August 28, 2016

August 28, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This writing is a response to “Verbal behavior in clinical context: behavior analysis methodological contributions” by Zamignani and Meyer (2007). 

The paper deals with “the client-therapist interaction from a behavior analytic point of view.” I will use this paper to illustrate my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), categories of “behaviors in clinical interaction,” which can and should be observed and measured. 

I claim high rates of SVB and low rates of NVB in the conversation between the client and the therapist “are the interpersonal variables that are responsible for the change in therapy.” SVB is necessary!

As the SVB/NVB distinction involves both the verbal and the nonverbal interaction between the therapist and the client, it can be considered as one of the “process researches” these authors are writing about. 

Their aim of “maximizing the effects of treatment” is accomplished by skillfully increasing SVB and reducing NVB in the interaction between therapist and client. These authors focus on “mutual influence” in which the behavior of the therapist and the client are “analyzed as social behaviors.” Shared control is the main characteristic of SVB. 

Although these authors write about “social stimuli,” surprisingly, the sound of the speaker’s voice and the listener’s response to it is of not mentioned anywhere in  their “identification of regularities.” 

The SVB/NVB distinction could greatly contribute to these authors’ aim of “identifying regularities in the systematization of the observation data into classes of behavior of the therapist and client.”

The SVB/NVB distinction will clarify the “different theoretical assumptions that guide each one of the studies” considered by these authors. Many things which before weren’t clear will become clear.   

August 27, 2016

August 27, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This writing occurs under conditions which didn’t exist before.  I have been incredibly busy during the first two weeks of this fall semester. As a therapist, I see approximately twenty eight clients a week and as an instructor, I teach three classes with each thirty eight students. 

Everything is going very well and we just bought a new Toyota Corolla. Today I am catching up with myself as I haven’t had time to write. I was beginning to feel like I was missing something, but now that I am writing, I am happy to report on my success, my wealth and my joy. 

My wife Bonnie is proud of me. We have a lot to talk about these days as she is a case worker at the welfare-to-work program. She also deals with clients who struggle with mental health issues. She refers clients to people like me; many of her clients need to get some extra education or therapy before they are ready to join the work force again.

I am a therapist as an educator. The clinical work I have been doing this summer has changed me as an instructor. I feel enriched by it as it allows me to make a stronger connection with my students. In both jobs I establish some routine and this gives me a sense of comfort, confidence, continuity and stability, which I didn’t experience before. 

By documenting this, I feel grateful about what I have accomplished. My success inspires my students and my clients. We talk about serious issues, but we have a lot of fun. I love each of my clients and students and they love me back. My skills are optimally used as I create as sense of community and belonging. I am at my best when I am busy like this.

August 26, 2016

August 26, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-eight response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). One of the authors of the Rice symposium, Scriven, wondered if the falsehoods and falsifications for which phenomenologists and radical behaviorists blame each other will ever be resolved. 

Scriven raised the simple question: “How many of us psychologists are sufficiently prepared to understand Scriven when he talks?” (italics added). In doing so he addressed the importance of talking, but since he was talking about himself, he was actually asking himself whether calling radical behaviorists “wicked” made any sense at all? In other words, he was questioning his own Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Scriven believed there must be a better way, which, of course, there is. He pondered “Do we have to feed ourselves fibs as fuels for our forward movement?” He was wondering if predetermined theoretical talk wouldn’t continuously stir negativity? Only when we ask ourselves that question will we give an honest answer. Only when the speaker is his or her own listener can we step out of our NVB, which is basically talking bad about each other, mudslinging and putting each other down.  

When we listen to ourselves while we speak, we recognize our own negative self-talk and realize that what we do to each other, we also do to ourselves. This opens the door to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we speak with each other in the same positive way as we talk with ourselves. In SVB the speaker is no longer accusing the listener of being wrong as the SVB speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks and he or she knows he or she is the same as the listener. 

As long as experiencing ourselves while we speak is not accepted as a “conspicuously exploratory research”, we “must justify, often with great hypocrisy, and inevitably with great caution, whatever interest in behavior we may have.” Scientists buttress their so-called competence, “by a formidable list of publications, often in some picked-over area.” 

This writing is to let the reader know that also the publication of Day’s behaviorist paper cannot bridge the gap between radical behaviorism and phenomenology, which might as well be described as the difference between written and spoken communication.  Unless we engage in an actual conversation, that is, in SVB, we will never get clear on this. 

According to Day “The profession greatly needs a lot more writing that consists of a little more than careful description of what is actually observed by psychologists” (italics added). However, to acknowledge and explore the SVB/NVB distinction, more conversation is needed. 

Radical behaviorism’s emphasis on “simple descriptions of observed behavior” should involve a listener’s (positive or negative) affective response, induced directly by the speaker’s voice. “Productive professional behavior” is a therapist’s or teacher’s ability to induce positive affect in the client or student by how he or she speaks. 

Day focuses on “complex behavior,” on verbal behavior and states “Although someone is able to make only the most tentative conclusions - here, of course, he is conditioned to hesitate even to speak, much less to publish – the professional community still needs the benefit of his experience.” 

I feel stimulated by Day to write this, but my conclusions aren’t tentative: SVB and NVB are observable behaviors which we will only learn to discriminate if we talk. Only the radical behaviorists who know about the SVB/NVB distinction can reconcile with the phenomenologists who know about SVB. We haven’t had this conversation as academics find writing and reading more important than speaking and listening.

