March 16, 2016

March 16, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Humble Behaviorism” Neuringer (1991) writes about research that was done by Herrnstein (1984), in which pigeons were trained to respond to projections of slides with people in them. The pigeons even responded appropriately to pictures of people they had never before seen. “In an extension of this work, after pigeons were trained to respond on one key to music by Bach and another key to music by Stravinsky, they generalized in ways analogous to people: they responded to the Bach key when probe pieces by Telemann or Buxtehude and the Stravinsky key when music by Eliot Carter was played (Porter & Neuringer, 1984).” This is very interesting research corroborating the generalization which goes on in human interaction. Certain people have substantially more Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) instances in any given verbal episode than others, who have more Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) instances in any given verbal episode. I read in another paper (I don’t recall which one), that it was found that as discrimination increases generalization decreases. This explains why someone like me, who discovered, due to a large amount of SVB instances in his behavioral history the distinction between SVB and NVB, only wishes to continue with SVB, whereas those who had a lot of NVB instances in their behavioral history, basically only want to continue with NVB. This explains SVB and NVB from a respondent perspective.