February 12, 2015

February 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a fourth response to the paper “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. By looking for similarities and differences between Skinner’s work, these authors and his own, this writer explains Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), a distinct, but not yet understood or validated construct by most behaviorists. 

If verbal behavior “is behavior that is effective only through the mediation by other persons” and “has so many dynamic and topographical properties, that a special treatment is justified, and indeed, demanded” (Skinner, 1957, p.2), we must also account for the enormous amount of ineffective verbal behavior that has obviously not been mediated. This is exactly what the SVB/NVB distinction makes emphatically clear.

Most of our verbal behavior is NVB, that is, non-mediated operant and respondent behavior. Only a small portion of our verbal behavior is SVB, “behavior that is effective only through the mediation of other persons.” 

When one thinks of the very few people who are capable of mediating the verbal behavior of B.F. Skinner, one gets a sense of the true proportion of SVB and NVB, that is, of mediated and non-mediated verbal behavior.

Since even among behaviorists there is no mention of this distinction, the non-mediated verbal behavior is just as common among the behaviorists as it is among the non-behaviorists. 

 

The reason this distinction is continuously overlooked is because people write rather than talk about it. Although writing about it is surely more reinforcing, it actually prevents us from understanding the importance of talking about it. Moreover, writing can’t and it doesn’t affect and hasn’t affected our way of talking in any significant way. NVB is everywhere. 

Although bi-directional, mediated SVB, because most people don’t know how it really works, to this day is still rare, this writer has faith in this “postcendent selectionist relation.” Ever since the stimulus response formulation has been replaced by Skinner, non-mediated, uni-directional NVB has been on its deathbed. This writer, who is a  behavioral engineer, subscribes to the aim of Skinner, Beacon and Mach: “The proof of a valid and viable science was its useful outcomes.” 

SVB always yields useful outcomes. Moreover, SVB is “a naturalistic approach” in which “variables of which verbal behavior is a function are analyzed in terms of the conditions which lead to the emission of verbal behavior” (Hefferline Notes, p.2). From the intertwinement of Skinner’s work on mediated and non-mediated relations, it should be clear that both are needed for a complete account of verbal behavior. 
 

The authors comment on the Hefferline Notes that “there are a few differences in content” between them and the later volume of Verbal Behavior (1957). However, “The topics dropped or changed may be the most interesting.” Interestingly, the Notes also reflect the transition of Skinner’s analysis from spoken to written form (Knapp, 2009). 


What was dropped and left out was considered to be unnecessary by Skinner. On the final pages, Skinner once again explains that mediated, verbal behavior is always embedded in and arising from un-mediated, nonverbal behavior. He says “There is nothing exclusively verbal in the material analyzed in this book. It is all part of a broader field” (Skinner, 1957, p. 452). His functional account is definitely going to improve our way of communicating once we begin to acknowledge the nonverbal embedded nature of our verbal behavior. 


Although Skinner’s analysis didn’t include the SVB/NVB distinction, this was not because he was unaware of it. He wanted to “bridge the gulf between the verbal and non-verbal, or between verbal and the vestigial remnants of a dualistic system” (Skinner, 1947, p. 76). Verbal Behavior only fits with SVB, but NVB is not mediated by other persons in the way Skinner described. 

In NVB the listener defers to the speaker, because the speaker is not allowing the listener to become a speaker. This has consequences for both the speaker and the listener. The speaker who is deferred to is not stimulated by the listener to become a listener either. In other words, in NVB the speaker and the listener get deeper entrenched in their roles.

In a conversation between a speaker and a listener, we can only engage in SVB, if the speaker becomes the listener and if the listener becomes the speaker. This is more complicated than is usually believed. Neither the speaker can easily become the listener nor the listener can easily become the speaker, as SVB deals with much more than that.

For SVB more is needed than the turn-taking between the speaker and an the  listener. For SVB there must be turn-taking between the speaker as-own-listener and the-listener-as-own speaker. In other words, the speaker must take turns with him or herself and listen to him or herself. This listener learns to speak only if he or she is listened to...

Once the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she is no longer the same and can never be like the speaker, who didn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks anymore. In SVB, the speaker is permanently changed and becoming interested in listening. Also, the listener who becomes a speaker is instantly transformed.

Listeners who become speakers, play different roles than speakers who become listeners. All this goes on within just one person. The speaker who became a listener becomes capable of saying things which he or she couldn’t say before and the listener who became a speaker is capable of hearing things which he or she couldn’t listen to before. 


SVB first changes how a person talks with him or herself and then it will change how he or she talks with others. Likewise, SVB first changes how a person listens to himself and then how a person listens to others.  In SVB we listen to others and we can hear if they are listening to themselves.

