January 27, 2015

January 27, 2015 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

It takes a person like this writer, who struggled throughout his life with the way in which coercive control conditioned and respondently limited his operant behavior, to long for a solution. Each time this writer found something that was reinforcing, he ran with it and took it as far as he could. At one point in his life he studied years of classical singing and aspired to be tenor-singer in the opera. During those years he learned to listen to nuances of his voice and sense with his body when his voice was resonating. Although he was quite successful, he didn’t want to continue because spoken communication was more satisfying and intellectually stimulating to him than singing. 

This writing is to remind the reader that his discovery of listening to his voice while he speaks, which is SVB, didn’t come out of the blue. After he had left his study in singing, he went through a poetry-phase and for the first time began to express as precisely as possible what he really felt and thought. Although he was strongly reinforced for his poetry, it didn’t translate into better communication with others. How he wanted to communicate was determined by a sound of his voice which he was only seldom capable of producing in his interactions with others. This intrigued him. Why was it so difficult to speak with that particular sound which made him feel so good? Why did he keep losing his voice? 

It took him many years to find out that his sound was affected by his environment and always expressed what was happening in his immediate surroundings. Consequently, in aversive environments he produced NVB, but in safe and supportive environments, he produced SVB. Slowly, but surely, he began to figure out that our way of communicating is, mostly without us knowing it, primarily based on how we sound. Due to how he grew up, this writer was conditioned to escape and avoid any aversive tone of voice. He was only able to learn from those whom he liked and those who had a negative impact on him began to trouble him less and less.   

Skinner in “The literature of freedom and dignity emphasizes ending that kind of [coercive] control, but largely ignores, even denies, the vital effects on our existence of added-reinforcement, an ignorance that can lead to disastrous global outcomes.” [word added] (Ledoux, 2014, p. 357). Compared to this writer, Skinner grew up under much more reinforcing circumstances. Since added reinforcement contrasts with punishment and since Skinner was so ingeniously effective in managing his environment, mankind’s need for added reinforcement at best became a literary topic, which was emphasized artistically as long as his verbal behavior was under control of the contingency of becoming a writer (this was Skinner's past passion). To further the cause of the science of human behavior, radical behaviorism, it was more effective to hit back at the field of psychology with the negative consequences of coercion. It is interesting to note that it was only at the very end of his life that Skinner gave his approval for behaviorology to establish itself as a separate science. And, of course, it also took someone with a history like Ledoux, to establish behaviorology and to increasingly focus more on added reinforcement. 

In spite of all the developments in which others explored the workings of operant conditioning, something has prevented behaviorologists from recognizing that even they must learn to talk in a different way. Unless  added reinforcement would change the way in which they communicated, they remained oblivious of the two response patterns or rather, the two entirely different environments that are involved in producing SVB and NVB.  Because they were so busy writing and studying, they never even bothered with the “ever present and always operating” vocal verbal behavior  involved in “behavioral control” which “comes in two flavors, which we call positive control and negative control.” (Ledoux, 2014, p. 357). This important distinction dovetails perfectly with SVB and NVB.