November 23, 2014

November 23, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

There has been a lot of talk about how progress is supposed to be made. Once in a while we hear scientists speak about bringing different disciplines together, increasing collaboration and informing each other about what is going on in their neck of the woods. To the knowledge of this writer, none of this has ever led to making the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Among scientist there is an implicit assumption of objectivity. By presenting data, integration of disciplines is miraculously believed to occur. The unity of science, based on the fact that scientists are dealing with the natural world, is only an issue because of NVB. The lack of  interaction between the different fields, which has led to fragmentation, is based on absence of SVB. 

The presence of problem behaviors attracts our attention, while the absence of problems behaviors receives little or no attention at all. NVB is problem behavior, while SVB is communication that is  without any problems. Most people find SVB hard to imagine, but SVB can’t be imagined, while NVB is imagined. NVB is based on guess work, while SVB is based on empirical evidence. There is no need to explain SVB, because it is evident that it works. Only in SVB do we understand each other and agree with each other. Only in SVB do we realize that NVB is a total waste of time. All we need to know about NVB is that it is not SVB. It is the distinction itself which matters, not SVB or NVB. 

Whether we are dealing with a head-banging autistic child, a drug addict, an alcoholic, a criminal, a mental health patient, or an incompetent parent, problem behaviors make everything that is good go down the drain. As long as the difference between SVB and NVB has not been made clear, we will remain stuck with NVB. SVB derives from the basic research that was based on nonverbal animal models. We may not like to hear this, but we are animals. Animals are non-verbal and our verbal behavior has a non-verbal origin. Likewise, head banging, addiction, criminality, mental health issues and incompetent parenting signify problems that are involved in the transition from being nonverbal to becoming verbal. People behave in problematic ways, because they don’t have any other way of communicating. Although they may not lack in verbal ability, their nonverbal expressions cause them problems because they acquired a verbal bias, which makes them deaf to their own sound. 

Functionally speaking, there is no real difference between the self-injurious behavior of the autistic, the food-obsession of the morbidly obese, the suicidality of the chronically depressed, the overdosing addict, the hyper active,  unfocused child, the recidivating, cunning criminal or the physically, emotionally or sexually abusive parent. All of these behaviors may look as if they are irrational, but they are not. There are lots of rational reasons why people actually act this way, but in order to fully understand this, we must first need to achieve a different way of communicating. Only SVB will allow us to acknowledge that these behaviors are in fact actual attempts to communicate something. 

All our human problem behaviors fall into the category of NVB, which signifies the absence of SVB, that is, the absence of real communication. Thus, our problems can be solved and prevented if we have SVB. As long as the aforementioned behaviors continue, NVB continues. Problem behaviors have continued, because we haven’t viewed them as being a function of how we communicate. Failed attempts at solving problem behaviors have demoralizing effects on those who tried to effect change. Only those who know the difference between SVB and NVB will not be disappointed, because they see the change that is possible and they know how to implement that change. 

  

The less choices we have, that is, the less behavioral variability, the more problems we accumulate. NVB can viewed as the institutionalization of our spoken communication. It has given us less and less choices and, consequently, more and more people are acting out. SVB, by contrast, liberates us from the rigid, hierarchical, predetermined, coercive ways in which we have been expected to talk.

During SVB we can talk simultaneously or we can experience confrontation. Rather than preventing confrontation, this enhances our interaction, which becomes more lively and interesting. SVB proves that NVB has prevented the confrontation and didn’t allow us to be alive while we communicate. 

Focus on problems, a basic characteristic of NVB, has hijacked all communication. Supposedly, we are better off once our problems are gone. NVB is the perpetuation of and the preoccupation with pathological behavior. NVB makes it seem as if we address and solve problems, but NVB doesn’t and can't replace what was problematic. We merely distract ourselves and take our attention away from the problem, but we fail to understand what sets off or what pays off the problem? NVB has been going on forever, because it is reinforced. If we don’t understand how the success of NVB prevents SVB, our behavior will continue to get worse. We must understand the triggers and pay offs for NVB.

