April 29, 2015

April 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

I am still responding to a paper by Emilio Ribes (2003) “What is defined in operational definitions? The case of operant psychology.” I thought I would get to the section about verbal and nonverbal behavior right away, but ended up responding to what preceded it. I now arrived at the section which is called “The operational foundation of classificatory concepts in operant psychology”, which covers the aforementioned topic. I realize while writing about this paper that I read it carefully, with a lot of attention. I could never afford myself this much time while I was in graduate school. 

I agree with Ribes that “the dichotomies between operant and respondent behaviors, contingency-shaped and rule-governed behaviors, public and private events, and verbal and nonverbal behaviors” are “also operationally based concepts and that the criterion used for their definition depended exclusively on observational limitations to identify the correlation of a stimulus event with a target response.” I would like to add that our way of talking creates and maintains many observational limitations. In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the conversation which is rich in turn-taking between the speaker and the listener, and low in instances of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which turn-taking is absent, such dichotomies do not occur. 

The elephant in the room of human relationship is NVB. Scientific investigation requires SVB; NVB is biased and must be controlled. While discussing, that is, writing about, respondent and operant behavior, Ribes uses Skinner’s (1938) definition of elicited behavior as when “it can be shown that a given part of behavior may be induced at will (or according to certain laws [the laws of reflex]), by a modification of in part of the forces affecting the organism….only one property of the relation is usually invoked in the use of the term – the close coincidence of occurrence of stimulus and response.” 

If we would finally arrange to have the conversation, which is necessary to  observe this, we would find it is the sound of the speaker’s voice, which either determines an appetitive or an aversive contingency for the listener. What else can the “close coincidence of occurrence of stimulus and response” in our vocal verbal behavior mean? It means that “a given part of behavior”, the reflex of the listener, which “may be induced at will” by the speaker, affects what the listener says. The speaker’s tone of voice determines if the listener will be able to emancipate into a speaker, whether he or she will dare to say something, will feel safe enough to say something or will not say anything at all. The speaker’s tone of voice either invites and enriches conversation or it will stop it in its tracks. The latter is an example of NVB.

Ribes also uses Skinner’s definition of emitted behavior to make his point. “An event may occur without any observed antecedent and still be dealt with adequately in a descriptive science. I do not mean that there are no originating forces in spontaneous behavior but simply that they are not located in the environment. We are not in a position to see them, and we have no need to. This kind of behavior might be said to be emitted by the organism. An operant is an identifiable part of behavior of which it may be said, not that no stimulus can be found that will elicit it (there may be a respondent the response of which has the same topography), but that no correlated stimulus can be detected upon occasions when it is observed to occur.” Operant behavior is about postcedent effects, which invisibly increase or decrease future probability of that behavior. Let’s see how “the definition and classification of behavior in two classes, respondent and operant” came about.

According to Ribes it was “based on a particular operational criterion: the detection by an observer of a stimulus eliciting a response.” If we map it onto our vocal verbal behavior, “the definition and classification” of the respondent class of behavior is based on whether the listener, the observer, detected a stimulus, a speaker, who was eliciting a response, in the listener. However, Skinner and other behaviorists are more into observing, that is, into seeing, than into speaking and listening. The speaker as his or her own listener while we speak is a phenomenon that yet has to be fully explored.

It shouldn’t go unnoticed there is a scientific sanctioned bias for observing over listening. Since we overemphasize seeing in our scientific observation, we are inclined to hang on to our old beliefs, which are summarized by the old saying ‘seeing is believing.’ Moreover, because words are visible, we consider what is written as more important than what is said. In operant conditioning, however, there is, nothing to see; the stimuli that cause operant behavior are “not located in the environment.” Thus, by listening, in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), we become aware of how the speaker affects the listener. 

Ribes is partially correct when he states “concepts classifying behavior were based on the observational limitations of the experimenter.” When it comes to vocal verbal behavior, the experimenter, who, as speaker, is also his own listener, must listen because his or her observations will only be as valid as what he or she is capable of hearing. Just as data don’t depend on theory and just as theories only determine which data will be selected, so too will our way of listening select what we hear. The fact that previous conditioning led to a particular way of listening, doesn’t mean that we have a permanent hearing defect or that we cannot change our way of listening. The above statement is written in the past tense, as if it concerns a problem we have dealt with, but nothing is further from the truth. It is certainly true that the inability of the experimenter, who, as a speaker, is not listening to him or herself while he or she speaks, who, therefore, is limited in his or her ability to fathom what his or her effect is on the listener, gives rise to mentalistic concepts that presumably classify behavior. As we have seen (pun intended), these concepts have fallen on psychologically deaf ears. We haven’t made much progress in terms of reliably improving our vocal verbal behavior, that is, our relationships with one another, which depend on our ability to talk.

