January 8, 2015

January 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

In the paper “Verbal Behavior in the Measuring Process” (1996) written by L.E. Fraley, things are stated which explain what this author means by Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Just like Fraley’s description of “measuring”, SVB can also be described as generating “new stimuli that intra-verbally evoke new and potentially more effective responding to the situation under investigation.” The “situation” that is “under investigation” is our spoken communication or vocal verbal behavior.

Measuring the independent environmental variables, inside and outside of the skin, that cause and maintain the dependent variable, the way in which we communicate, is not likely to happen any time soon as long as our way of interacting gets us what we want. Interestingly, Fraley starts of his paper by writing “If we can already respond effectively and sufficiently to a situation, it tends not to stimulate measuring.” Given the fact, which is not acknowledged by many, that 95% of our spoken communication consists of NVB, the kind of spoken communication in which, presumably, we get what we want no matter the costs, there is nothing stimulating us to pay attention to what is going on. The only person who is interested in measuring why we keep having so many communication problems, according to Fraley’s line of thought, would be someone who is unhappy enough about the negative consequences of his or her own way of interacting. Indeed, a person, like this author, who recognizes the difference between SVB and NVB, is chronically unhappy with the ubiquity of NVB. Unhappiness is the Establishing Operation for SVB.

Only SVB-deprivation establishes Voice II, the voice that is needed to have SVB, as an effective reinforcer. Only the evocative effect of Voice II increases the behavior that has been reinforced by SVB. Attempts to create and maintain SVB, which necessarily involve measuring, that is, verbally describing what is going on, are caused by what is known as an Establishing Operation. Our common high rates of responding with Voice I, the voice which produces NVB and low rates of responding with Voice II, are only noticed by someone, who, like this author, recognizes that NVB cannot evoke measuring practices. “New intra-verbally evoked stimuli” describe “effective” and “sufficient” very differently from when high rates of Voice I-responding tuned out the possibility of SVB and the difference between SVB and NVB was not noticeable. 

 

If our NVB proves to be ineffective, there are only two options: either our NVB rate of responding will increase or it will decrease. If it increases, this is because higher rates of NVB are reinforced by our environment, if it decreases, then higher rates of SVB are reinforced by our environment. Interestingly, SVB never proves to be ineffective, only NVB proves to be ineffective. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of NVB is always a consequence of SVB and without SVB, the ineffectiveness of NVB cannot be analyzed. Stated differently, the analysis of the ineffectiveness of NVB brings about SVB.

The “new stimuli” which “can bring new behavior to bear on a situation” don’t and can’t occur in NVB and only occur in SVB. Voice I elicits the same old reflexive NVB, but Voice II evokes novel, lively, intelligent SVB. “New stimuli” that “share in evoking the previously conditioned behaviors that could not otherwise be evoked in the current situation” are neural behaviors which are produced covertly. Although it is our behaving body which changes the situation, if we practice disembodied communication, as we continuously do when we engage in NVB, we don’t and can't let this changed situation speak. Talking about our NVB implies being vulnerable and expressing our feelings of tension, pain, stress, anxiety and fear. However, in NVB negative experiences are never accurately expressed. This can only happen during SVB. 

During SVB we are able to talk about things which we are unable to talk about during NVB. During SVB we can talk about NVB, but we cannot talk about SVB during NVB. The fact that this is not known creates enormous problems. SVB and NVB are mutually exclusive response classes. We cannot accurately talk about our negative emotions as long as we are negative. Only to the extent that we have positive emotions can we talk about our negative emotions. If we are constantly experiencing negative emotions, we cannot talk about them, we don’t want to talk about them. We only want them to stop. Numbing our emotions can be accomplished in various ways. Medicating our negative emotions doesn’t allow us to talk about them. It is a complete lie that the combination of pharmacological therapy with psychotherapy works. It doesn’t and it can’t. The medications which numb the nervous system prevent mental health clients from experiencing emotions. What is urgently needed is a better way of communicating. First, NVB must to be stopped. SVB only occurs when NVB has been stopped. This writer knows how do that.

