sounding, scientific English, but, there is also hostile, distrustful, nasty, aggressive, negative, guarded, defensive, pretentious, hurtful, harsh, rude, horrible-sounding, cut-throat, biased, unscientific, my-way-or-the-highway English. The former is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the latter Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We are not in the habit of viewing SVB and NVB, as two different languages, because we don’t approach how we speak in a scientific manner. We must pay attention to independent variables in the internal and external environment of which our speech, the dependent variable, is always a function. 

  

One way to explain SVB is by imagining that one is safely going to bed. One unwinds from a busy day and one looks forward to going to sleep. As one prepares to lie down in bed, one doesn’t engage in any activity and when one’s head hits the pillow one falls almost immediately asleep. The reader is asked to think of that moment in which one starts to feel sleepy. Instead of falling asleep, the reader is asked to stay awake and speak. One speaks with a sleepy voice and the fact that one speaks makes one even sleepier than one already was. One’s voice sounds calm and is almost inaudible. It is with this gentle voice that one begins to recognize the possibilities of SVB. One remains awake, because one’s voice sounds so good that one wants to explore its beneficial effects. One doesn’t fall asleep, because one’s voice generates a sense of well-being that increases as one speaks and makes one feel quiet and conscious.