My argument is that although radical behaviorists have created useful concepts that classify our behavior, much is lacking in their vocal verbal expression of these. It is astounding that even radical behaviorists haven’t been able to point out mankind’s neurotic fixation with stimulus-response processes, which dominate, impair and ultimately destroy human interaction. Increased emphasis on “a stimulus following the behavior” is only possible if environments in which we teach operant conditioning become free of aversive stimulation. 

The aforementioned is yet to be achieved. By “holding the definition [respondent/operant] at an operational level” Skinner considered the reflex not as a theoretical concept, but as “a fact”, “an analytic unit, which makes an investigation of behavior possible.” Ribes points out that “Skinner defined the limitations of the observer in trying to identify the environmental or other variables functionally related to behavior and the possibility of explicitly manipulating their occurrence.“ Although the respondent/operant distinction doesn’t inform us about “the properties of the behavior being identified”, it brings into focus the behavior of the scientist him or herself. Ribes’ complaint that Skinner’s “distinction resulted in nothing more than a classification of the observer’s limitations and procedures” alerts us to his inability to admit and investigate his own limitations as an observer “in trying to identify the environmental or other variables.” Most likely Ribes is not a fluent speaker.

Let’s see (not hear) what Ribes says (writes) about contingency-shaped and rule-governed behavior. Again, it seems to come down to the “observer’s possibility to identify or not a previous reinforcing stimulus as responsible of the occurrence of a new behavior.” Skinner’s distinction “between behaviors that are followed directly by consequences and behaviors that are evoked by contingency-related antecedent stimuli” leads Ribes to conclude that it “resulted from the observational difficulty of identifying the consequence (or reinforcer) that leads to the acquisition of a new response.” I like to point out, however, that the “observational difficulty” doesn’t imply the experimenter’s inability to hear him or herself and only illustrates Ribes’ disagreement with Skinner on logical grounds. If it happened in actual conversation this would be a typical example of NVB. Not surprisingly, Ribes repeats the same old argument as before: “My main argument is that the concepts of contingency-shaped and rule-governed behaviors only reflect the limitations of the observer regarding the “origins” of the behavior under analysis, not the suggested different functional properties of the behaviors distinguished in such a way.” 

The assumed shortcomings of Skinner’s take on this are detailed in another paper, which I now feel compelled to read (I thought this would be my last reading of Ribes, who I find rather tedious, but I guess I was wrong). I will read it, but I will save my comments for later. From his choice words, it was apparent that Ribes wrote that paper, because he wants to somehow strongly disagree with Skinner. After reading more than half the paper I didn’t find anything I hadn’t already read in his other papers. “Instructions, rules and abstractions; a misconstrued relation” (2000), informed me that “the usefulness of the distinction between rule-governed and contingency-shaped behaviors is questionable”, but the paper didn’t explain why (I suggest father-issues? I will may be read it later, but I don’t think it will change much for me.

Going back to “Operational Definitions” (2003), I have now arrived at the section which is about the distinction between private and public events. I find it fascinating that Ribes writes “According to Skinner, private events had the same physical and functional properties as those that occurred outside the body” (italics added). By writing in this manner, he seems to be referring to a behaviorism in which this similarity is questioned (his kind). Also the fact that he refers to his interview with Skinner comes across as if he has a problem with what Skinner had told him during the interview.

Ribes wrote about what “Skinner said” and what “Skinner thought.” I have already responded to that unpublished interview in my previous writing. Ribes wrote “except for its public unobservability, private events were thought to be there, waiting to be discriminated, named, and described under the reinforcement contingencies of a verbal community.” Apparently, he doesn’t believe it. I would never use such language. Ribes must have read much more behaviorism than I did, but I am quite sure that private events have been discriminated, named and described by other behaviorists (i.e. Schlinger, Moore, Palmer). However, since most behaviorists are still unaware of SVB, analyses of private events are impaired by “limitations of the observer.”

