November 30, 2014

November 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Before we can teach others how to communicate, we must have knowledge about communication, but also about how to communicate. Knowledge about communication is one thing, but knowledge about how to communicate is quite another. Knowing how to listen, speak, read and write is different from its function, that is, why we listen, speak, read or write. The function of spoken communication, of what spoken communication is for, is often misconstrued. Spoken communication is so often used for purposes for which it wasn’t meant, that we have forgotten what it was for. We may occasionally use a chair to stand on it, to screw in a light bulb, but we generally use chairs to sit on. Although some may use a car for racing, most of us use a car for transportation and driving within the speed limit. Although we may read a paper while sitting on the toilet, we normally go there only to take a pee or a shit. And, although we may say or think many negative things about each other, spoken communication is basically about understanding each other and saying positive, reinforcing things. The chair, which is broken into pieces and serving as firewood, has lost its function. Once spoken communication has broken down, it has lost its function and it can only maintain a our struggle. 

One doesn’t need to know about electricity to turn on the light. One doesn’t need to be a doctor to live a healthy life. And, we don’t need to know everything about everybody to understand each other. Limited understanding is sufficient. Based on selective principles, we acquire, over our life time, adequate amounts of behavior, called knowledge, to be able to have and maintain our relationships. Generally, we would only speak the language that was spoken by the verbal community in which we were raised.That is not a problem. If a baby was born in China and brought to America, it would learn English as easy as a baby that was born in Holland and raised in the United States. Although the words we speak are arbitrary sounds, they have a function. Thus, why we speak English or Chinese is more important than what we say. We speak to be understood by those who belong to our verbal community. Although our knowledge may be limited, it is sufficient to be understood. Each of us has first-hand experience of that. We know what it is like to understand or to be understood. Unless it makes sense to us, what we hear compares to listening to an unfamiliar language. 

This author was visiting his Chinese family for Thanks Giving. In their company, he is the only Caucasian, but since he has been married 29 years, they have known each other for quite a while. Upon the arrival of his wife’s sister and his brother in law, there was, according to this author, more Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) than upon their departure. Likewise, when his wife’s brother and his wife and their two sons arrived, there was a lot of SVB, but soon there wasn’t any SVB left anymore and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) reigned again. It seemed to this writer, who has witnessed this process many times, that culturally everyone was only able to permit a limited amount of SVB and then they almost dutifully returned to NVB. They were only allowed to have so much fun and openness. Due to their behavioral histories they always act this way during family gatherings. 

An odd situation arose when, after he had spoken with his brother in law and his two sons, this author asked his sister in law how she was doing. She suddenly became very defensive and seemed to be answering a question this author hadn’t even asked. She stated shortly that she was keeping busy, but  made clear non-verbally that it was none of this author’s business to ask about how she was doing. The contingency instantly changed and the conversation swung from SVB to NVB. It appeared as if the previous conversations with her sons, one of whom was going to leave home to go to college, had made her aware about where she is at in her life. Although this author only casually inquired about what was keeping her busy, she reacted as if she had been set on fire. Her reaction subsided, however, once she began telling the author’s wife’s sister that she was now doing volunteer work. She even mentioned she was thinking about going back to work again, once her other child had left the house. It was strange that she would not talk with this author, but that she would talk rather demonstratively with his wife's sister. She sounded pretentious and uncomfortable, almost confessional.  

The SVB, which was possible before this incident, was no longer possible afterwards this author had asked his sister in law how she was doing. In the opinion of this author, which was later confirmed by his wife, the whole atmosphere had changed. It would have made no sense whatsoever, if this author would have attempted to say something about this, as this would have made things only worse. After this event, this author felt left out of the conversation. He didn’t do anything to change the situation and kept to himself and heard there was still a little SVB happening among other family members. 

