December 8, 2014

December 8, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The probably forgotten and no longer read paper “Behavior” Does Not Mean “Behavior of the Organism”: Why Conceptual Revision is Needed in Behavior Analysis” by Vicki L. Lee (1999), was read, understood and enjoyed by this author. The paper’s abstract informs the reader that “discussion about social justice issues would be more effective if the implications – for how we talk about behavior - of the different meanings for the word “behavior” were grasped.” The fact that Lee mentions “how we talk about behavior” immediately peeked this author’s attention. 

Like Lee, this author addresses independent variables that affect how we talk. However, his emphasis is not on the words that we use, on what we say, but on how we are talking and, more specifically, on how we sound while we are really talking. This is more pragmatic. In what follows, this author uses Lee’s elucidation on the word “behavior” as a stepping stone to introduce the reader to two different types of verbal behavior: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the latter being the verbal behavior in which we invariably get trapped by the content, by the words; the former being effective verbal behavior in which what we say is enhanced and made clear due to how we say it. The distinction between SVB and NVB is one which deals with changes in the sound of our voice while we speak. Everyone who has ever explored this distinction agrees that SVB sounds good and that NVB simply sounds horrible. The unanimous agreement among those who have experimented with the SVB/NVB distinction led this author to wonder: why does the sound of our voice change from energizing, regulating and positive, to draining, dis-regulating and negative? Of what is the sound of the speaker during SVB and NVB a function?  

    

The scientific explanation of “behavior” is so far removed from what we commonly understand it to be (e.g. putting on your shoes, getting the mail out of your mailbox, playing flute) that most people feel put off by technical phrases such as “stimuli shaping behavior”, “the environment controlling behavior”, or “behavior being emitted by organisms.” This is a clear example of what this author means by NVB. Obviously, for those who are familiar with behaviorist terminology there is nothing noxious about them. However, this doesn’t mean behaviorists engage in SVB. To the contrary, their tenacious focus on what they say, on the content, again and again makes them produce NVB.

NVB is a function of our verbal fixation. Simply stated, NVB speakers get carried away by what they are saying. They argue over the content, but they don’t realize that their argument has never led to any improved communication. Improved communication could only occur when the argument had stopped. Thus, only SVB, in which what we say is viewed as a function of how we say it, explains why we sound horrible in NVB and why our voice then functions like an aversive stimulus that elicits respondent behavior in the listener. Moreover, during uni-directional, forceful NVB, the fight, flight or freeze reflexes, which are triggered in the listener, prevent bi-directional SVB communication. No matter how much we may be able continue to pretend otherwise, NVB is not communication.

It is interesting to notice how everyone seeks to justify why they are predominantly involved in NVB. SVB doesn’t need any justification, because it is self-evident when it occurs. Regardless of whether we talk about fighting couples, arguing politicians or disagreeing scholars, they all engage in the same NVB. The conversation or rather, the lack thereof, between other scientists and behaviorists is in essence no different than the one between Jews and Palestenians, husbands and wives, students and teachers or employers and employees. The false belief that something different is going on in each of these relations determines the continuation of NVB. Characteristically for NVB, scholars like Lee would say “these ways of talking were necessary in the first place only because early psychologist gave the word behavior an unusual meaning.” Notice that she justifies her NVB by emphasizing the content of what we say and recognize that since “early psychologist” were trying to only prove their point, their choice of words was a function of their need to convince others and to win the argument. 

Besides our verbal fixation, there are two other reasons why in NVB our voices sound terrible. The second reason is: we struggle for each other’s attention. We may think that we have grown up and we may be able to camouflage the fact that we are forcing each other's attention, but during NVB we sound like a baby, who is crying for its mother: our voice is grabbing, holding and demanding the attention of others. No matter how many papers have been written about the need for verbal, precise, scientific terminology, behaviorists have been given the same treatment, by the field of psychology, as the needy child, who continues to demand attention. Behaviorists are being ignored because they keep subscribing to their own treatment. Skinner, who got the attention from others with his original descriptions, didn’t get it by using NVB. To the contrary, he had a lot SVB. The many behaviorists who came after him, who often mechanically or even religiously repeated what he had said, produced lots of NVB. Furthermore, also among themselves they have produced primarily NVB. 