February 11, 2015

February 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is a third response to “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. Before he wrote what he considered to be his most important book “Verbal Behavior” (1957), Skinner had a table discussion about “the merits of behaviorism” with the famous mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. This authoritarian man conceded that “behaviorism might deal effectively with all the aspects of behavior with the exception of one, language.” It makes no sense that, on the one hand, behaviorism “might deal effectively with all aspects of behavior”, but, on the other, wouldn’t be able to deal with verbal behavior. Such a statement is as obviously wrong as asserting that behaviorism might account for chess playing and singing, but not for riding a bicycle. 

The special place historically given to language has prevented us from understanding it as not in any way significantly different from other behavior. Moreover, arrogant people like Whitehead, engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). He verbally attacked Skinner by presuming that he couldn’t account for the negatively-loaded nonsense-sentence “No black scorpion is falling on this table.” There was definitely an explanation for his domineering, bombastic, intimidating way of communicating: Skinner’s radical behaviorism exposed and demolished his fictitious explanations! 

This writer’s extension of Skinner’s work with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) involves the exploration of situational variables that set the stage for optimal communication and analysis of NVB, that is, how we maintain superstitions, ineffective, hierarchical and problematic communication. In SVB we can say and understand more in a shorter time than in NVB.

Skinner’s linguistic labor involved primarily writing. Although he spoke a lot, his emphasis was not, like this writer is, on speaking. While working on his book, he wrote “I think the subject had better be experimental.  I couldn’t say enough on language in an hour to get the point of view across” (Skinner, March 15, 1935). Skinner here states that he needs more time to say what he would like to say. The lack of time he is referring to is characteristic for NVB, which was, and still is, our dominant way of communicating. In SVB, however, we have all the time in the world, we give each other time and we are able to take time to speak. Although this writer recognizes that Skinner was aware of these constrains, it was not Skinner’s goal to do anything about it.  He had other 'operant' fish to fry.

The experimental exploration of the SVB/NVB distinction involves speaking and listening. This writer agrees with Skinner that reading and writing are not sufficient in “getting the point across.” What Skinner’s statement addresses is what this writer calls verbal fixation. In NVB we talk mainly about what we say and not about how we say it. We get too wordy and have no sense of our body in the here and now while we speak. 

In SVB, by contrast, in which we embody our sound, we enhance the positive experiences of our body by the way in which we speak. Instead of getting stressed, frustrated, fearful, tense, angered and irritated, as we always do in NVB, our sound, which is in the here and now, makes us more aware of our relaxed body from which it emerges. What makes SVB possible is: listening to our sound while we speak. It makes us attentive and capable of understanding each other. 

When Skinner states “the subject had better be experimental” what he is indicating is more attention needs to go to nonverbal phenomena, to what affects us directly. This is what happens in SVB. By paying attention to how we sound, we become attuned. Skinner writes “Underneath what seems like a lot of complexity (which is really only novelty) there lies an immense simplification”(Skinner, June 21, 1935). Then he invented “a rather elaborate apparatus for experiments on humans“, the “Verbal Summator” (Skinner, September 25, 1935). With this apparatus participants would listen to meaningless, nonverbal utterances until they thought they understood what was being said. 

Each speaker is, of course, him or herself a Verbal Summator, who is only understood to the extent that the listener is capable of making sense of his or her sounds. It is easy to recognize the importance of nonverbal aspects of spoken communication when we compare English and Chinese, because they sound so different. However, within the English and the Chinese verbal community there are two other communities: the SVB and the NVB community, who also speak two entirely different languages.

Although we may verbally speak the same language, this prevents us from recognizing that nonverbally, that is, in how we sound, we often are not attuned and incapable of understanding each other. As long as our indirect verbal behavior doesn’t accurately express our direct nonverbal behavior, we remain entangled in our own and in each other’s verbal behavior. Only in SVB we can disentangle, because in SVB there is alignment between our verbal and nonverbal expression. In NVB such alignment isn’t possible. 

Skinner made the hard-headed “strategic decision” to ground “his highly theoretical and sure-to be controversial analysis” of verbal behavior in his basic operant research. He openly admitted in a letter to his friend Fred Keller “I’ve had a long run and tiring run of experiments” (Skinner, December 6, 1936).  This writer has done the opposite of Skinner. He refused for years to write about SVB and NVB and insisted we should speak about it. What he now writes about it is born out of his interactions.