This episode in which SVB changed into NVB happens all the time. Important to note here is that those who want to have SVB and are able to have it, cannot demand it and will not get into an argument over it with those who clearly can’t have it and force others into not having it. When his wife talked with this author after everyone had gone home, the SVB was restored again by her. She acknowledged that her sister in law was very uptight and arrogant. She apparently had nervously connected this author's question about how she was doing with the fact that her role and identity as a stay-home mother would soon be over, once her other son would leave the house to go to college.

November 29, 2014

November 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

An incomplete and therefore unscientific account about how human behavior is caused has kept us stuck with the antecedents, with stimuli, which supposedly produce our behavioral responses. Our sense of self has been narrowed down by this outdated view. Since this stimulus-response account only refers to respondent conditioning, it keeps excluding and downplaying the effects of postcedent events. Consequently, the range of human behavior has remained limited by our reflexive responses. 

The fact that no eliciting stimuli could be found for a broad range of our behaviors, created the contingencies, which evoked in Skinner the discovery of operant conditioning. As it turned out,  consequences of operants have little bearing on our respondent behaviors. Moreover, our old way of explaining behavior in terms of cause and effect has also kept us entrenched in and imprisoned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the interaction that is based on hierarchical biological and social differences. Simply stated, NVB is about survival of the fittest. In the slave-owner-slave relation, the slave owner is always right and the slave has to defer to what the slave-owner demands. Similarly, the boss is always right and those in power, supposedly, are always right.

NVB, of course, has nothing to do with science and historically has always been the biggest stand in the way of its development and implementation. The old adage knowledge is power tells us how knowledge has been hijacked by a few, who presumably benefitted from it. We may be inclined to think of them as the happy few, but when we know more about the SVB/NVB distinction, it becomes very clear to us that those with NVB cannot be happy and can at best only pretend to be happy. Those who are in power may continue to believe that they cause their own behavior, but behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, demonstrates that is simply not the case. A novel social structure would begin to emerge once this fact about our behavior becomes more widely known. However, the elucidation of and adherence to scientific facts requires an entirely different way of communicating. We will only be able to become scientific if we can change the contingencies, so that we can become more objective. The transition from NVB to SVB involves a change of contingencies. Contingencies, which have previously favored cognitive, explanatory fictions of psychology, have also perpetuated NVB. It is NVB which results in ignorance about and rejection of Skinner's  radical behaviorism.  

it was because he withdrew from his Ph.D.-study in psychology that this writer was able to discover radical behaviorism and then behaviorology. He felt reinforced by empirical evidence that validated his SVB approach. As he became more knowledgeable about behaviorology, he found out that the problems involved in communicating this science, are identical to the problems that are involved in teaching the distinction between SVB and NVB. Since, for a long time, he had already explored the contingencies of our spoken communication, it was crystal clear to him, that the gap which exists between spoken and written communication, was of greater importance for the dissemination of behaviorology than the gap which once existed between respondent and operant conditioning.

NVB, the communication of intimidation, domination, exploitation and coercion, is an anti-scientific way of communicating. Since NVB is based on elicitation and maintenance of negative emotions and since aversive stimulation is NVB’s central theme, it has severely impaired development of human relationship and progress. NVB madness is only going to be stopped by accurate knowledge about how behavior actually works. Many operant behaviors, which were, until now, still unaccounted for by the dominant, but incomplete respondent-conditioning-stimulus-response paradigm, can, due to SVB, now finally be validated. NVB has invalidated and excluded the behavior of millions of people and has destroyed and marginalized entire cultures. Moreover, the theoretical gap between respondent and operant conditioning could only be closed by operant processes. Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is an operant process in which at long last we come to terms with our respondent conditioning. SVB makes us realize that NVB is a troublesome vestigial remnant of our evolutionary history. 