Once the behaviorist community adopts the tacts SVB and NVB, they will be able to produce a more refined analysis of private events. Right now the ubiquity of NVB determines that private speech is mostly excluded from public speech. SVB provides improved access to private speech, because it includes, enhances and stimulates private speech with public speech. Private speech is a function of our public speech. NVB negative public speech, in previous environments, causes negative private speech in our current environments. 

Skinner was right by assuming that the problem of tacting private events could be overcome by examining “how the verbal community reinforced a tact appropriately correlated with its controlling stimulus properties.” There is no other way: we must learn from our behaviorist verbal community to tact emotions accurately. Thus, SVB is our vocal verbal behavior involving the accurate expressions of our positive emotions, but NVB, is based on inappropriate tacting of negative emotions, which cannot become positive.   

Skinner knew that his analysis of private events would succeed, because his concepts were not based on “whether two people are brought into agreement, but whether the scientist who uses the concept can operate successfully upon his material – all by himself if need be” (1945, 1961). I love Skinner, who acted on his bold statements. I have this in common with him. I find Ribes’ complaint that the private/public distinction leads to “serious conceptual mistakes” nonsense. Remarks as these, which, interestingly, are not made in his interview with Skinner, tell me how conflicted Ribes must be. I don’t get it why he has conceptual problems with the simple notion that what is within our skin must include our physical events and “that private events might control observable behavior?” (italics added). There is no question about it that private events can and do control observable behavior. However, this doesn’t mean that private events cause behavior; our body mediates behavior, but doesn’t and can’t cause it. Of course, there has to be “a correspondence between physical properties of private events and the tacts describing them.” How else can vocal verbal behavior make any sense? What we say will be meaningless as long as our tacts are inaccurate or distracting from what they describe. How we say what we say can also distort the meaning of what we say. Our emphasis on what we say makes us disembody our communication.

At long last I have arrived at the section in which Ribes writes about verbal and nonverbal behavior. I have a lot of time, so I proceed to read, sentence by sentence. This so-called "dichotomy" is “based on an operational criterion.” This is where it gets interesting: “The nature of the operation is not observational.” Ribes freaks out when there is nothing to see. His conceptual clarity is scattered because “The distinction between both types of behavior depends on the agent providing consequences to the operant behavior.” The nonverbal is made visible “as reinforcement delivered through a mechanical device,” but verbal behavior, is “behavior reinforced through the mediation of other persons” (1957). In other words, verbal behavior doesn’t “produce direct mechanical effects on the environment”, but our nonverbal behavior does!

“The additional refinement specifying that the mediator of the reinforcement has been especially conditioned to do so by a verbal community does not change the basic operational nature of the definition.” Ribes has no problem with the definition as long as he can continue to visuallize the mediator, as someone else. His conceptual problem seems to arise from when the speaker acts as his or her own listener, when the speaker and listener are the same person, when, unless one looks into a mirror, there is nothing to see.

Ribes is running into problems trying to understand how “The listener, to whom the role of mediating the reinforcer is attributed, becomes a surrogate for the mechanical device dispensing reinforcement.” Rather than pointing out, in abbreviated version, why this is objectionable, he refers to his old papers. It wouldn’t surprise me if these papers weren’t received well. I can imagine  that Skinner never responded. I will read these papers later and write about them if I feel the need to. As stated, I don’t think I will feel the need to.

Ribes concludes his paper by stating “At best, nowadays, operant theory fulfills the role of a conceptual scheme organizing technological operations, although the achievement of control does not seem to be correlated with the parallel achievement of prediction and theoretical understanding.” I find that inaccurate. My reading of Skinner's work, enriched by my knowledge of the SVB/NVB distinction, leads me to think that operant theory correlates perfectly with the achievement of prediction and theoretical understanding. By this time I am getting tired of Ribes. However, I will still read his papers to see if he comes up with anything he hasn’t already written. I advise Ribes and other behaviorists to first say things out loud before writing them down. His writing will improve if he hears how he sounds while he speaks.  

April 28, 2015

April 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

I had a wonderful long sleep and I feel rested and relaxed. Yesterday, I helped planting beets at Baba’s vegetable farm and felt appreciated. I went to bed early. This added to sound sleep, which I don’t have often these days. In my dream, I was a young man and there was this beautiful nameless girl, who I liked me and let me kiss her. We laughed and had fun and when I woke up, I remembered I was once in love with that girl and got into an embarrassing situation because of it. 

