December 28, 2015

December 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my twelfth response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). It doesn’t come out of nowhere that Bostow writes “The task of developing behavioral technologies that reach into the most personal lives of behavior analysts is not an easy one, because scientific rigor requires independent verification of procedures and effects.” 

Anyone who knows the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) immediately realizes that such a remark is the result of being conditioned by NVB. In SVB, the “task of developing behavioral technologies that reach into the most personal lives of behavior analysts” is easy. We are so used to things being difficult, that we distrust anything that is easy. 

Rigorous “Independent verification of procedures and effects” is a matter of verbal behavior. NVB is not up to the task; it is too blunt and too insensitive. Only SVB creates the appropriate scientific conversation. The real issue is NOT “climate change” or “reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources”, but changing the way in which we talk, because only that can change our other behavior. Our behavior has not changed as we haven’t addressed or explored the NVB which causes and maintains it.

I totally agree with Bostow that we do not “need to wait for a better life to happen; it could be designed using a science of behavior” (Skinner, 1987a, 1987c), but I believe that without the SVB/NVB distinction, Skinner’s science remains incomplete. 

Although many people have tried to refer to SVB and NVB, SVB is NOT about having epiphanies. To the contrary, it is down to earth. Thus, “understanding that behavior does not begin inside of us” didn’t and couldn’t bring us any closer to SVB. It is a matter of whether necessary communication skills are learned.

Many solutions to our problems will come from “contingencies in our personal environment,” but these contingencies will not be accessible to objective scientific scrutiny with NVB. NVB must be controlled before we can have SVB scientific dialogue. With SVB our culture becomes less superstitious and more scientific and will “contrive contingencies” to “support self-management.” I agree with Bostow “It is our personal environment that must be changed”, but I differ with him how to change it. I propose the change from NVB to SVB and have good reason to believe this will generalize to many other behaviors. Bostow may have “given up trying to change a larger world”, but he has NOT discovered SVB.