Although this writer used to believe that spoken communicating could only be changed by a different way of communicating, he no longer thinks this way. Alignment of behaviorological knowledge with his findings about spoken communication is now pushing him to write these words about speaking. Because of the importance we have given to written words – something which certainly has made us less inclined to pay attention to how we speak – reading about talking is more likely going to change human interaction than talking about talking. This writer is convinced that the reader is more likely to talk about the SVB/NVB distinction by first reading about it. The unwillingness to talk about it, which has existed as long as human beings have been alive, was based on the aversive experiences this evokes. Given the fact that most of us, regardless of our place in the hierarchy, day in day out, are exposed to and conditioned by NVB, we experience the absence of the structure which we are used to as threatening. This threat only subsides once the response rate of SVB begins to increase. As the rate of SVB increases, the rate of NVB decreases. SVB and NVB are inversely related, as one goes up the other goes down and visa versa. Behaviorology explains why our attempts at reducing aversive stimulation during our spoken communication have until now utterly failed. 

November 28, 2014

November 28, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer,

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer considers himself a behavioral engineer, a verbal engineer. He creates and maintains the contingency for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In doing so, he establishes a verbal community that didn’t exist before. The monthly seminars, which now take place at his house, are a new phase in his work. More and more this writer is asked to write about SVB. This stimulates him to write.

Although it matters a great deal what we say, what matters in SVB is how we sound. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB),  how we sound doesn’t matter at all. Consequently, in  NVB we just sound horrible, but in SVB we sound pleasant. One may think that what sounds horrible to one person, may sound pleasant to another, but, once the distinction between SVB and NVB has been made, we all agree that only SVB sounds good and NVB always sounds awful. Certainly, we will continue to have NVB as long as we don’t agree on what we sound like. SVB is based on our nonverbal agreement that we sound good. However, in SVB we also verbally agree. We are more likely to agree verbally when we already agree non-verbally. Also, we are more likely to figure out why we verbally disagree, when we keep non-verbally agreeing on how we sound. When we don’t agree non-verbally, about how we sound, we can’t agree verbally. It won't happen. This is why much of what goes on in the name of spoken communication, what this author calls NVB, a complete waste of time and energy. 

Once people know the difference between SVB and NVB, they want NVB to stop and they want SVB to continue. If they want NVB to continue this indicates that they don't yet discriminate the he difference between SVB and NVB. We continue with NVB, because it doesn’t give us any choice. Only SVB gives options to choose from. Since we have had so little SVB, we usually don't have a  choice between the two. If we have had more SVB, it was by coincidence, but not by choice. Yet, we keep having NVB all the time and we think that we choose it, but only when NVB has been stopped, during SVB, do we have a choice. Only when we are out of it do we realize we were having NVB.

The absence of NVB makes SVB possible.The choice, which only becomes available during SVB, is obtained because we listen to ourselves while we speak. In SVB, we also listen to others, but this is not the most important thing. The most important thing in SVB is to listen to our selves. In NVB, we want others to listen to us and this is the most important thing. In NVB, others want us to listen to them, but nobody is listening to him or herself. In SVB, by contrast, everyone is listening to him or herself, while he or she speaks. This creates a different focus, because due to our self-listening, we begin to listen to others in the same way as we listen to ourselves. Moreover, due to our self-listening, we speak to others overtly in the same way that we speak to ourselves covertly. Thus, in SVB, when others are speaking, the covert speech of the mediator, the listener, is the same as the overt speech of the verbalizer, the speaker. In NVB however, the covert speech of the mediator is different from and therefore distracts from the overt speech of the verbalizer and this is caused by the fact that in NVB we listen differently to ourselves than we listen to others. All mediators reinforce the verbalizer in SVB, but in NVB, phony mediators reinforce phony verbalizers without even realizing it. 

In behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, we explain behavior by considering antecedents, responses and postcedents. Antecedents are stimuli which happen before the response occurs and set the stage for the behavior to occur. Postcedents or consequences, are events that happen after the behavior has occurred. Postcedents can be reinforcing, in which case the response rate is increased, or punishing, in which case the response rate is decreased. When a response produces the postcedent that follows it, it is called a consequence. SVB is a response which produces its postcedent. Why is this important? It is important because the difference between SVB and NVB is not capricious. Human behavior is lawful. For all the havoc and chaos that NVB creates, it always predictably does so. SVB, by contrast, will equally predictably produce very different behaviors. 