A common trigger of aggression in autistic children is increased academic demands. Similarly, when people are in a learning situation for SVB, acting-out-NVB-habits are triggered. Any environment of positivity, openness, calmness, sensitivity and focus, which is necessary for and maintained by SVB, is taken advantage of and instantly trashed by people with negative NVB habits. Unless enough SVB has occurred to extinguish these NVB habits, there will be more and more episodes of NVB.

The classes of controlling variables, the pay-off for NVB, cut across all people. They neither depend on race, gender, culture, SES, language, nationality, religion, education or profession. All people are motivated in precisely the exact same way to have NVB or SVB. This is why it is so important to look at why we behave either way. Our overrated different back grounds don’t involve our common ancestry. To understand how we interact with each other, function or biology is much more important than form or topography. Why we say things is more important then what or how we say things. 

When we look at why we communicate the way we do, we talk about reinforcement, function, motivation, purpose or intend. When two persons sit across from each other at the dinner table and a burning candle is standing in between them,  one of them can blow out the candle. Regardless who does this, both will be in darkness when this happens. If neither one of them blows out the candle, they have their conversation by the light of the candle. The candle is either burning or it is not. There is light or there is darkness. Such is the lawfulness of the natural world. Blowing out the candle compares to NVB, but keeping it burning is SVB. This is not a metaphor, but a scientific fact.

Attention-seeking in autism can involve someone is banging his or her head at a wall, slapping his or her own face or poking his or her own eyes. In NVB we demand, divert, get or dominate the attention with our verbal and our nonverbal expressions. Although we are verbal, our responses are primarily caused by respondent rather than by operant behavior. We may continue to talk until we are blue, but our conversation isn’t going anywhere, because we are trying to avoid rather than connect with each other. Task and social avoidance are quite apparent in autism, but not in our NVB, in which they are equally present. People escape from the conversation as long as there is aversive stimulation.

In SVB there is no aversive stimulation. Only in SVB do we really communicate. The central message of NVB is: “leave me alone”, but the central message of SVB is “let’s talk.” NVB may get us off the hook, but it ignores the fact that we are poor communicators. The mother of the child who collapses on the floor and throws a temper tantrum in the supermarket because it wants candy, is inclined to cave in, because the child stops screaming and the embarrassment towards the people who see the child misbehave is avoided. Likewise, because we don’t want to create a scene, we give others what they want and cave in to their attention-seeking demands, but we inadvertently reinforce NVB.

Just as the child learns to accelerate its behavior responses high enough, by screaming and by rolling on the floor, to get what he or she wants, we also intensify the punitive effects of our NVB, to force others into submission, humiliation and into giving us what we demand. Our NVB is forceful, harsh and punishing, while our SVB is reinforcing. 

This author wonders why many people enjoy playing violent video games and watching violent movies and reality shows? It seems clear that also non-autistic people seek sensory reinforcement. The autistic tries to create interesting sensory displays with his or her stereo typical behaviors, while most us support NVB, because we too crave stronger and stronger forms of stimulation. These forms of stimulation are legitimized because they are provided by our entertainment and our computers.

Another question this author has, is why so many people nowadays are addicted to noise? Is it, just like the autistic’s rocking behavior, an attempt to find homeostasis? If over-stimulation and under-stimulation is aversive and if rocking is maintained by automatic negative reinforcement, is it then not plausible that NVB is also the consequence of our need for homeostasis? In NVB we are either over-stimulated or under-stimulated, but we are never stimulated in the way that optimizes our performance. Since SVB is so rare in our lives, our bodies are often dis-regulated by stress. What we consider to be our comfort zone is either a demand for stimulation or a demand for the absence of stimulation. In both cases our NVB maintains a need for stimulation which is absolutely unhealthy.

It is believed that autistic individuals experience endogenous stimulation as a consequence of their self-injurious behavior. This biological process also seems to be happening in the bodies of those who engage in NVB. Even when we are not literally hurting ourselves, why do we still get a kick out of seeing other people getting hurt? This biological process occurs in sports, politics, wars, crime and in psychopathology. In addition, we self-torture in the name of our religion, which, according to this author, also prevents our SVB. What this comparison of autistic behavior with NVB hopefully shows is that these behaviors are not just random, but always have a purpose. To understand both autistic behavior and NVB, we must analyze the multiple functions it can serve. We keep having NVB because we don't know how to have SVB. Once we know how to have SVB, we stop having NVB.   