She lived in a building where I sometimes hung out. Her mother had put an empty milk bottle outside the door and underneath it was some money to pay the milkman for a new bottle of milk. I knew I would get caught if I took that money, but I stole it anyway. The door opened as I ran down the stairs and her mother called my name. She demanded I give her back the money. There was no escape. She would have gone to my parent’s house if I wouldn’t have given it back. I walked back up the stairs and gave the money to her and caught a glimpse of her pretty daughter, who was laughing at me. While her mother was admonishing me and telling me she was going to talk with my parents, I felt ashamed, but her daughter was smiling at me. After the news had reached my parents and I had been punished by my father, I was made to go back there and apologize. The girl was again smiling at me from behind her mother.

I was reminded of this girl in this dream. I had never thought of her again  until last night. Although I knew that I liked that girl, I never asked her or contacted her and avoided going to that dreadful place of humiliation. When I had stolen the milk money, it never occurred to me it had something to do with that girl. I remember clearly I was going to get caught, but I felt I had to do it. In the dream, we were reunited and we tenderly embraced and kissed each other. It took me a long time to figure out something forbidden and shameful had joined with attraction. The girl saw and knew my emotion. After that my relationship with women was shaped by their ability to see, acknowledge and reinforce my feelings. 

In my dream, I asked the girl if I should brush my teeth before kissing her? She laughed and asked me why? I said, because I want to have a fresh breath when I kiss you. I had had some coffee and felt it made me smell bad. We didn’t have sex. We did what young people do before they have sex: we hugged and caressed each other and we looked into each other’s eyes. When I woke up this morning, I felt a sense of satisfaction and relief, as if something had come back which had been missing a long time. 

My sexuality is not, as it once was, something forbidden or to be ashamed off. To the contrary, it is light-hearted and innocent. The transition from being a boy to becoming a man was full of feelings of guilt and rejection. I often did exactly what I was not supposed to do and got caught red-handed. Often I acted in negative ways, because I felt it was expected from me to act that way. I confirmed all the beliefs about me. Luckily, I no longer feel trapped by these powerful expectations of others.  

What follows now is the last part of my response to the paper “What is Defined in Operational Definitions? The Case of Operant Psychology” by Emilio Ribes (2003). Smith (1992), who examined the influence of Beacon on Skinner, is quoted as ‘saying’ “human knowledge and human power meet in one.” He spoke of “the declaration of a different kind of knowing, in which the power of producing effects is not simply the by-product of knowledge, but rather the criterion of its soundness.” 

Those who experimented with Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) acknowledged that the continuation of the conversation in which there is no aversive stimulation is very different from the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) we mostly engage in. When individuals feel supported to listen to themselves while they speak, they find themselves capable of thinking and speaking simultaneously and are able to recognize that they are what they think, that thinking is a behavior which creates their person- hood. Consciousness, which is an effect of one behavior on another behavior within one person, is expressed during SVB. 

In the section “The analysis of private events” Ribes reiterates Skinner’s insistence on the inclusion of private events in the experimental analysis of behavior. He writes “Assuming that private events could be discriminated like any other physical event, Skinner “spelled out the conditions required by a verbal community to identify (discriminate) them to teach a subject to discriminate private physical events in terms of a verbal self-report (tact).” However, there is a great difference between a verbal community which teaches us empathy versus one that tells us not to cry and to suck it up.

If our family or community is one in which toughness and insensitivity is praised, this is bound to give rise to more instances of NVB. Only to the extent that we receive love, care, bonding and sensitivity, will we be taught to tact that kind of behavior and have more instances of SVB. In other words, in environments in which NVB dominates, people are not as likely to identify what they feel, because they are only taught to tact how to be insensitive; for them tacting insensitivity means being sensitive.

“The core of argumentation of Skinner focused upon two issues, the truth value of observation based on public agreement and the ontological status of private events.” SVB and NVB relate to these two important issues, but public agreement about these two can only be obtained due to SVB. The distinction or rather the rift between radical behaviorism and methodological behaviorism was and could never be resolved, because of NVB. This distinction, which, as Malcolm (1971) has stated, is “questionable”, has weakened and continues to undermine the importance of the science of human behavior. 