When thinking about causation of behavior, most people are inclined to think of antecedent stimuli. Although we may know there can be positive or negative consequences to our behavior, we wrongly believe that we either choose to have these consequences or that we decide to avoid them. The fact is that we don’t cause our own behavior. Most of our behavior is caused postcendently, but as long as we think that we are causing our own behavior, we will not be considerate about these postcedents. Our view of causing our own behavior has kept us stuck into short-term ways of thinking. Only when we adopt a scientific account of human behavior, will we develop reliable long-term thinking.

November 27, 2014

November 27, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This author had a great skype conversation with his behaviorist Dutch friend. His wife is undergoing chemo therapy and it is not sure how long she will be able to live. He was talking about how living in such uncertainty has affected his life. It is very uncomfortable for him and due to the illness of his wife, his life has grinded to a halt. On the other hand – and this was what most of the conversation was about – it has also intensified his life in many ways, causing unexpected positive events. His  love for his wife is deep. He is a committed family man and his children are successful and happy. 

My Dutch friend was recently at a retirement ceremony of a colleague, who spoke with authentic emotional appreciation and love about the support he had felt from his wife, who had made his career possible. When after that another colleague, the dean, had spoken, he had felt infuriated, because with just few words it completely destroyed the beautiful atmosphere of openness and gratefulness, which had come about because the retiring man who had expressed his true feelings. 

This story illustrates the enormous difference between the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) of the retiree and the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) of the mean dean. From one moment to the next SVB was no longer possible because the contingencies were altered by the words of the dean. After the ceremony had ended, my Dutch friend went to the reception, but once he saw the dean, he was still so upset about what the dean had done that he went home without shaking the hands with the retiree. He was telling me that insensitivity is very common in academia and that because of his wife's illness he is less and less capable of tolerating it. 

This author's Dutch friend, who recognizes SVB, realized that it made no sense to have NVB and he simply left the situation. More reinforcing to him are the sun panels on his roof, which save money on utility bills. Government programs in the Netherlands subsidize citizens to make environmentally friendly decisions. It has nothing really to do with environmental awareness, but the money being saved is a great example of smart behavioral engineering. Once we know more about the lawfulness of behavior, we can create contingencies which reduce our ‘carbon-footprint’ behavior. This author was reminded of the little bags dog-owners can find on poles in the park. They can take a bag to pick up the dog poop. However, there something went wrong with the behavioral engineering, because the little bags with dog shit in it can be seen thrown around all over the park. Many took a bag, collected their dog poop, but threw the bag on the ground, when they couldn’t find a trashcan to throw it in.

November 26, 2014

November 26, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

The following comments are additional responses to the MIT lecture by Edward G.Carr (2011) about problem behaviors of children with autism. Carr’s research is so informative because it provides us many clues about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the two ways in which we communicate. As Carr repeatedly reiterates, labelling, isolating and medicating doesn’t help. His approach reserves a special place for spoken communication. He even wrote a whole book about it “Communication-Based Interventions For Problem Behaviors.” This author has read positive reviews about this book. Carr’s relaxed tone of voice makes what he says easy to understand. His lecture is mostly based on SVB and only occasionally he has a moment of NVB.

The reader is urged to verify what this writer means. Google Carr’s lecture (2011) by cutting and pasting this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kkocTdn0iY. This writing is a partial transcription of that lecture, which is used to illustrate SVB and NVB. Human beings across the globe are having trouble communicating. Since there are so many problems, we need to analyze our problem behavior. As our problems can only be known by the way in which we talk about them, ALL problem-enhancing communication is called NVB. Only communication which solves problems or which is without problems, is called SVB. The negative emotions we have, when we have a problem, are noticeable, but they are often not talked about or they are not talked about in such a way that they become less or can completely dissolve. This is especially obvious in the treatment of autism.

