Language Enlightenment

Monday, April 18, 2016

August 24, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

This writer had another wonderful skype conversation with his friend and colleague from Bogota, Colombia. They discussed step by step the components of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). This time they addressed the fact that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is much easier to be established and takes less time. NVB is ubiquitous and is reinforced more often than SVB, because it takes less time. To learn SVB requires time. Patience sets the stage for SVB.

This writer read in “A Brief Functional Analysis of Aggressive And Alternative Behavior in an Out-Clinic Setting” (Northrup et. al., 1991) that severe problem behaviors are functionally equivalent to communicative responding. This is interesting, because they had been talking about Maria Amelia Matos, the famous Brazilian behaviorist, who was often considered to be very angry and difficult to deal with. This author interpreted that Maria must have been convinced she knew something most people didn’t want to hear or give much attention to.

Maria had been very competent and well-established, but this writer believes that anger, in the severely handicapped as well as in academically skilled professionals, is misunderstood as long as it is simplified, because it is not functionally explained. In Northrup's research, due to contingency- reversal-conditions aggressive behavior was decreased, while the manding, or asking behavior was increased. In other words, the contingencies that maintained aggressive behavior could serve to reinforce alternative replacement behavior. When aggression and manding result in the same outcome, they are functionally equivalent. Subsequently, when manding is strengthened, aggression will be weakened.

This eauivalence principle is at the crux of SVB. As SVB increases, NVB decreases. SVB replaces NVB, because SVB is better than NVB. As the contingency for SVB is not maintained and since no one knows how to maintain it, NVB kept on increasing, while SVB kept on decreasing. It would be interesting to find out from Maria’s Matos students, if this reversal was noticeable. It probably was.

August 23, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

These are successful and enjoyable days. Of what this success is a function, is to consider the entire behavioral history of this writer. However, it is especially the most recent history, which has brought a lot of recognition for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). What is happening, is happening because it can happen. It is so amazing to know how it really works. Although this writer had known how it works for many years, he wanted scientific validation for what he discovered.

This writer finds increasingly in the works of other behaviorists, mostly in the works of behaviorologists, who insist on the natural science of human behavior, the explanation of both the simplicity and the complexity, but also the beauty and the power of SVB. He is convinced by what he reads that SVB is as real as chemistry, physics and biology and that his life is a culmination of naturally occurring events which led to his discovery. Everything that happened in his life was based on what happened, or rather, on what could happen before it happened.

Past events always control and determine future events. If no antecedent event can be found to provide the functional explanation for what one is experiencing, this doesn’t mean that it just happened out of the blue. Most likely it means we are not really looking for natural causes. Surely, our behavior is determined and something is causing it. Even so-called spontaneous creativity is determined by environmental variables. All behavior is based on previous behavior and could only occur due to the kind of behavior that preceded it. In other words, how we act at any given moment will happen because it could happen. It happens because of the history of behavior that led up to it. Someone who has no behavioral history with the Chinese language will not be able to all of a sudden speak it and someone who never played violin will not miraculously know how to play it.

The conclusion is: at any given moment, only that behavior can happen, which is based on all the behaviors that have preceded it. Knowledge of and reliance on this philosophy of naturalism goes hand in hand with SVB, which is perfectly explained and validated by it.

August 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) seminar for the teachers at Butte College was a success, but it didn’t go as well as this writer had wanted. It started out a little chaotic, because this writer had forgotten the paperwork which participants must sign so they can get their time reimbursed. This writer had to step outside of the room and go into another room to get the paperwork from a colleague. However, on the whole, people totally got it and were intrigued by the concepts, which they were unfamiliar with. Towards the end of the presentation, this writer achieved a momentum in his speech, which allowed him to say things in ways he never said was able to say before. The highlight for this writer was the graceful departure of one Taiwanese philosophy teacher, who congratulated him in beautiful manner, which indicated how deeply moved he was by what was happening.

