Friday, April 8, 2016

August 5, 2014



August 5, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

When talking about the natural science of verbal behavior, it is almost inevitable that people become overly focused on what they say. Not surprisingly, the behaviorologist’s emphasis on functional relationships often goes hand in hand with the rejection of form. Although form and function are equally important in the analysis of a verbal episode, more attention historically has gone to the contingencies that control form than to form itself. Surely, verbal utterances, the words we use, the language we speak, what we say, is controlled by variables in the environment, which set the stage, but, our nonverbal behavior, which either facilitates or distracts from what we are saying, simultaneously needs to be taken into consideration. 


Behaviorologists have not been able to change the prevailing view that individuals cause their own behavior, because they have mainly tried to verbally dispel this common superstition. However, in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) communicators attain a nonverbal focus. Thus, SVB demonstrates that our attention for nonverbal behavior improves our verbal behavior, because verbal behavior is a function of nonverbal behavior. In the same way selection by consequences is the foundation for modern biology, contingency selection is the foundation of verbal behavior. Our verbal behavior has nonverbal origins.            

August 4, 2014



August 4, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Although verbal behavior, as Skinner has said, is reinforced through the mediation of other people and is thus defined by how it is conditioned, shaped and maintained postcedently, that is, by its consequences, it is equally necessary for behaviorologists to pay attention to form, because traditional terms lack the scientific precision and often entail more than is appropriate for the analysis of a verbal episode. When behaviorologists use the term “verbalizer” instead of speaker and “mediator” instead of listener, this enhances their ability to be considerate about the body that manifests the verbal behavior and the body that is affected by it. Without attention to responses of the body there is nothing to observe. 


The inferred internal agent, which a majority of people believes causes their behavior, is not all of a sudden gone because of the use of different terminology. Although a naturalistic perspective can only be made clear with words that maintain focus on the subject matter, something more is needed. To purge mankind permanently of the ubiquitous superstition that there is a soul or a self that causes our individual’s behavior, requires a new way of communicating, which stresses how verbal and nonverbal behavior-changing consequences of the verbalizer are mediated by the mediator, even if he or she is alone.  


When attempts are made to focus the verbalizer’s attention on the body that manifests easily detectable muscle-driven motor behaviors and mini-scaled neural activity between nerve cells,  which are only assessable by means of special measurement instruments, it is easy to get trapped in the narrowing verbal rules of scientific logic. Moreover, common resistance against these scientific verbal rules may very well be a function of nonverbal secular or non-secular experiences, which are not acknowledged as such. In other words, due to verbal fixation, even behaviorologists fail to see that scientific endeavors can make them biased towards the verbal realm of verbal behavior. 


The focus on the body, intended by words such as "verbalizer" and "mediator", is a verbal attempt to hone in on the nonverbal. When people reject the knowledge that there is no soul or self, what they object to is that their nonverbal experience, which is articulated by their way of behaving verbally, is invalidated. They feel that something which was preciously reinforcing to them was taken away. Since scientists as well as non-scientists are equally conditioned to be more verbal than nonverbal, not much ground has been gained in educating people that the earth is round and that we don’t need to fear that we will fall off. There is a common fear that we lose our language when we become more nonverbal. However, the exact opposite is true: the more we focus on the nonverbal, the better our verbal behavior will be.

August 3, 2014



August 3, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

The more he learns about behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, the more this writer’s verbal behavior becomes effective. A process of re-conditioning takes place due to which he finally begins to understand and accept the important fact that most of his verbal behavior is much better kept to himself.  The retreat from public, overt speech to private covert speech, happens in normal development, but this writer, due to his troubled upbringing, only experiences this late in his life, after age 55.


Usually, it is after a child has learned how to speak and write that verbal behavior begins to recede to a private level. However, in the case of this writer, it didn’t happen that way. That was why he was described as “an open book” or someone “who has his heart on his sleeve.” The difference between public speech and private speech, the former being detectable by others, the latter being detectible only by one self, was until recently unclear to him.


A child’s loud emotional expressions, such as crying and screaming, are tempered as it learns to speak and write and it becomes private as speech decreases in intensity level. We first speak loudly, then softly and then think silently to ourselves. Also, what we say to ourselves privately can be loud, calm or totally quiet. The public side of the continuum involves the use of our vocal cords, the private side is only about our neural activity.
When one thinks “I don’t feel very well today”, nobody, except the person who is having that thought, has access to that private speech. However, this sub-vocal speech was conditioned under public circumstances. When one first learned to give words to the physiological experience of being sick, one was taught in the language of the verbal community in which one grew up. Yet, what takes place at the most subtle, neuronal level of our private speech can only occur in a language that was already learned.  If the public behavior which accompanies this private speech is to ask for sympathy and if, in the verbal community in which one grew up, this sympathy was given, the thought “I don’t feel very well today” is reinforced. If, on the other hand, one’s request for sympathy is punished by the verbal community, if one’s plea for sympathy falls on deaf ears, one isn't even as likely anymore to have the thought “I don’t feel very well today.” 


