February 28, 2016

February 28, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The paper “Understanding and Pavlovian Processes” by Tonneau (2004)has made me realize that behaviorists have over-emphasized the importance of operant conditioning and downplayed classical or Pavlovian conditioning. I think this is the reason why behaviorists are not well-accepted in academia. If they would have included respondent conditioning in their approach, they would have had a much broader basis to explain behavior. It is in my opinion absurd that behaviorists ignore the importance of classical conditioning. 

Without classical conditioning behaviorism remained incomplete. Paradoxically, behavioral science is undermined due to its lack of in interest in what laid the foundation for its very existence. Although it is understandable that Skinner elevated operant conditioning over classical conditioning, the explanation of behavior is inadequate as long as responses which can occur without reinforcement are not explained by classical conditioning.  I used to think that behaviorism didn’t get much traction in academia as behaviorists didn’t know about the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, but now that I learn that SVB and NVB are actually best explained by respondent conditioning, it is clear to me that Pavlovian conditioning plays a much bigger role in human behavior than radical behaviorist have been willing to acknowledge. 

Implementation of behavioral technology continues to be gravely impaired due to an unfortunate process of historical lopsidedness which favored operant over classical conditioning. I think that more operant conditioning will be possible only once we take serious the respondent processes that are involved in our verbal behavior. It amazes me to find out that this has not happened yet and that radical behaviorists have maintained a bias towards classical conditioning. The SVB/NVB distinction makes us re-consider Pavlovian processes that make operant conditioning possible in the first place.