August 2, 2016

August 2, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fourth response to “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). “In using words as seen, perceived, observation, guess, hunch and insight, as in the preceding paragraph, the radical behaviorist does not feel that he is specifying with very much precision what many psychologist would call either behavioral or mental processes.” This would not be the case if they would insist on listening while they speak and engaged in SVB. 

I appreciate Day more than other behaviorists as he seems to be aware that ‘observation’ has something to do with the way in which we talk.  “He is simply talking as best as he can – actually, in this case he is not talking as carefully as he might – and he is responding to discriminable events which have not been very consistently differentiated by whatever factors govern the way in which we learn to talk as we do.” 

I consistently differentiate between our current way conversation and the “factors that govern the way in which we learn to talk as we do.” NVB doesn’t allow the investigation of the extent to which we talk as we do because of how we sound. Surely, “the verbal community which instills in us “the capacity to identify a stimulus” is not necessarily a scientific community. It has been my consistent auditory-observation that people who are uneducated in the sciences are more likely to differentiate between SVB and NVB than those who are. 

It is time that scientist realize that the scientific community has higher rates of NVB than the non-scientific community. In other words, people have remained ignorant about science for the very same reason they have remained ignorant about radical behaviorism. 

Although the unscientific community has higher rates of SVB than the scientific community, they both have much higher rates of NVB than SVB.  The reason is that coercive behavioral control is more widely practiced than behavioral control based on positive reinforcement. Such practice is, of course, maintained by the way in which we talk. 

By increasing our rates of SVB and by decreasing our rates of NVB, we move away from the ubiquity of aversive behavior control and we learn to practice positive behavioral control. As I have been able to bring these changes about in both myself and in others, am “confident in my statement of a functional relationship” between how we sound and how we talk. As a psychology instructor, in front of a class of thirty students, and as a therapist, treating individuals suffering with a variety of mental health problems, I manipulate, i.e. control, specific behaviors. I accomplish this by increasing SVB and decreasing NVB. My student’s and client’s success is based on the SVB/NVB distinction.

Day, who doesn’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction, states “the focal interest in control of behavior does not prejudice the case for the importance in human functioning of genetic or constitutional factors, nor does it lead to any such grandiose hypothesis as that all behavior is controlled by reinforcement.” As we become familiar with SVB, as we become capable of controlling our conversation outcomes, increase our learning and our improve relationships, less attention will be drawn to “genetic or constitutional factors.” 

Moreover, as our involvement in will SVB increase and our involvement in NVB will decrease, we will find that more behavior can be “controlled by reinforcement” than we have previously believed. The enormous gains which can be made by switching from NVB to SVB, by switching from aversive behavioral control to positive behavioral control, will one day be considered as the crown on Skinner’s work. I am confident that the exploration of the SVB/NVB distinction makes this shift possible.