November 15, 2014

November 15, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

I was reading in the  newspaper about some "retired professor who doesn't mince words", who goes as far "as to forecast humanity's life expectancy", but, who "lately has refrained from issuing such a bold statements" because his "approach has shifted." Has he studied the science of human behavior, behaviorology? No, but, in need of attention, as a retired professor, he finds it more reinforcing to  "focus on the emotional and psychological response we [he] might have." Is he talking about the actual causes of why we behave the way we do? May be, a little…"Other scientist", who are not like him retired (and not free to say whatever they want), who "have been unwilling to state the case", are a piece of the puzzle, but are they "unwilling" or incapable?

From a behaviorological perspective, people like this person, who say "I strongly suspect it's too late for our species" have a punishing effect on their audiences. Their basic impact is that they decrease behavior. Ironically, the behavior they decrease is spoken communication! Unless something reinforces and thus increases authentic human interaction (which is not the same as political debate), we are not going to address the issue of behavioral change, which is needed for mankind to survive. We don’t need any more professional speakers, lecturers, writers, movie-makers, actors, celebrities, gurus, authorities, lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, who pretend to communicate with their Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). What we need is people, who are capable of recognizing that only Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) can help us to address and solve our problems. Everyone is needed!

Unless we have scientific evidence about what human interaction really is and what it is not, we are going to remain entrenched in our NVB, which dominates the world. The evidence this author is referring to can’t come from any book, lecture or movie, since it must be experienced individually by the communication participants, while they speak. To have SVB, there must be 100% agreement. This criterion, however, cannot be assumed. In SVB communicators continuously check with each other whether they understand each other and make sense to each other. In SVB communicators don’t aversively influence each other. Any aversive stimulation will immediately get the attention and is correctly analyzed as the NVB, which makes SVB impossible.

Reinforcement of SVB is going happen when NVB is no longer reinforced and thus extinguished. Since extinction takes time and involves operant as well as respondent processes, it is of utmost importance that people are educated about the contingencies that make such extinction possible. Without behaviorological knowledge we are unable to maintain these contingencies, although we may incidentally succeed in creating them. SVB will eventually replace NVB, just as behavioral science will eventually replaced superstition and explanatory fictions.

November 14, 2014

November 14, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

After this author stumbled upon the natural science of behavior, called behaviorology, he slowly but surely began to change his written language and the way in which he speaks. It became clear to him that he is not, as it says at the top of this page, the author of his writing. There is no author, no agent, who causes this writing, but there are contingencies, which are affecting this author to write these words. At any given day or moment, these contingencies are different and so this author’s writing differs. Similarly, there is nobody causing this author to say things in any particular kind of way. He speaks how he speaks, because of the contingencies which are and which have been affecting him.

This author, like everyone else, couldn’t understand, say, read or write anything he was unfamiliar with. Regardless of what he comes up with, it always builds on or extends what was already there. When we imagine him in China, he would be surrounded by people whose language he doesn’t speak. He may try to speak Mandarin because nobody speaks English, but if he is accompanied by a translator, there was no need for him to learn it. Also, the duration of his stay determines how long he will be exposed to Chinese-speaking people. The longer time he spends in China, the more likely he will pick up on some of the language, even if he would be surrounded by English-speaking Chinese.

If this author would learn some Chinese, he would be naturally inclined to speak and understand it and perhaps learn how to write or read it, because it is something he knows a little and is reinforced by. Russian, by contrast, is totally strange and doesn’t have any appeal, neither does Arabic or Portuguese. The physiological changes, needed to speak, understand, read or write other languages, didn’t and couldn’t occur, unless there was a situation in which these changes could begin to occur. 

The reader, who is able to read and understand this writing, is urged to acknowledge that the experiences that he or she is having, are not caused by him or by her. This author knows about the trouble that is involved in the notion that we cause our own behavior and that are responsible for it. Without behaviorology, it is impossible for anyone to know that this is not true. The belief that we are responsible for causing our own behavior is as ridiculous as saying that we should be able to speak Chinese without ever having been exposed to it. Behavior is caused by environmental variables, by what is known in behaviorism as contingencies of reinforcement.            