       

The third reason why we keep having NVB, in which our voices are felt by the listeners as stabbing, punching, grabbing, pushing, pulling, choking or draining, is our hyper-vigilant, anxious, guarded and suspicious outward orientation. When, as behaviorists would certainly like, we want others to listen to us, we are generally not listening to ourselves. We are so busy trying to influence others, trying to teach others, trying to defend ourselves against others, trying to control our others, who are our environment, that we don’t realize that this is a function of our lack of well-being. The lack of feedback of how our own behavior affects the behavior of others guarantees NVB, in which we talk at each other, rather than with each other. Our outward orientation prevents us from noticing that we are not in contact with ourselves and therefore we cannot have SVB with others.

The contingency for NVB is different than the contingency for SVB. Thus, that we feel threatened or on guard is not causing our NVB, but rather, our NVB is the direct expression of the way in which we are affected by a hostile environment. Very informative for the distinction between SVB and NVB is Lee's description “The room and its temperature and the window and its various states are in the environment of the individual’s body. That is, they are outside the individual’s body. However, they are among the constituents of the things the individual gets done. That is, they are inside the person’s actions.” This illustrates beautifully how we experience and engage in SVB or NVB. 

   

Skinner (1938) focused on operant, not respondent behavior. He unknowingly chose SVB over NVB when he wrote “Operant behavior clearly satisfies a definition based upon what the organism is doing to the environment, and the question arises whether it is not properly the main concern of a student of behavior and whether respondent behavior, which is chiefly involved in the internal economy of the organism, may not reasonably be left to the physiologist. Operant behavior with its unique relation to the environment presents a separate important field of investigation (p. 438.)” Skinner's focus on "what the organism is doing to the environment", is necessary if we are going to learn about SVB. 

Lee stated that “the way we talk about our subject matter might exacerbate other psychologists' misconceptions about behavior analysis (1993).” She also quoted Morris, who wrote "the structure of our language influences how we think about behavior in ways that are incompatible with the nature of behavior" (Morris, 1993). Although structure was mentioned, not a word was said about SVB or NVB. It was supposedly always only about what was being said, but not about how it was said. Even Morris was unable to recognize that positive or negative emotions would create a different structure of our language. As long as they have NVB, even behaviorists can't think clearly about behavior as “behavior of the organism." In NVB, communicators think that they cause their own behavior and consequently they hold each other accountable, but in SVB, it is apparent that we reciprocally create conversation. However, in both SVB and NVB, we are in it, we behave together.  Once pointed out, the difference between engaging in SVB and NVB is as obvious as being in a warm or cold room.

December 7, 2014

December 7, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This author heard someone on the radio say “he sounded good, he said what I wanted to hear.” What a verbalizer sounds like to a mediator is a function of the mediator’s behavioral history. However, only in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) does the verbalizer say what the mediator wants to hear, but in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the mediator’s dislike of the verbalizer doesn’t get any attention. This doesn’t mean that in NVB the mediator likes to hear what the verbalizer is saying. In NVB, the mediator merely pretends to like what the verbalizer is saying. Thus, the aforementioned saying may be an example of NVB or it may also be an example of SVB. 

The statement seems to refer to how the nonverbal behavior, the sound of the voice of the verbalizer, is determined by the mediator, depending on what the verbalizer is verbally saying. Supposedly, the verbalizer sounds good only if he or she says verbally what the mediator wants to hear. People with a liberal or republican leaning only like to hear what they already agree on. However, nobody is really listening. The nonverbal behavior of paying attention to our sound is made impossible by our verbal fixation. We make it seem as if what we say, the verbal, is more important than how we say it, the nonverbal. This assumption is maintained by NVB. Only in SVB is what we say aligned with how we say it. Only in SVB is there congruence between our verbal and nonverbal expression.