“Analysis of private events passes through the analysis of how the verbal community identifies their occurrence and reinforces the individual for properly reporting his or her private events in the form of a discriminated verbal operant (the self-descriptive tact).” What happened to the behaviorist community is no different from what happens to any other verbal community. Those who are conditioned by and therefore more involved in NVB only have limited, at best, inaccurate descriptions of their private events. Unable to remediate the consequences of their inaccurate descriptions, they inevitably learn to avoid self-descriptive tacts altogether and are of course reinforced for that. 

Like Stevens and Skinner, I agree that we must study “private events scientifically” that is “the terms denoting them should be identified through public concrete operations.” Although SVB and NVB can only be identified when we have SVB, they are publicly observable phenomena, which co-occur iwith entirely different private events. Certainly, “private events are not causes of behavior”, but those who keep eliciting NVB will always tell you otherwise. It is important we recognize the enormous role of NVB in psychopathology. As long as we keep writing about ontological assertions versus epistemological assertions and have NVB instead of SVB, we keep beating around the bush.

It is only because we are conditioned by and used to NVB and because we don’t know how to create and maintain environments in which we will reliably increase our SVB, that we accept as a given that “the verification of the utterance “I am excited” is different for the person experiencing excitement and for the one observing that person.” I claim that this difference is absent in SVB and only occurs as a consequence of NVB. To the extent that our private events and concurrent private speech are not reciprocated by others, a wedge is driven between private speech and public speech. Another angle to look at this is that during SVB we are conscious about the same behavior. 

We may not be familiar with it, but this doesn’t mean we can’t talk from a third-person perspective in a first-person manner. To believe otherwise, is to assume that conscious communication is impossible. When speakers listen to themselves while they speak, they are conscious of their sound, which is produced and listened to in the here and now. In SVB a sense of well-being is shared and continued by all the communicators.  

April 27, 2015

April 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

I am reading one more paper by Emilio Ribes. I don’t think I will read another one of his papers after this one. I remember that he said that it makes no sense to consider verbal and nonverbal behavior separately. Many other behaviorists have said the exact same thing. It seems to me as if he was repeating an old story. However, if we are going to engage in a conversation with each other, of course, we must differentiate between our verbal and our nonverbal behavior. It is because we nowadays seldom talk with each other, that writings like that begun to have a life of their own.


Writing about talking creates the illusion that we are talking, but it doesn’t help us understand the problems we are getting stuck with while we are talking. Ribes and Wittgenstein are people who are stuck and who also get others stuck with words. Unless we reconsider nonverbal behavior separately from verbal behavior, we get carried away by academic, scientific, political, cultural and linguistic jargon. The more we write, the less we talk. 

Today I respond to the paper “What is Defined in Operational Definitions? The Case of Operant Psychology” (2003). This paper by Ribes is about “the operational origin of the dichotomies between respondent and operant behavior, contingency-shaped and rule-governed behavior, private and public events, and, verbal and nonverbal behavior.” I skimmed through the paper very quickly and got to the last dichotomy, which is important for how we talk together. 

By mentioning Skinner, who was influenced by Stevens, who promoted Bridgman’s operational analysis as a general methodology of science, the reader is informed about the context of Bridgman’s analysis. Evidently, Bridgman was also impacted by Einstein’s relativity theory. He reasoned that “operational analysis was itself a relativistic enterprise constrained by the limits of human activity in relation to the physical world.” Not the conversation with his wife, children, students or colleagues, but “the conceptual revolution brought about in physics at the turn of the century and into the first quarter century of modern physics” was the context for his operational analysis. 

Let’s contrast this with the context in which I discovered the importance of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These subsets of vocal verbal behavior began to occur to me because I hated how other people sounded. I got in trouble for addressing this matter again and again. It was initially a process of negative reinforcement, which led me to escape and avoid NVB. Relieved and satisfied to have accomplished that I produced SVB and began to pay attention to the environments in which this could occur. It happened out of necessity. I never choose or planned this. 

SVB only occurs when the contingency which makes it possible is accurately described. It was after many years, after I had stopped having contact with my family, after I had immigrated to the United States, after I had withdrawn from my graduate psychology study (ABD: All-But-Dissertation) that I discovered radical behaviorism and the terminology which explained what I had been going through. By discovering radical behaviorism I found scientific validation. 

Einstein highlighted “the true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it.” I would say that we should observe, or rather, that we should listen to what a man says about it. I think that we can only find true meaning by what someone says about it. Although this mostly is not the case, I think that what we say about a term can be identical to what we do with it. If what we say about a term is identical to what we do with it, we achieve SVB, but if what we say about a term is different from what we do with it, we will engage in NVB. 