His decision to write about it grew out of his slowly evolving understanding of radical behaviorism and more recently, behaviorology. There really is no need for experimental validation of SVB and NVB, because these response classes are already accounted for. What is needed is writing which makes speaking more likely. If this writing has that result then we can verify the importance of the SVB/NVB distinction. Darwin’s theory of natural selection doesn't depend on approval by creationists; the “analysis of verbal behavior rests on the foundations of analysis of operant behavior.” 

February 10, 2015

February 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

“Meaning is not a property of” Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), “of behavior as such, but of the conditions under which behavior occurs.”  This writing is a second response to the paper “B.F. Skinner’s analysis of verbal behavior: a chronicle” (2007) by E.A. Vargas, J.S. Vargas & T.J. Knapp. From moment to moment, under different conditions, SVB or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) happen.  Verbally, the conditions of our interaction stay the same (we only speak English and don’t usually switch to another language), but non-verbally, our conversations change very rapidly and continuously. However, this change often goes completely unnoticed. 

The SVB/NVB distinction addresses these nonverbal and verbal changes. When we switch from SVB to NVB or visa versa, we are temporarily in different environments and we engage in different languages. Since our neural structures are affected by these changes, in the SVB speakers and listeners pay attention to their body, but in NVB meaning is lost because communicators are unaware of stimuli occurring within their own skin. 

“Technically, meanings are to be found among the independent variables in a functional account, rather than as properties of the dependent variable.” (Skinner, 1957/ 1992, p. 14) Embodied conversation is the dependent variable. SVB is meaningful, because we discriminate stimuli, independent variables, within our own body of our embodied conversation. When people loose meaning, they unknowingly refer to losing touch with their own body.

NVB is inaccurate in that it can’t and doesn’t identify the variables of which our talking, thinking and feeling is a function. The  environment within our skin is affected by the environment outside of our skin. Skinner suggests we need “a view of explanation and causation  wherein explanation is reduced to description (Skinner, 1930, p. 38). We will only have SVB to the extent that “all observed values of independent and dependent variables are provided and their paired relationships are specified.” 


This writer addresses the change which must occur in our way of talking as we substitute the concept of causation with the concept of function. That this transformation hasn’t happened is because it has not been  properly addressed. Certainly, people have argued about this matter, but their argument couldn’t lead to description of the SVB/NVB distinction. 

This writer discovered something which was so reinforcing that he was compelled to pursue it. He noticed by producing a particular sound that he was able to think and speak better. This sound energized him, calmed him and reassured him and made him feel good. He was able to continue to speak with this sound and discovered that SVB is based on sounding good. 


Others, to whom he explained this, felt the exact same way. They too were able to produce a specific sound which had a positive effect on them. Moreover, by simultaneously listening themselves and to each other they engaged in a form of communication, which was experienced as novel and beneficial. The simplicity and parsimony of SVB is powerful and elegant. 


To most of us it comes as a big surprise and relief that there is a way of communicating which is so completely effortless. It is apparent to all the communicators that they are authentic, that they are listened to and taken serious and that their ability to speak and listen is enhanced by their own sound. Many issues can be addressed while the topic of the conversation keeps fluidly changing. Everyone gains from SVB although not everyone will speak or needs to speak. In SVB things are said which need to be said, but which couldn’t be said in NVB.  In SVB we can finally say what we had wanted to say and feel confident about it and satisfied with it. In SVB we experience the positive consequences of real conversation. 

     

Two of Skinner’s findings coincide with this writer’s  work. For Skinner “A big step occurred when he automated the recording in a rectangular runway so that the organism, not the experimenter, initiated each run” (italics added). This writer realized it is not what he, an experimenter, does with the participant, but what “the organism” does by him or herself. 


When the participant “initiated each run” he is able to obtain accurate measurements. This meant the end of any attempt to change others. He lets them decide whether they join or not. As a teacher, he doesn’t try to get students to his class. They show up for the duration of a semester and he works with those students who respond to his SVB. This may sound strange, but the fact is that only positive reinforcement works and so NVB must be ignored. Although initially not everyone is equally involved, during the semester, more and more students get SVB and by the end of the semester, the entire class gets it. 


In the stable, reinforcing environment this writer creates, the different rates of responding of individual students become more harmonized over time. Another similarity with Skinner is that “the real power over rate of responding lay in its relation to how immediate postcedents were programmed.” Students who are anticipating reinforcement reinforce this writer, their teacher and this process is getting better and better as the semester progresses. 


Skinner’s contribution was that he differentiated postcedently controlled operant behavior from antecedently controlled reflexive or respondent behavior. A gradual shift of focus from respondent to operant behavior took place for this writer. This involves the replacement of NVB by SVB. This writer proposes the same shift to all his students and he engineers the classroom environment in such a way that it can and will happen.