Skinner (1957) considered functional unity as essential for describing units of discourse. He treated the units that emerge, both for the verbal community as well as for the individual, as idiosyncratic. He stated “…phrases, idioms, clauses, sentences… may have functional unity as a verbal operant…” which “is exclusively a unit of behavior in the individual speaker.” Verbal Behavior is a functional verbal account of the organism’s interaction with its nonverbal and its verbal environment. This required a new terminology and dismissal of grammatical issues, which couldn’t capture the workings of the operant process. The logic of traditional grammar is totally different from Skinner’s logic, in that the former is rooted in the primacy of internal, imaginary causation of behavior, while the latter teaches that behavior is a function of measurable, environmental variables. Many are still upset with Skinner for changing the language. However, this author proposes to take Skinner’s work even one step further. The proper discussion of operant conditioning processes cannot occur as long as communicators still engage in NVB, which essentially is the way of talking which disconnects the speaker from the listener, from his or her environment. We are only able to accurately talk about environment-behavior relations if our way of talking includes rather than excludes the environment.  Our agential way of talking in which we continue to believe that we cause our own behavior, is a way of talking which separates the speaker from the listener. SVB has a totally different kind of logic. As talking only makes sense if someone is listening, listening is more important than talking in SVB.

December 6, 2014

December 6, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Animals move away from aversive stimulation, but human beings, who, because they have language, think that they are different from animals, believe that they can’t move away and consequently are troubled for long periods of their lives. As long as we haven't made the SVB/NVB distinction, we have no way of even deciding what is aversive. Consequently, we accept as normal a way of communicating, which creates and maintains our anxiety and stress. If only we knew that NVB makes us feel bad, we would want to stop it, but we usually have absolutely no clue that our way of communicating makes us feel the way we feel. There are, of course, many other reasons why we feel the way we do, but the most important one, is seldom analyzed. We don’t know how we feel, because of how we talk. NVB makes us miss out on the most important experience of life: feeling safe. 

  

Building on Goldiamond’s Constructional Approach (1974), Beata Bakker-de Pree, a Dutch behaviorist, came up with the theory of the Dominance of Active Avoidance (1984). This theory emphasizes that for an optimal mental health, avoidance behaviors are the most important. Ideally, by avoiding the invalidating, social, stimulus, individuals avoid it so well that escape is hardly even necessary. Although approach behaviors get the individual what the individual wants, over-emphasis on approach behaviors doesn’t and can’t contribute much to our well-being, because it maintains our lack of functioning active avoidance behaviors. Active avoidance is key to SVB, but made impossible by NVB. NVB makes us think that active avoidance is neither needed nor possible.

In behavior analysis the continuity of species refers to the similarity of behavioral principles or processes between humans and nonhumans. The psycho-biologist Jaak Pansepp (1998) coined the term Affective Neuroscience after he found the neural bases of emotion in humans and nonhumans. In evolutionary thinking it makes no sense to say the old contains the new, since evolution is a forward process. Because behaviors, just like genes, are selected by consequences, it only makes sense to say that the new must contain the old. Humans aren’t any different from nonhumans in their need for homeostasis. Because of our NVB we get carried away by the words of our languages and we think we are different from animals. SVB, however, puts us in our place, that is, SVB makes us conscious of the here and now and of our future, but NVB keeps us trapped in our past. Thus, SVB is evolutionary, forward thinking and NVB, just like creationism, is backward thinking.

Once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, we realize how often our behavior was determined by the contingency that maintains NVB and makes SVB impossible. We may be controlled enough to not explode or go nuts, but the negative effects of NVB add up and are also expressed in other ways than in our spoken communication.: NVB is the independent variable that is causing many mental disorders. Since we can’t say what is bothering us unless we have SVB, we remain oblivious of what is going on with human interaction. If a person has a headache, it would be normal to postpone certain activities until he or she feels better. If, however, in our spoken communication we feel negatively affected, we usually don’t postpone the talk or our listening to such a talk. We have all learned to not let it bother us, to keep our heads up, to be the better person, to not react, to let it go, to change the subject, to not go there, to not rock the boat, in other words, to dissociate... 