November 13, 2014

November 13, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

A couple of times a veteran in one of this writer’s classes has talked about his experiences. Each time he seemed compelled to elaborate about the terrible events he has witnessed and has been actively involved in. When given the opportunity to speak, he demonstrated an eagerness to release some of his many horror stories. From this fact alone it can be deduced that, whether he knows it or not, he feels the need to talk about it. This author considers this actually a healthy sign and he will continue to give him or anyone else the opportunity to express themselves. 

The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) climate of acceptance this author creates in his class, which over time has become more and more enhanced and maintained by the contributions from the students, also occasionally brings out examples of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although responses such as those given by the veteran can be intense and intimidating, they hardly attract any response from the students. This writer, as the instructor, is the only one to verbally respond. Although he always validates the expressions of NVB of the veteran, he doesn’t feed into them or reinforces them and therefore basically extinguishes them, while replacing them with instances of SVB.

Reduction of behavior resulting in extinction consists of two different processes: respondent and operant extinction (Ledoux, 2013). Extinction of the respondent conditioned stimulus, which is no longer capable of eliciting the conditioned response, is different from the cessation of NVB when nothing reinforces it.  

The veteran related that on Veteran’s Day people were talking about the meaninglessness of war. He had felt insulted and gotten into a fight with someone who thought different than him. Things were said which had triggered classically conditioned reflexive behavior. Since he is not reinforced in this class for his NVB, a slow form of operant extinction is taking place. However, his war stories are intermittently reinforced by his fellow veterans and the celebration of Veteran’s Day. Interestingly, the person he had felt so offended by was himself veteran. Someone who used to reinforce him, no longer reinforced him, but now rejected him. In other words, the change of mind of the other veteran was considered so threatening that he felt like killing him. It goes without saying that unless our veteran student’s violent behavior is also respondently extinguished, little ground can be gained with operant extinction. Unless the necessary respondent extinction schedules are implemented first to decrease a veteran’s PTSD, operant extinction is impossible. It is great to see him become more social and at ease and to notice that his positive behaviors are reinforced by the other students. 

November 12, 2014

November 12, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday, this writer was reading midterm of the students from his psychology class. It occurred to him that those who had adhered, as they had been instructed, to the APA format, were the least interesting to read, while those who basically had ignored this aspect of the assignment had written papers, which had some kind of message. It was as if the former were only pretending to say something, while the latter were clearly thinking about the research they had read and responding to it in ways which related to their own lives. As this author had said in advance that he would not grade the papers on APA format, some students chose not to practice that part of the assignment.

Some papers contained no opinion of its author at all, while in others the data was organized to support the writer’s opinion. It was particularly interesting to notice this since students had been given the task to write a paper on a topic of their choice. How data from the research papers they had used was presented, indicated if the students had felt supported and confirmed in their own opinion or were overwhelmed, confused or even defeated. What also struck this writer was the correlation between how students behave in his class room and how they write. He had never before noticed this.

Stated with better words, this writer saw the similarity between how students talk and write. In some cases, it was apparent that certain students, who hardly talk, can say a lot in their papers. It seemed as if he was hearing them for the first time. However, in cases in which the student is talkative, but perhaps not as thoughtful, the paper reflected difficulties involved in interpreting the facts, which don’t always agree with what we are thinking. Also, great differences were seen in the extent to which some students were able or willing to question the facts.

While reading these papers, this author was reminded of his own process. Due to behaviorological knowledge, he no longer views individuals as causing their own behavior and, as a result, he  doesn’t view these authors any longer as having caused their papers. It is only in retrospect that this author has come to understand his resistance to having to quote the words that were produced by others. He realizes that behaviorologists, like everyone else, have inadvertently continued the agential view in the name of academic writing. If behaviorologists truly adhere to the view that individuals are not the doer of their actions, they should stop the tradition of having to reference the work of others. Our mothers and fathers and other members of our verbal community have influenced our verbal behavior much more than any scholar, yet we never reference them or give them the respect they deserve.