November 22, 2014

November 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is a response to “The Role Of Automatic Negative Reinforcement In Clinical Problems” (2005) by Raymond G. Miltenberger. The paper is easy to read and consequently easy to respond to. Miltenberger explains well why automatic negative reinforcement is difficult to treat and therefore understudied. Clinical problems like binge eating, hair pulling and compulsive buying, illustrate the problems involved in treating behaviors which are automatic negatively reinforced. 

While reading this paper, this author was immediately thinking about Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is also maintained by automatic negative reinforcement. NVB is definitely a clinical problem, but it is until now not considered as such. NVB is the way in which we communicate most of the time. In other words, NVB is the interaction which continues and increases our problems.

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), by contrast, addresses and solves our problems. This may sound vague, but when we begin to look into the occurrence of these two crucially important and easily detectable response classes, it soon becomes clear that there is a great difference between the communication and relationship in which we speak at or with each other. In the former, we maintain NVB, in the latter, we maintain SVB. In NVB, the behavior of the verbalizer is problematic, because it is based on the covert attempt to get away from negative emotions. Although our overt verbal behavior is socially mediated, our covert verbal behavior is maintained by automatic reinforcement. Parity with the verbal community causes the automatic reinforcement of our private speech. 

If, as this author believes and insists, everybody is mainly involved in NVB and we are pushing each other around with our negative emotions from which we are trying escape, NVB private speech becomes over time maintained by automatic reinforcement rather than by social reinforcement, because  verbal behavior, over the cause of development, recedes from an overt to a covert level. Thus, overt NVB necessarily results in covert NVB, while only overt SVB can result in covert SVB. The great difference between covert NVB and covert SVB is that the former is always maintained by automatic negative reinforcement, but the latter is maintained by automatic positive reinforcement. Since behaviors which are maintained by automatic negative reinforcement are the most difficult to treat, it is no wonder why human interaction has remained a huge, but unaddressed problem. 

Aggressive behaviors which we often see in individuals with autism are functionally identical to NVB: people just don’t know how to communicate, that is, how to have SVB. There are no mysteries in the natural science of human behavior. As we pretend to explain such aggressive verbal behavior as innate, caused by stress hormones, having to do with the aggressor’s disposition, determined by his or her personality traits (such as need for achievement or power), we have not made any progress in terms of solving problems of relationship. We have not been very successful in decreasing and replacing communication problem behaviors. Our communication  problems have been around for so long that we are actually quite bored by them. Consequently, NVB is ubiquitous and SVB is rear. 

Individuals with autism also often manifest self-injurious behaviors, which are functionally the same as the less conspicuous ways in which people who are stuck in NVB keep hurting themselves. The reason that we don’t acknowledge food or drug addiction, domestic violence, abuse or unhealthy behavior, as having the same etiology is because we focus on topography of behavior, but not on its function. Once we look into the meaning of why we keep having NVB instead of SVB and why we keep making SVB more and more impossible, we find that there is always a pay-off. 

Although NVB behavior is complex behavior under control of multiple environmental variables, the different topographies involved in NVB have something in common. Whether someone has his or her head up his or her ass or his or her foot in his or her mouth, the reason why NVB keeps occurring is because people simply don’t know how to have SVB. Although our haphazard ways of asking, demanding, distracting or avoiding each other’s attention are mediated by different topographies, they still all come down to one and the same root cause, namely that we don’t know how to express our needs in such a way that they can be met. As the imminent behaviorists Edward Carr (1993) has said, it is not about our behavior, but about of what the behavior is a function. NVB is a caused by the fact that we, just like autistic individuals, don’t know how to communicate.