NVB is the language of dissociation. Besides being the expression of it, NVB is also the source of arousal. Once we know the extent to which NVB is the source of negative arousal, we are motivated to create and maintain the contingency needed for SVB. Currently, we aren’t motivated, because we don’t know that we have that choice. Many sources of dis-regulation have been offered, but no one has mentioned the difference between SVB and NVB. Moderation of our arousal levels could not be effective as long as the source of it wasn’t properly analyzed. Once we acquire the ability to differentiate between SVB and NVB, our proper analysis will dissolve our dissociative tendencies and will make behavioral changes possible, which were never before considered. 

Skill acquisition is a result of SVB and a person’s ability to learn depends on SVB. NVB, the spoken communication in which the verbalizer aversively stimulates the mediator, is antithetical to learning. Stated differently, NVB can only bring forth more NVB, but can’t bring forth SVB. NVB has to stop before SVB can begin. However, SVB teaches both NVB and SVB. SVB opens us up to operant learning, but NVB narrows us down to respondent behavior. There is an optimal level of learning that is determined by our level of arousal. Too much arousal or too little arousal is called NVB. Only the exact amount of arousal is called SVB. Easy tasks can be performed with higher levels of arousal, while more difficult tasks require lower levels of arousal. This relationship between arousal and task performance was explained more than hundred years ago by the Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908). SVB makes this applicable to an individual, because it defines the exact amount of arousal of the mediator that is needed to be able to understand the verbalizer. Thus, with his or her voice, while he or she speaks, the verbalizer regulates the mediator’s level of arousal. This is a natural phenomenon.

SVB is based on positive affect and tension reduction, which, like nothing else, enhances learning. The idea that there might be a need to increase an individual’s tension, in order to enhance learning, is part of the old NVB-school, in which learning supposedly results from punishing consequences. This coercive teaching has contributed to the perpetuation of NVB and has prevented individuals from finding out about their optimal level of arousal. The regulating properties of SVB foster intrinsic motivation, that is, SVB overt speech results in SVB overt speech or positive self talk. In SVB communicators co-regulate, but in NVB they dis-regulate each other. Due to SVB we can make connections, which we couldn’t make with NVB.

We all know that social or biological contexts feed into our individual level of arousal, but we have never included NVB as a variable. This is especially important if we wish to measure the process of behavioral change or rate of responding. When we are exposed to SVB or NVB, we are confronted with two very different environments, which affect our level of arousal. A student in a classroom may be exposed to a teacher, who gives a lecture, which is only 30% SVB, but 70% NVB. The arousal level of each individual student would be different if the teacher had 70% SVB and only 30% NVB. 

A version of what in treatment of autism is called “Pre-Curser-Behavior (PCB)” (Carr, 2011), the behavior that occurs just before the problem behavior (e.g. the meltdown), is also seen before the breakdown of communication. In class, students would start talking with each other, checking their messages or, basically just fall asleep or get distracted. In this example, the problem behavior is that students are bored, not paying attention, zoning out and not learning anything. If, over a period one hour, we see moments in which most of the  students arousal levels have dramatically increased or decreased, we can look at what was said before this happened and what was said after this happened. This profile, of when most students pay attention or zone out, indicates when SVB or NVB occurred. 

This author has done this experiment many times and his students have given him the feedback that he needs to be able to continue with SVB. He asked his students to raise their hand and to point to the other side of the class room, if they thought that he was producing NVB. One person is enough to make him leave his lecture table and to move him to the other side of the class, where he continues talking. Each time this happens, everyone feels as if they are getting a break. As this happens more often,the  rate of SVB increases while the rate of NVB decreases, because the students influence the behavior of the teacher. This is an example of reciprocal reinforcement.