August 25, 2016

August 25, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-seventh response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Day says “phenomenologist should” (italics added) do this or that so often I can’t help noticing. He engages in effortful Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

In NVB we try to make others to listen to us, but in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) we focus on listening to ourselves and as a result, we listen effortlessly to others.  We can directly observe, listen to the speaker’s voice and know if his or her speech is effortful or effortless. 

In most verbal episodes there are many more instances of NVB than SVB. Spoken communication has remained mankind’s biggest unresolved problem.  If radical behaviorists would have been listened to this would not be the case, as operant science, which explains and supports the SVB/NVB distinction, is always based on positive behavioral control.

In SVB we mutually reinforce and therefore co-regulate each other, but in NVB only the speaker is reinforced for dominating the listener. The NVB speaker punishes and dis-regulates the listener and forces him or herself on the listener, who is not as powerful as the speaker. 

In NVB speakers speak the language of coercive behavioral control, which is justified by the fact that the speaker has a higher social status than the listener.  Stated differently, in NVB we all presumably know our place, but this socially accepted hierarchical difference between the speaker and the listener separates one from the other. During SVB the speaker and the listener are connected and united, but during NVB the speaker and the listener out of sync and disjointed. 

Day states “the best way to change a mental condition may be to try to change other, more conspicuous aspects of behavior first; the desired changes in covert behavior may occur as a result.” He is right. When we change our tone of voice many new behaviors begin to become possible. 

Changing how we sound changes the hierarchical structure supported by NVB. SVB changes the relationship between the speaker and the listener. 

This is why changing the sound of the speaker’s voice is a big taboo. The only place where this taboo is temporarily allowed to be lifted is in therapy because people suffer from mental health issues. 

When my clients are stimulated, by me, to listen to themselves while they speak, they change their tone of voice and manifest different behaviors than they were having when they were not stimulated to listen to themselves. The manic person becomes calm; the scattered, inattentive person becomes attentive and focused; and the depressed and isolated person becomes happy, lively and social again. This result is consistently achieved by only changing the sound of the client’s voice. 

If changing the tone of voice of mental health clients results in such beneficial consequences it is apparent that this phenomenon is also of crucial importance to those who are not afflicted by mental disorders. With SVB students learn better, relationships flourish, parenting becomes a joy, working collaboratively becomes possible and thinking rationally is enhanced. We become conscious, intelligent communicators in SVB, but in NVB we will remain rigid, mechanical and repetitive. 

“The lack of careful study of Skinner’s work” is due to our high rates of NVB; with SVB we are going to enhance education. One of radical behaviorism’s biggest opponents, the linguist Noam Chomsky, was never properly answered. His incendiary tone of voice should be addressed as it signifies NVB. He is a typical example of an outdated archaic speaker who dominates the listener. As such, he is political and biased, but not scientific. SVB is a scientific way of talking which exposes his failure.

August 24, 2016

August 24, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-sixth response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). Day does a great job delineating how radical behaviorism “impinges upon the domain of phenomenology.” Radical behaviorism primarily focuses on “behavior, even though it may not be public in nature.” A behavioral analyst acknowledges the fact that “much of both his own behavior and that in which he is interested is under complex control, a control that is likely to be to a considerable extent environmental in nature.”

When people think about the environment, they tend to think of oceans, forests, rivers and skies, but not of other people. We are each other’s environment; we affect each other and we are affected by each other. The way we are affected by each other’s sound is a more ancient biological process than how we are affected by each other’s words. Language is a relatively new event in our evolutionary history.  

Our body’s innate response to sound and particularly to vocalizations from conspecifics is of great importance. This obvious fact is often completely ignored because we are more inclined to pay attention to what we say than to how we say what we say. Although we are verbal creatures, the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) relates to our non-verbal history.

Our own sound can stimulate us in a manner that rejuvenates our entire nervous system. Furthermore, our brains and our nervous systems are either stimulated and conditioned by the sound of our well-being or by the sound of our fear, stress and frustration.  In the former our nervous system is regulated, but in the latter, is it dysregulated. 

Instead of simply acknowledging that the phenomenologists seem to be having more SVB than the radical behaviorists, Day suggests that “The phenomenologist needs greatly to recognize that a little less metaphor and theory, and a lot more description of the things that he has actually observed, would be of much help to others in understanding the problems he faces.” He focuses on what the phenomenologist say.

I understand why Day wrote what he wrote, but as a teacher and as a therapist, I firmly believe that an emphasis on how we say things is of greater importance for helping others. The problems people face are caused by an over-emphasis on the importance of their verbal behavior and the disconnect this creates from their non-verbal behavior. 

To speak in a phenomenological metaphor: we are often just like unconscious talking heads as we disconnect from our body, which is the instrument of sound. Each time we get verbally carried away, we disembody our communication, but by listening to how we sound while we speak, we become embodied, conscious, whole speakers again. 

When Day insists “The phenomenologist should be especially weary of the ways in which his previous experience acts to influence however he happens to talk, particularly in constructing theories, planning research, and reaching explanatory conclusions”, he clearly only refers to what the phenomenologists say and not to the previous experiences of how speaker’s voices played a role shaping their verbal behavior. 

One could say that Day is verbally fixated as he is downplaying the role of “previous experience”, that is, of nonverbal learning, which “acts to influence however he happens to talk.” If it is true, and I strongly believe it is, that phenomenologist have more SVB than behaviorists, Day’s criticizes their SVB with NVB. Such disapproval never worked. 

In the study of complex behavior, to decide “what is chicken and what is egg”, we shouldn’t lose track of the fact that nonverbal learning made verbal learning possible;  prior environments changed our body.