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.