Our private speech is a function of our public speech and what we say to ourselves can be traced back to variables that were present in the environment of our verbal community. The misconception that our behavior is caused by an internal agent obfuscates the irrefutable fact that what we say to ourselves is caused by how others have communicated with us. Once he recognized that he had never caused his own behavior, this writer was finally able to stop making his privately detectable experiences public and he was able to overcome his obsession with his verbal confession.

August 2, 2014



August 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writer’s verbal behavior can only make sense if he reads what he is writing. Similarly, a speaker’s verbal behavior only makes sense if he or she is listening to him or herself while he or she speaks. The reader continues to play an important role in the maintenance of this writer’s writing and only in the presence of a listener is reinforcement of his speech likely. If, however, the reader has nothing in common with the readers who were involved in the conditioning process of this writer, if the reader, for instance, doesn’t understand English, but only reads Russian, then that reader is incapable of reinforcing this writer. Likewise, if the characteristics of the listener were absent or didn’t play any role in the conditioning history of the speaker, such a listener will not reinforce the speaker.  


It makes no sense to speak Russian to someone who doesn’t understand it and it makes no sense to write in Russian for a reader who has no history with that language. In other words, our verbal behavior is evoked, shaped and maintained by our environment. Only audience members of the Russian verbal community can provide the reinforcing stimuli which make speaking and writing of the Russian language possible.  Our verbal repertoire is reinforced and selected by its consequences. Only if the speaker speaks in Russian, only if the writer writes in Russian, will the Russian verbal Community be reinforcing the speaker or the writer.


For Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) to survive in a person’s verbal repertoire and for it to reliably occur, it must, like any other language, be reinforced by other members of that verbal community. Only SVB communicators can mediate the consequences which will keep it going. However, since the operant perspective, which is a functional, scientific account of behavior, is heavily opposed by the widespread belief that individuals cause their own behavior, there is only very little reinforcement for SVB. Similarly to English being spoken as an international language, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is spoken almost everywhere. NVB isn’t magically occurring, it is reinforced every day by all those who know how to speak it.  


Many native languages have disappeared because they were no longer reinforced. Those who want to continue the tradition inherent in their language must make extra effort to speak it and to practice it. Since many phenomena distract us from our spoken communication, understanding of our relationship is getting less and less attention. NVB expresses our imaginary isolation and loneliness. Although much of our social behavior is innate and SVB is essential for every culture, it is mostly punished and extinguished, while NVB is reinforced. The only way for us to keep SVB alive is by automatic reinforcement. We must learn to listen to ourselves while we speak, because others, for backward cultural reasons, often can’t reinforce us.

August 1, 2014



August 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Most of this writer’s writing is produced by what is known as automatic reinforcement, it reinforces itself. Verbal behavior doesn’t necessarily need the participation of another person, because the letters, words and sentences, which are produced by the writer, are read by this writer, in the same way that a speaker could hear him or herself speak. Similarly to vocal verbal behavior, in which the speaker’s sound waves are not only mediated by other people, but also affect the speaker him or herself, because he or she hears him or herself speak, writers read their own writing and are affected by their own words. 


If there was no such thing as automatic reinforcement, this writer would have stopped writing a long time ago, because without reinforcement his behavior would be extinguished. Of course, this intrinsic reinforcement can only last for so long, because, ultimately, like any other behavior, verbal behavior is sustained by extrinsic reinforcers supplied by others, readers and listeners, other than the writer or the speaker him or herself. This writer’s writing becomes more automatically reinforcing to the extent that he considers these members of a remote audience, who eventually will be reading his writing. His vocal and written verbal behavior has been repeatedly reinforced in the presence of others, who belong to the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) community. 


The most important aspect about a verbal community is that in it people produce similar sounds, which are languages, such a German or English. Within each verbal community people reinforce specific sounds under specific circumstances. For instance, when seeing a tree, a person from the English verbal community is reinforced for saying “Tree”, but a person from the German verbal community is reinforced only for saying “Baum.” We forget that words are sounds. 


Rather than only thinking about words being reinforced by our own verbal community, this writer wants to stimulate the reader to think about sounds that are reinforced by the different verbal communities. When an object is shown to a child and this child is reinforced for producing the sound that sounds like “Tisch”, this sound, in a German verbal community, will reliably be produced by this child in the presence of a table. It is because this sound was reinforced by others, that this sound was operantly conditioned. In the English verbal community this sound would not be reinforced. It would either be punished or extinguished. The only correct sound for the object that will be reinforced in an English verbal community is “Table.” 


Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the spoken communication made possible by the reinforcement of positive emotions, is also shaped and maintained by our verbal community. A different verbal community reinforces our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).