November 11, 2014

November 11, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This author discovers something new about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) every day. Today he read about automatic reinforcement. When behavior is automatically reinforced this is because the response and the reinforcer are the same. This fits with SVB in which a speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. In SVB, we consider the discriminative effects of the verbalizer on the mediator, within one person. Each time we stimulate others with our speech, we also simultaneously stimulate ourselves, verbally as well as nonverbally. This becomes more apparent to when we deliberately listen to ourselves while we speak.

Oddly, it is only during SVB that we begin to capitalize on the auditory feedback that is a byproduct of our own speech. Only during SVB, which means very seldom, do we speak about the verbal and the nonverbal effects of self-listening. Stated differently, NVB reigns everywhere because seemingly harmless agential explanations, such as self-listening, keep dominating our spoken and written conversations – even in scientific circles. Because of pre-scientific language, which this author defines as NVB, we hardly ever talk about what we should be talking about. 

It isn’t hard to image that the verbal stimuli, which we as adults express in our interactions every day, are conditioned reinforcers and automatically reinforcing. When we as children produced the correct sounds in the presence of particular objects or events, these sounds, which we call words, became linked with various unconditioned reinforcers. When children learn how to speak and begin to produce the same sounds as their parents, these sounds, depending on what is reinforced and punished, become classically conditioned stimuli, which elicit strong emotional responses in them. This is why a person’s mother tongue produces reinforcing consequences and it also explains why and how SVB and NVB work. 

This author insists that sounds, more than words, are automatically reinforcing. Based on what he has observed in his seminars about SVB, he is convinced that the reinforcing effects of nonverbal stimuli are much more profound than those which are created by verbal stimuli. As the low rates of SVB  indicate, it is unusual to make this distinction while we speak. When we look into what causes automatic reinforcement, we find that we overestimate the verbal and underestimate the importance of the nonverbal.

Automatic reinforcement is believed to play a big role in the maintenance of self-stimulatory behavior in autism. Behavioral analysts try to replace behaviors, such as hand flapping or body rocking, with appropriate behaviors. Such operant behaviors are difficult to change because they are maintained automatically, respondently, by the reinforcing sensory stimuli they produce. In other words, when behaviors and reinforcers are the same, they aren’t mediated by social consequences and are resistant to it. Children with autism also have problems attending to simultaneous multiple cues. Their inability to discriminate relevant environmental cues from nonessential ones can be explained by the SVB/NVB distinction. 

This author questions why automatic reinforcement, which seems to be part of many of our behaviors, has received little attention? If it is mentioned at all, it is only mentioned in relation to behaviors that are hard to get rid of, because presumably they are not maintained by social reinforcement. Although self-stimulatory behavior as seen in autism is believed to be maintained by automatic reinforcement, Cunningham & Schreibman (2008) believe that a functional account provides a more realistic picture. If self-stimulatory behavior increases as a function of increased task demands, but decrease upon removal of aversive stimuli, aren’t self-stimulatory behaviors then socially mediated? When self-stimulatory behaviors increase in the time out condition, indicating that they were maintained by escape from task demands; when children who learned to say “help me” in the functional communication training decreased self-stimulatory behaviors; when light demand and acquisition of an alternative, more appropriate method of communicating frustration lead to decrease of self-stimulatory behavior; and, when the presence of a familiar person resulted in decrease in self-stimulating behavior, this is empirical evidence that external  and not internal stimuli are at work.

It can be stated unequivocally that NVB maintains self-stimulatory behavior, while SVB decreases it. In NVB, aversive nonverbal, presumably nonessential, cues distract from relevant, verbal cues, but in SVB we achieve behavioral change by identifying the environmental social variables of which the autistic's self-stimulating behaviors are a function. Self-stimulatory behavior is based on automatic reinforcement, but is also mediated by social variables. It can be easily verified that only in the presence of certain people will self-stimulatory behaviorl be increased or decreased. If in the presence of person A self-stimulatory behaviors are increased, but in the presence of person B self-stimulatory behaviors are decreased, we find that person A has a different tone of voice than person B. The sound of person A's voice has a different effect on the autistic than the sound of person B's voice. Moreover, if person A's voice is instructed to sound like person B, person A will start having a similar effect on the autistic as person B. Much progress has been prevented, because the effect of the sound of the speaker's voice has not yet been scientifically explored.