Presumably, the purpose of our verbal behavior is mainly instructional, but this meaning is only apparent to the extent that we succeed in getting our needs met. Since NVB is a coarse-grained, uni-directional behavior, it cannot represent our needs. Many of our subtle, bi-directional, social needs have remained virtually unaddressed or have been ignored. Only our fine-grained SVB can completely meet our needs, but this requires the crafty re-shaping of our coarse-grained NVB. The lack of reciprocity, which is so apparent in individuals with autism, is also blatantly common in NVB communicators, who are not diagnosed with autism, but who are equally troubled.

November 21, 2014

November 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is like sculpting: one chips away at the ineffective Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) sound frequencies, until one is left with the reinforcing conversation, which is so delightful and revealing that it keeps on going by itself. The raw material of sculpting is stone, but the basic ingredient for conversation is our sound. Tools we use to sculpt the rock, such as hammer and chisel, consist in our spoken communication of our vocal cords, larynx, lips and tongue. While a sculptor looks at his or her statue, the speaker listens to what he or she says. 

A beautiful statue that is admired by many people makes the sculptor want to make more those statues, but statues which are not appreciated by anyone are only going to be made more often if it pleases the sculptor. This essential aspect of creativity, so beautifully described in “Exploring Stone Sculpture: A Behavioral Analysis” (2012) by Betsy Constantine, is what led this author to discover SVB. The sculptor, because of his or her experience of working with these tools and materials, has a sense of what the statue can be like. He or she visualizes what he or she would like to produce and is capable of producing. He or she delights in creating an approximation of what he or she imagined.

 

In spoken communication speakers do the same. Based on their previous experiences they aim to achieve what they know is possible. The violent, insensitive, repetitive and energy-draining NVB products most people keep producing are inevitable results of their problematic behavioral histories. People  maintain NVB, because they don’t know anything else. If they knew something else, they would produce something better, which approximates SVB. Initially, they only sometimes succeed, but the better they know their art, the more they practice their skill and the more often they succeed.

The metaphor doesn’t break down because stone is material and sound is immaterial. To the contrary, our voice is as real as stone. The fact that we haven’t acknowledged this is the main reason we keep having NVB. Imagine the sculptor who carelessly knocks off the piece of rock where the nose of the statue should be? He or she can’t put it back on and the rock was permanently changed. A similar chance occurs due to the wrong tone of voice; SVB becomes impossible.  NVB is so common, that statues with a nose are no longer reinforced. What was art trying to tell us? It told us to stop and look and pay attention to the nonverbal. In SVB we pay attention to how we sound while we speak.

November 20, 2014

November 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday evening this author and his students went to listen to Guy McPherson, who presented his grim picture of environmental decline, which is going to result in the total extinction of life on earth. The various questions that were raised signified that the atmosphere was very tense. Immediately on arrival, this author felt a sense of loss, despair, fear, hopelessness, and, yes, also a sense of defiance, that it can’t be too late to do anything. He listened to the speaker, who spoke in a calm, but negative tone of voice and turned to his students to see what they thought about it.

The question he asked them was: is it “Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB)?” The students recognized that the speaker and his audience were having NVB. Since people were asking questions and giving their opinions, this writer too raised his hand. When the speaker finally gave him permission (he kept talking, even though other people had been given the chance to say something much quicker), this writer said he had an idea. He described the negative atmosphere in the room and called it NVB, the kind of conversation that is going everywhere. Then, he contrasted it, by describing SVB, the way of talking in which we no longer aversively influence each other. This led to various responses. The speaker, initially, agreed we should be having this peaceful interaction, but this writer interjected he doubted that, because the speaker’s way of interacting was clearly based on negative emotions. Then the members of the audience asked this writer how we can present the facts without having this effect and this writer replied that one can’t have SVB by continuing with NVB, which has been going on all along. As this writer spoke when the speaker tried to speak, the speaker told him in a forceful tone not to interrupt him. This writer, however, stated calmly that the NVB communication even continues in the name of environmentalism. At this, the speaker suddenly became very angry and shouted "shut the fuck up.”

This author then left the room. He has been avoiding these kind of NVB interactions for a long time, but because another faculty had invited him to this lecture, he thought he might be actually able to explain something is very wrong with the way in which we communicate. The speaker’s response shows where we are at with our communication. We may talk about environmental decline, but don’t want to know that our NVB, that is, our way of talking is totally toxic.