January 4, 2015

January 4, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writer is half way through reading the introductory Behaviorology-book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) by Stephen Ledoux. He highly recommends it, he learns a lot and he realizes there are many things he didn’t know. The natural science of human behavior is awesome.  Behaviorologist are behaviorists who established their science separate from the field of psychology. Behaviorology is not part of and no longer seeks recognition psychology. It is a science next to biology, physics and chemistry. This writer considers his views in line with behaviorology. 

Reading this book makes this writer realize that the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) path he has been travelling has brought about “enduring changes in the neural microstructures of his body”. Also, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and its punishing consequences have changed this author’s neural mediation, due to which the relationship has weakened between the occurrence of the evocative stimulus, Voice I and its response, NVB, which this evocative stimulus evokes. In other words, due to tacting, the verbal identification or naming of SVB and NVB, bodily changes have occured, which make the presence of the evocative stimulus called Voice I, induce more often the effective mediation of an avoidance response, due to which this author finds himself less and less exposed to, involved in or effected by NVB. Also, the SVB/NVB stimulus-evocation process has strengthened a bodily response to the evocative stimulus Voice II, which post-cedently leads to reinforcement.

SVB cannot and will not occur without listening to ourselves while we speak. “The reinforcing stimuli functionally feed energy back into the organism’s nervous system, changing it so that the now different nervous system mediates behavior differently.” (Ledoux, 2014). Evocative stimuli are also the Voice II-producing others in whose presence the evoked response, SVB, is reinforced. Mediation by others is as important as mediation by the speaker him or herself. Unless the mediation by self and others happen at the same time, SVB cannot be consequated. If they don’t happen together, the nervous system will be conditioned to prefer Voice I.   

Voice I and Voice II are evocative stimuli. SVB and NVB are two response classes. Either of these response classes are more likely to occur when they are reinforced. To increase SVB and decrease of NVB, it is of importance to understand the difference between when reinforcement of Voice II follows a SVB response and when no reinforcement follows the Voice II response. Only if reinforcement follows the Voice II response, will Voice II increase. The absence of reinforcement for Voice II makes SVB occur less often and eventually extinguishes this response. 

 

If SVB is not reinforced this doesn’t mean that therefore NVB is reinforced. Only in the presence of antecedent evocative stimulus Voice II, will SVB be reinforced and only in the presence of the antecedent evocative stimulus Voice I, will NVB be reinforced. Similarly to a pigeon, which can be trained that a green light signals occurrence of reinforcement, human beings can be trained that evocative stimulus Voice I signals punishment, while evocative stimulus Voice II signals reinforcement. 

Voice II may save one’s life in a threatening situation, while in a non-threatening situation, Voice I may be necessary to prevent getting involved into a conversation because one needs to go somewhere. There are various environmental reasons why it can be either reinforcing or punishing to speak with Voice I or Voice II and such consequences may vary from one moment to the next. One thing is for sure, if all SVB responses occur with reinforcement, SVB responses will be learned very rapidly and without any error, but if SVB responses are only sometimes are reinforced, or are not reinforced at all, then the SVB response will weaken and eventually extinguish. There is so very little SVB in the world because we are only just beginning to learn how to reinforce it. The errorless learning of SVB, which is effortless, requires an entirely different approach to learning. As long as people falsely believe that an inner agent causes them to talk the way they do, they misinterpret the physiological changes in their body and the will produce NVB.