To anyone who has investigated with this writer – during conversation – the response classes SVB and NVB, it is evident that only SVB produces a “new set of responses” that are “more effective than responses to the stimuli otherwise already available.” Stated bluntly, NVB only makes things worse, it  rapidly deteriorates human relationship and destroys any sense of community. “Measurement-enabled improvement” of how we interact with one another requires us to become more objective about what we experience subjectively, while we communicate. This hasn’t happened yet. It couldn’t happen in NVB.

 

“The measurement practice” that “like probing and prompting, is a kind of intervention that enhances the evocative capacity of antecedent stimuli” has happened in many fields of science, but not in our spoken communication. SVB is that measurement practice. SVB is interaction in which “functionally, a measurement yields a kind of supplement to the antecedents that share in controlling subsequent behavior.” Surprisingly, Fraley gets frail when he ends the paragraph by stating that such measurements are “hopefully yielding more effective forms of behavior.” For behaviorologists there is no such a thing as hope. If behavior happens, it can happen, if it doesn’t happen, it couldn’t happen. SVB can and will happen if we measure what actually takes place while we are communicating. In other words, we must engage in ongoing conversation with one another to be able to measure what is going on. 

Improvements don’t depend on hope, but are reliably achieved by listening to how we sound while we speak. However, SVB is not about trying to change the way we sound. It is simply about listening to how we sound and not about trying to change how we sound. We have not listened to ourselves while we speak. The “more effective forms” of verbal behavior reveal themselves as SVB and can be replicated, while NVB should be understood as a feedback-impairment. This author thinks about SVB and NVB, when Fraley states “A person’s behavior always produces some kind of effect on the environment that might, in turn, control that person’s subsequent behavior.” The instance in which the verbalizer’s effect on the mediator controls the verbalizer’s verbal and nonverbal expressions in such a way that he or she becomes him or herself a mediator of him or herself – while he or she talks about this – is one in which the contingency is changed so that SVB can begin to occur. Our private speech can become public speech in SVB.

“Data collected during the process of measuring” thus only refers to what happens during SVB. When “feedback” occurring “from probes of the environment” is “not evoking effective responding” this simply means that our “measurement-produced stimuli” are inaccurate or insufficient. Whether we talk about private or public speech makes no difference. NVB public speech sets the stage for NVB private speech and SVB public speech sets the stage for SVB private speech. Indeed “some enhancement of to the antecedent controls on our behavior is needed if that more appropriate kind of responding is to be evoked.” Only our SVB public speech can dissolve our NVB private speech and conditions neural behavior, which “is preserved as some kind of record.” However, when it comes to measurement of verbal behavior, “a record” is the same “as the event to which it pertains”. It is important to recognize that our body is the instrument without which there is no sound. In SVB “stimulus supplementation from measuring” equals the increasingly more accurate verbalization in public speech of what happens within our own skin.

January 7, 2015

January 7, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

The most important thing to be understood about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is that it can’t be understood unless one experiences it. As long as one tries to understand it, one is incapable of experiencing it. This is not some game of words, this is really how SVB works. Only if one stops trying to understand it, one will be able to understand it. Understanding comes as a consequence of one’s experience of one’s body while one speaks. Without such an experience, one will produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is never found out right away, but only later on, in retrospect. 

It is our body which experiences the consequences of human interaction, not our so-called mind. It is our body which is evoked into action or inaction, due to the way in which we communicate. If our body is punished, as it most certainly is while we are aversively stimulated by NVB, the consequence of this aversive stimulation is always a decrease of behavior. We don’t see this, because we are more inclined to pay attention to the behavior that is occurring and not to the behavior that is not occurring or that cannot occur. If, on the other hand, our body is positively reinforced, as it would be when it is stimulated by the contingency which makes SVB possible, there is always an increase of behavior. This increase is visible, audible and measurable. The lack of behavior or the limited occurrence of behavior is always related to disembodied communication, or NVB, because NVB decreases behavior. If we want to increase behavior we must have SVB. 

Only when we look at why behavior occurs, of what behavior is a function, do we have a chance of finding out what causes it. Much of our behavior is caused by how we communicate. Lack of control, excess of speech and distractibility, are based on the low rates of focused talking and listening, which defines NVB. Total or partial absence of speech, as seen in autism, is also believed to be a consequence of NVB. Also, the onset of dementia happens earlier due to the relatively low amounts of SVB. Lying, criminality, as well as chaotic and psychotic behavior, is caused by how we talk. We don’t want to look at how our way of communicating causes many problems, because we would have to admit that, with our current beliefs, we can’t change it. When we say that individuals are responsible for their own actions, we refuse to look at our NVB manner of talking. This writing is not to make us individually responsible either. 

