August 24, 2014

August 24, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer had another wonderful skype conversation with his friend and colleague from Bogota, Colombia. They discussed step by step the components of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). This time they addressed the fact that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is much easier to be established and takes less time. NVB is ubiquitous and is reinforced more often than SVB, because it takes less time. To learn SVB requires time. Patience sets the stage for SVB. 

This writer read in “A Brief Functional Analysis of Aggressive And Alternative Behavior in an Out-Clinic Setting” (Northrup et. al., 1991) that severe problem behaviors are functionally equivalent to communicative responding. This is interesting, because they had been talking about Maria Amelia Matos, the famous Brazilian behaviorist, who was often considered to be very angry and difficult to deal with. This author interpreted that Maria must have been convinced she knew something most people didn’t want to hear or give much attention to. 

Maria had been very competent and well-established, but this writer believes that anger, in the severely handicapped as well as in academically skilled professionals, is misunderstood as long as it is simplified, because it is not functionally explained. In Northrup's research, due to contingency- reversal-conditions aggressive behavior was decreased, while the manding, or asking behavior was increased. In other words, the contingencies that maintained aggressive behavior could serve to reinforce alternative replacement behavior. When aggression and manding result in the same outcome, they are functionally equivalent. Subsequently, when manding is strengthened, aggression will be weakened. 

This eauivalence principle is at the crux of SVB. As SVB increases, NVB decreases. SVB replaces NVB, because SVB is better than NVB. As the contingency for SVB is not maintained and since no one knows how to maintain it, NVB kept on increasing, while SVB kept on decreasing. It would be interesting to find out from Maria’s Matos students, if this reversal was noticeable. It probably was.