December 5, 2014

December 5, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

One of the wonderful possibilities of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is that the verbalizer can describe the sensations which he or she is feeling in his or her body. This enables the verbalizer to link his or her own sound to the physiological arousal level that he or she feels at any given moment in his or her body. Even negative feelings can be described in a positive manner; we can talk about Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in a SVB-fashion. This is for most people a completely new experience, an experience which they had wanted to have, but which, for the most part, they have never had and, based on their previous experiences, never thought they could have. In effect, sensations and tensions felt in the body, when described in a conscious, accurate manner, decrease by talking about it.

During SVB, the verbalizer’s ability to talk about his or her physiological events, which play a big role in a person's private speech, has a soothing and regulating effect, which is reinforced by those who listen. Since this regulating effect comes about due to the verbalizer’s improved skill in describing what used to be his or her covert behavior and since the mediator’s validating role only pertains to the public speech of the verbalizer, many covert speech issues are then expressed publicly, because they can. NVB therefore signifies the verbalizer’s inability to talk about his or her negative physiological experiences, that is, his or her private speech. It is due to the behavioral history of the verbalizer, in which verbal expression of  nonverbal, negative, covert events were punished, that the skill to publicly express these events verbally could never fully develop. 

Verbal expression of negative physiological experiences is often a taboo because it shows weakness. However, talking about the fact that we are hurting or experiencing discomfort in SVB is different from talking about it in a NVB. In the former, our pain is alleviated, but in the latter, it is increased. NVB is the spoken communication which prevents us from talking about our negative experiences. 

The doctor’s question whether the stomach ache is “a sharp, stabbing or throbbing pain?” (Carr, 2011) can’t be answered by a two-year old, someone who hasn’t learned these words. A child does not yet have the behavioral history to make these distinctions. Only when these covert experiences were repeatedly labelled as such, will someone be capable of describing them. Although we usually acquire words to describe acute physiological pain, we learn less words and descriptions that capture our so-called psychological pain, when we experience coercion, rejection, aggression and loss.

During SVB, we acquire labels to describe subjective phenomenological experiences. The fact that we have haven’t acquired these labels doesn’t mean we don’t have these interoceptive experiences or that we don’t need to describe them. The fact that we haven’t gotten refined enough in our spoken communication to be able to refer to our internal states, makes us have NVB, by default. Even if we don’t have suitable labels to describe what we experience inside our body, in SVB we will find new ways of addressing what is going on, because we are not under any pressure to use specific words. 

In SVB we are more interested in how we sound, and, consequently, it is much easier to stay with, to accept, to feel, to acknowledge and to access our subjective experience. In NVB, by contrast, our words take us away from our experience. Another way of saying this is that SVB is our embodied communication, while NVB is disembodied communication. In NVB, we lose touch with our body. 

The words we use to describe the negative ways (NVB) in which others interact with us can only be those, which are already used by the members of our verbal community. We may occasionally invent a phrase, but, for the most part, we only speak the language with which we have a behavioral history. Although this author came up with the label Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) these words already existed and he only put them together to address a specific matter which has not yet been properly addressed. In SVB, it is not so much what we are saying, but how we say it, which makes what we are saying more meaningful. In NVB, by contrast, there is a fixation on what we are saying. Consequently, in NVB there is a disconnect between the verbal and the nonverbal, between what we say and what we do. 

The saying ‘actions speak louder than words’ emphasizes actions, because words hide the fact that our actions are lacking. However, it is only in NVB that, due to words, actions are lacking, because it is only in NVB that words become a smoke screen which cover up the reality. In SVB, words make and keep us conscious and stimulate us into action. Moreover, in SVB, words themselves are actions, because SVB changes our reality as we speak. We are so bad at communicating negative emotions because the contingencies for SVB are mostly nonexistent. However, when SVB contingencies are made available, SVB will occur, effortlessly and convincingly. If we would only spend more time analyzing how we speak, it would be self-evident that SVB is much better than NVB. In SVB our private speech is included, but in NVB, our NVB private speech is excluded from our public speech.