NVB conditions enduring changes in our neural structures. SVB is a different kind of conditioning, leading to different response mediation. We use the same words, but how we say them makes all the difference. The function-altering consequences of evocative verbal stimuli are different in SVB and NVB. It is impossible for SVB stimuli to become “more effective in inducing the neural mediation of a response” (Ledoux, 2014, p. 289), if there is no repeated exposure to such stimuli. However, “competition among antecedent stimuli” determines a selection process, in which even those rare occasions that we can have SVB “strengthens all the antecedent functional relations.”

January 6, 2015

January 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Based on what he knew at the time, this writer wanted to become a psychologist. He attempted to pursue a Ph.D. at Palo Alto University (PAU), which attracted him because of their so-called “Practitioner-Scientist Model.” He had advanced to candidacy and was writing his dissertation, but he withdrew, because there was no support for his views, which, as he later discovered, were rooted in Radical Behaviorism. Although he had taken two master level classes in Applied Behavior Analysis, his teacher had been punitive and boring and of no help to him. The dominant way of thinking at PAU, like everywhere in mainstream psychology, was mentalistic and in retrospect didn’t  even qualify as scientific. Thus, this writer was duped out of his education and still pays off huge loans and did not achieve his academic goal.

The positive side of this debacle was that this writer could spend a lot of time studying behaviorism and behaviorology. It wasn’t until he found out about behaviorology that he realized what a difficult task he had set himself in teaching Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Initially, he had wanted to study psychology to gather scientific validation for what he called the “Listen While You Speak Technique.” He now calls it SVB, because behaviorology is the science which explains his work. Even radical behaviorism didn't seem good enough, because they basically backed out of establishing themselves as a separate field of scientific endeavor, next to biology, physics and chemistry.  This author's views align perfectly with behaviorology. What he does is predictable and replicable and therefore should be considered as science.

This writer had wanted pursue science and eventually he got it. Unfortunately, behaviorology is not very well known, but it exists and, as its proponents have said: validity doesn’t depend on the number of people adhering to it. Although he doesn’t have a degree in behaviorology, he considers himself a behaviorologist, because his behavior is under evocative control of this new science. If behaviorologists want to check on his status, they are invited to do so, because everything he is saying can and should be verified. SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are two naturally occurring universal response classes, which appear in every language. It is this writer's wish that one day an examination committee of behavioriologists and radical behaviorists listens to his spoken dissertation about the SVB/NVB distinction. Interacting with him and exploring this distinction based on his explanations should convince each committee member that this distinction is a genuine behaviorist construct which can benefit many people, generate a lot of research and new discoveries and should be rewarded with a Ph.D. degree. This writer challenges behaviorists.  The proof for the fact that the proof is in the pudding, requires that we eat the pudding. There is nothing circular about this line of rational thought. 

In Chapter 13 of the excellent introductory behaviorology text book “Running Out of Time” (2014, p.308) by Stephen Ledoux, the reader is informed about differential reinforcement. This procedure “involves reinforcing some responses differently from others.” Certain members of verbal behavior response classes are treated differentially, that is, certain response class members are reinforced, while others are extinguished. This could and should be applied to how we speak. In most of our spoken communication members of the NVB response class are consequated, while members of the SVB response class are not reinforced at all. No wonder that NVB is ubiquitous.

Ledoux (2014, p.309) clarifies differential reinforcement with an example of “helping a friend” who is going through hard times. The helper should only reinforce that friend’s verbal responses “that indicate some comprehension of the problems he is experiencing and some reasonable steps towards solutions” and essentially ignore any “mis-comprehension regarding his problem-related behavior.” This is exactly how we should be dealing with the response class members of SVB and NVB, respectively. However, we can only begin to do this once we acknowledge that these two response classes exist. How can we differentially reinforce bi-directional SVB and ignore uni-directional NVB, if we don’t make this distinction? The fact is that we can’t do this and we will not be able to do this as long as we haven't explored this distinction.