Based on the many seminars I have given over the years I believe that we mainly engage in NVB. Our problem is not that we can’t achieve SVB, but that we keep thinking that talking is not doing. Although Bridgman and Ribes in their writings “explicitly acknowledged that concepts were inevitably linked to human experience”, they consider the operational analysis of concepts as “not related to criteria regarding the public verification of properties or events.” In other words, like ‘true’ academics, they throw out the ordinary conversation.

Stevens who “adhered to the conception of truth by agreement” was into written, but not spoken agreement. Academically speaking (pun intended), the former is presumably more important than the latter. This has many negative consequences. When only in principle “there are no rules for prescribing, selecting and validating operations that identify the properties of objects or events to which concepts are applied”, it becomes difficult to talk about it. Of course, in day-to-day interactions there are rules “for prescribing, selecting and validating operations.” They may not be explicitly stated, but the “properties of objects or events to which concepts are applied” have to be identified. 

According to Stevens “the only difference is that scientist’s standards conform to those of his associates.” It is important to recognize that this so-called conformity only applies to what is written, to de-contextualized language. Thus, discussion between pragmatics and semantics leaves out the unacknowledged fact that, Bridgman and Stevens, like everyone else, mainly engage in NVB.

Indeed, “the operational definitions and the operational analysis of concepts are two different things.” Bridgman’s operational analysis, like my analysis of SVB and NVB, is “a posteriori identification of the physical and or verbal actions involved in formulating and applying a concept.” I can understand where Stevens is trying to go with “public science”, but I also agree with Bridgman that Stevens’ semantic approach is a dead end. Like Bridgman, Ribes and Skinner, I am only interested in the “operations (or physical and verbal actions) taking place when the concept is used.” A priori identification of concepts prevents SVB. Only an operational, but not a “functional analysis of concepts” can deal directly with our way of talking. We need to define concepts according to their use while we talk. As long as behaviorism wasn’t known we were able to avoid this. Skinner complimented Stevens’ writing and called it “a damn piece of nice work” and described it as “the best statement of the behavioristic attitude towards subjective terms now in print.” 

It should be clear here that Skinner was referring to Stevens’ writing as if he was commenting on the fact that Stevens was having SVB with him. If Stevens would have had SVB with him, Skinner might have been alerted to the fact that it had something to do with how we sound while we speak. Skinner’s voice sounds different than others. His vocal verbal behavior had more SVB instances than other scientists. His tone was almost always calm and pleasant. It is not coincidental that he never sounded angry, anxious, frustrated or negative. His knowledge about literature infuriates his opponents. There is reason why Skinner has such a peaceful tone, why Chomsky sounds so incendiary and why Pinker has such a pedantic and annoying voice. 

“Reproducibility of data” which is essential in operant methodology is equally important for SVB as for NVB. The terms SVB and NVB can be added to “reinforcement”, “extinction”, “discrimination”, “generalization” and “chaining”, Skinner’s list, which illustrates “the theoretical functions given to concepts defined as operation-outcome relations.” The two subsets of vocal verbal behavior in humans called SVB and NVB can also be extended to the behavior of nonverbal organisms and constitutes the “laws of behavior.” In nonverbal organisms we should talk about Sound Non-Verbal Behavior (SNVB) and Noxious Non-Verbal Behavior (NNVB). These distinctions will make us recognize that, although only humans have language, non-verbally they are equal to nonverbal animals. This focus on the nonverbal makes possible the much-needed alignment between our verbal and nonverbal behavior.  

April 26, 2015

April 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) involves a manner of speaking in which the speaker affects optimal arousal levels for the listener. The arousal level for the listener is neither too high nor too low, but exactly right. Whether or not SVB is produced is determined by the listener. However, the speaker can also be his or her own listener and thus determine if he or she is producing SVB. When the speaker and the listener are one and the same person, it is only for him or for herself and not for someone else that the listener of his or her own speech can determine whether he or she is producing SVB.

As the speaker is capable of discerning he or she is producing SVB, he or she becomes more accurate in discerning if listeners other than him or herself are experiencing SVB. What may be perceived as SVB by the speaker as his or her own listener may be Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) for listeners other than the speaker. SVB occurs when the speaker as his or her own listener as well as the other listeners experience the voice of the speaker in the same positive manner. SVB perceived as SVB by the speaker as his or her own listener, can also first be perceived as NVB by other listeners and later as SVB. This can happen as other listeners are often not listening to the sound of the speaker, but to what he or she says. They often respond to the content of what the speaker is saying. Listeners may say they don’t like what the speaker is saying, but they don’t respond to his or her sound. 