Non-autistic communicators can learn from autistic non-communicators that aversive stimulation is stops interaction. As the cause of all domestic, racial, economic, national, political or religious conflicts is based on aversive stimulation, the solution is the  absence of this aversive stimulation in all our interactions. This general approach, however, requires an individualized treatment.  

To understand how we individually contribute to SVB or NVB, we must become scientific about the way in which we communicate. NVB is unscientific in that even when we admit that we have problems, we have no way of solving them, because our so-called solutions are not based on the natural world, but on explanatory fictions, perpetuated by our social and cultural contingencies.

It is often brought up by the behaviorologists that our language itself is unscientific, as it predates our modern scientific findings. Although this is true and although better definitions can help us to better observe, describe, predict and control the outcome of our interactions, our preoccupation with content, with what we say and with how we say it, will still prevent us from finding out why we say what we say and why we say what we say in the way that we say it. Read the preceding sentence three times and listen to the sound of your own voice while you do that. We never randomly say something and we never randomly say nothing, but we are constantly adjusting and responding to our environment. If, as in autism, our overt speech is impaired, lacking or only happening at a very low response rate, then our covert speech, what we say to ourselves privately, cannot be of much use. What we think to ourselves is a function of our public speech. Thus, if we are constantly exposed to and conditioned by NVB public, we will acquire NVB covert speech, negative thoughts, which create many problems. In NVB, we are on automatic pilot, we are involved in mechanical communication. Moreover, in NVB we are unable to make our covert speech overt. We can only do that during SVB.  

Individualized treatment of NVB, our problem behavior is needed. We need to become our own research subject, implement our own treatment and only then compare our notes with others. Carr (2011) states that generality in a single subject design is accomplished by three approaches: 1) direct replication (DR), 2) systematic replication (SR) and 3) operational replication (OR). In DR, we treat a person of the same age, the same diagnosis and the same problem behaviors. In SR, we give the same treatment to people with a wide variety of ages, diagnoses and behaviors, to establish external validity. In OR other scientists, who may not even trust any of these findings, replicate the study, but get the same results. Single subject designs yield more reliable results than statistical group designs, which are still seen as the gold-standard.We have to start with DR of SVB by treating ourselves. Only after we have had DR can we involve others in SR. Furthermore, only those who have been part of SR, like the students in my psychology class, can replicate the study and get the same results in OR.

Contexts in which NVB is more probable will become apparent. To have SVB, such context must be avoided or abandoned. Changing such contexts is a waste of time.Typically, NVB occurs when talking about the things which we like or find important is made impossible, not validated or forcefully stopped. People engage in NVB when what is said or the way in which it is said, is disliked, frustrating, difficult or boring. Also when activities take too long, this may result in acting out NVB behavior. Furthermore, when activities take place in noisy or crowded environments this may elicit NVB. Autistic children are often seen putting their fingers in their ears. This should tell us something. Listening to what they hear is painful for them. What they don’t want to listen to is NVB.

Actually, nobody wants to listen to NVB. Whether we know it or not, admit or not or are aware of it or not, we want to move away from NVB and we do so in every possible way. Distraction from NVB is exploited by entertainment and technology. However, this distraction can’t and doesn't teach us SVB. SVB only happens in the absence of such distraction. Moreover, a change in our routine or a new or unfamiliar situation may also lead to NVB. Carr (2011) talks about traumatic avoidance conditioning in which an autistic kid grabbed the drill from the dentist and was drilled in his cheek. Such aversive experience permanently created problem behaviors each time the child needed to go to the dentist. Often the only way to deal with this is to heavily medicate the child for every dental visit and for each subsequent medical visit, which elicits the same episodes. Rejection of SVB is equally traumatic and common and people self-medicate with alcohol or drugs and become addicted, just to be able to have a conversation. NVB in itself is a form of numbing and intoxication.