Members of the SVB response class always involve verbal and nonverbal expression and reciprocation of positive emotions, while members of the NVB response class always involve mostly nonverbal, but also verbal expression of negative emotions. In NVB someone is always on top (the speaker) and someone else (the listener) is on the bottom, someone is above others, better than others, superior to others, someone is dominating, coercing and exploiting others. NVB is hierarchical and has been around since the dawn of man. The arrival of language made our hierarchical relationships equal and gave rise to scientific behavior. NVB verbalizers, whose intimidating, manipulative manners are hard to address, oppose or confront, make the mediators feel inferior and as mediators have been differentially reinforced for not speaking about what they think or feel, they also produce NVB, even if they are allowed to speak.  

In NVB we are unknowingly only experiencing negative emotions and nobody is supposed to talk about it. Rather than “the machinations of some miscreant inner agent”, it is the discrepancy between our verbal and our nonverbal behavior, which gives rise to our NVB. NVB separates the speaker from the listener, which means that we are divided within ourselves. Consequently, we are also divided as speakers and listeners from each other. Only during SVB do we really connect with ourselves and with each other. In NVB our sense of separateness reinforces the notion of a self or an inner agent, which supposedly causes our behavior. We need to differentially reinforce SVB in order to be able to extinguish such mystical assumptions.

January 5, 2015

January 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is done in the afternoon instead of in the early morning. Different circumstances make different stimuli available, which evoke different behavior. Some of this writer’s writings were accidentally deleted, but luckily he was able to retrieve the documents, because he had send his writings to a friend. Much of his writings would have been lost if he hadn’t shared it with someone. This writer is in a good mood, because he is having his writings nicely organized, which makes it easier to send it to others. He also feels more ready now to share his writings with others. This wasn’t always the case. He looks forward to sharing his work. 

He anticipates how others will respond to what he writes. He doesn’t want them to think that what they are reading is something he is saying to them. Rather, he wants them to realize that they are probably imagining that someone is talking to them while in fact they are only reading these written words.  They may have thoughts about what is written here, but these thoughts are not part of any conversation, they are part of them just talking with themselves and they are, perhaps, due to this writing, aware that these words are behaved by them. 

Since they are already talking with themselves covertly, privately, they might as well talk with themselves overtly, publicly. If they would use this text to talk with themselves overtly, they can hear their own sound while they speak. This writing is then an opportunity to experience Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) as one person. SVB can also be experienced by two or many persons, but usually this doesn’t last very long, because speakers are not familiar enough with it to be able to continue. We have SVB each time the circumstances are conducive to it, but usually we have no clue as to what exactly makes it possible. If we knew more accurately what makes it possible, we would have it more often, just because we could. 

The scientific explanation of behavior, that some antecedent stimulus evokes a response, or that some consequence either reinforces or punishes a response, or that some postcedent event increases or decreases behavior, easily leads people to conclude that they see or hear or otherwise notice the evocative stimulus or take note of the fact that their behavior has positive or negative consequences and then decide to respond. Although the dominant NVB culture perpetuates this fiction, our inner self-decider doesn’t exist.  Every night when we sleep in our bed, we are perfectly okay without such a behavior-managing agent. Sleep is better when we forget who we are. Our inability to do so causes us insomnia. One may argue, that we don’t need to behave in the night, that our busy, imaginary self can get a rest, but, when we consider the ingredients of dreams, which are just another kind behavior, we find all sorts of environmental independent variables that stimulate, reinforce, trigger, punish, shape and extinguish, our behavior, the dream, the dependent variable. 

Behavior is tremendously complex and besides the relatively simple three-term contingency, consisting of an evocative stimulus, a response and a reinforcing or punishing consequence, the antecedent stimulus can be expanded to innumerable amounts of other contingencies, called n-term contingencies, which each contain “contextual antecedent stimuli, each of which functions to alter the function of another stimulus, until we reach the stimulus that actually evokes the behavior.” (Ledoux, 2014, p.287). These so-called “function-altering stimuli” can alter “the function of another stimulus from the status of a neutral stimulus to an evocative stimulus.” So, let’s say we want to visit a friend on Labor Day. Because we have been drinking, a police car is suddenly no longer experienced by us as a neutral stimulus, but as a punitive stimulus. We stop our car in a side street and let someone, who didn’t drink drive and arrive safely at our friend’s house, without getting a DUI.