When the listener is focusing on the sound of the speaker, the listener is more likely to perceive the sound of the speaker in the same way as the speaker, but when the listener is not conditioned to listen to the sound of the speaker, disagreement between the speaker and the listener about whether the speaker is producing SVB or NVB cannot be resolved as the attention of the listener keeps going to the content of what is said. If this kind of mediation by the listener happens, the speaker’s attention will very likely be distracted from listening to the sound of his or her voice while he or she speaks. 

If NVB instances happen at a high rate, while SVB instances happen at a low rate, then NVB occurs. If SVB instances happen at a high rate and NVB instances happen at a low rate, then SVB occurs. “When people speak, their speech is not the overt manifestation of an abstract grammar that rules and regulates what can be said or not, or how to say things.” Our speech is not caused by a language acquisition devise and thus the higher or lower rates of NVB or SVB produced by the speaker depend on the conditioning of the speaker's nervous system. Unsafe and threatening environments gave rise to high rates of NVB, the kind of speech in which, speakers and listeners predominantly emphasize the verbal, while escaping from the nonverbal, the environment within the skin. Safe and appetitive environments, on the other hand, set the stage for SVB, the vocal verbal behavior Ribes is referring to when he states “language as actual behavior has no grammar” (1991). 

Although Ribes is right when he states “grammar is not the condition that makes language effective or sound”, he is as verbally fixated as everyone else who was mainly exposed to and conditioned by NVB. It would never  occur to Ribes that only the calm sound of our voice can make our language a “meaningful social practice.” Although our language doesn’t require that it is “ruled by or adjusted to an ideal, abstract grammar”, for it to become more meaningful there must be a continuity of experience of safety and comfort. 

Ribes states “according to what has been said.” without realizing that nothing has been said, only something was written. Like Wittgenstein, he writes about “language as it is spoken in daily life”, but nothing indicates he actually speaks about it. I don’t agree with Wittgenstein who insists that “every sentence in our language is in order as it is.” This illustrates intellectual superficiality, because anyone who engages in conversation with others knows, that most of these conversations go nowhere and can’t go anywhere. Most of our conversations are NVB, which creates, maintains and exploits disorder. 


Only SVB can create order. SVB is not an intellectual accomplishment, but an experiential phenomenon. NVB facilitates the rejection and the abandonment of our experience of well-being. Ribes considers the importance of “language as a medium”, but is too enthralled by Wittgenstein’s “language games” to notice  that language is nothing but a sound produced by our vocal apparatus. He writes about the “acquisition of language” and “understanding and using words (which are tantamount to learning)”, but doesn’t mention the production and the listening to a sound to which we can all be attuned. 

Ribes wants readers to think of “language as an instrument.” He seems to refer to the human voice when he writes “language as an instrument, means effective use in relation to the behavior of other individuals”, but he primarily focuses on “thinking about its functions.” Thus, he only pays lip-service to the fact that “language is the instrument by means of which people relate to each other.” Apparently, Ribes wants the reader to think that “communication is a phenomenon taking place as a special function of language, but not as an equivalent to language,” but no explanation is given anywhere in his writings of an instrument that is producing harmonious positive sounds. 

Before I completed reading the section of the paper “language as a form of life,” I wondered if would contain anything that goes into the importance of sound while speak? The answer, as I expected, was no. Since Ribes is commenting on Wittgenstein’s ruminations about language, he only reiterates his view that “language games not only make up the meaning of words but the meaning of life itself.” What follows is long list of assumptions, but there is no reference anywhere about the important role of the human voice. 

The final section of the paper deals with “language as behavior.” I agree that “Psychology has not recognized that language, although ever-present in human behavior and its context, does not constitute a psychological phenomenon”, but the statement “all of human behavior is linguistic” is mistaken. Only SVB is linguistic, that is, verbal; NVB confines us to nonverbal responding. The fact that in NVB the sound of the speaker’s voice coerces the listener into submission, is not mentioned anywhere. Only something is said about “the groundlessness of believing, especially in small children.” Surely, it is sad that children continue to be conditioned to become adults mainly capable of NVB.