Today this writer will work again with his parolees in Red Bluff. He will lead a morning and afternoon group and do some case management for people who made appointments with him. Also, some paperwork needs to be filled out, so it is going to be a busy and full day. Tomorrow, this writer will sit at the Farmer’s Market to inform people about his upcoming seminar on August 31 at the Chico Branch Library of Butte County. Also, this writer needs to prepare for his first evening class on August 27. Furthermore, this writer wants to make sure he gets enough exercise, so he will go to the gym after coming back from work. In recent times, he has been swimming and this is something he enjoys, because he always combines this with laying on a stretcher and reading one of his papers.

This writer explained in his seminar to the teachers that the ability to be guided by what is reinforcing us, determines the quality of the dialogue between the teacher and the students. Every time something negative asks and demands our attention, we get punished and our lecture is diminished, but as long as we continue to give attention to those students who are paying attention, we receive the reinforcing energy, which keeps us going. Those who are not reinforcing us teachers, need to be reinforced by us and will follow along only, if we are able to do that.

August 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorst

Dear Reader,

Today is a special day, because this writer is going to present his Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) seminar for the entire faculty of BUtte College. This writing is a preparation for this event. While he was talking with parolees at his other job, yesterday, this writer explained to them that reading and writing can lead to thinking, which is talking with oneself and talking with others. This, in turn, then can lead to behavioral change… if it occurs often enough to make it happen.

During the department meeting everyone was talking about their summer and how much fun they had. When it was this author’s turn, he mentioned that he was and still is in the process of writing an academic paper together with a behaviorist friend from Colombia. It was nice to announce this in public. It felt like making a promise. By doing this, this writer is taking himself to another level. It will be a monumental achievement to get this paper published. Being involved in this project is rewarding, because everybody will be taking him serious.

This is the theme for today’s seminar: how to be taken serious. It is a delight to this writer that this topic arose spontaneously from his writing. To be taken serious by others, we obviously have to take ourselves serious, but in a good way. People often tell each other not to take themselves too serious, because supposedly taking themselves too serious impairs their connection with others. Today’s seminar will prove the opposite: the more we take ourselves serious, the better our communication will be. However, we are only able to take ourselves serious to the extent that others have taken us serious. In other words, we depend on others to be taken serious.

For the teacher to be taken serious, he or she depends on his or her students. As mediators, they set the stage for him or her to speak. Their reinforcement will not come from how well the verbalizers know what they know, but from the feedback they receive due to the behavioral change of the students, who are learning. This feedback is based on a verbalizer’s ability to monitor his or her impact on the mediator. The verbalizer continuously checks the well-being of the mediator.

August 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

This writer has bought and is reading the book “General Behaviorology: The Natural Science of Human Behavior” by Lawrence E. Fraley. He has spoken with Fraley twice and each time he was having a wonderful connection with this man, who writes so clearly and understandably about a subject this writer has been interested in for so long. Fraley is different from many other behaviorists, because he is head-on in addressing the importance of establishing a natural science of human behavior. It is a relief to read someone who speaks to this unapologetically and emphatically. Many other behaviorists, because they are trying to fit in with other “disciplines” are dancing around the truth regarding the superstitions, which continue to push aside a natural account of human behavior.

This writer considers himself a Behaviorologist, because he has been suffering the implications of many socially sanctioned forms of mysticism. By having accidentally stumbled upon Radical Behaviorism, once he had withdrawn from the Ph.D. program, this author found the theoretical home he had been looking for, but was unable to find at the mentalistic institution called Palo Alto University.

After reading and studying - by himself - , everything regarding Skinner and, particularly, what he considered to be his most important work “Verbal Behavior” , this writer became informed about the schism within behaviorism about whether they should try to fit in or stand out. Apparently, Skinner felt compelled to fit in, but at the very end of his life he admitted to others that it was time to stand out, that it was time to establish a separate science of human behavior, comparable to biology, physics and chemistry in its natural philosophical approach.

This writer feels extremely fortunate to know what he knows, because he also knows something, which even Fraley doesn’t talk or know much about: the way in which we communicate. Tomorrow he will be giving a seminar for the entire faculty of Butte College, where he teaches psychology. Fitting in is not anymore such a big deal as it used to be for this writer, because he has already been approved.