January 26, 2015

January 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

It is becoming clear that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the spoken communication which is going on everywhere, twenty-four-seven, is the language of coercion. During NVB communicators have the opposite effect on each other than in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which their verbal behavior is under bi-directional reinforcing postcedent control. In NVB, communicators are punishing each other, threatening and intimidating each other with punishment or they are oppressing, bullying and frightening each other by withholding reinforcement. 

In chapter 16, about “Aversive Control” in the book  “Running Out Of Time” Ledoux states the obvious, but often overlooked fact that “Control by both coercion and added reinforcers has always been with us.”  (2014, p. 357). We can deduce from this simple observation there must also be and there have always been two entirely different ways of communicating: SVB, the verbal behavior which is controlled by added reinforcement, and NVB, the verbal behavior which is controlled by coercion. Moreover, the ubiquity of NVB not only indicates that “our verbal behavior about control overemphasizes aversive control”, but it also signifies our bias towards what “pre-scientifically” seems to be “the most obvious kind of control, as if it were the only kind of control” (Ledoux, 2015, p.357). 

Stated more succinctly, SVB, based on added reinforcement, has to be our scientific way of communicating.  SVB is a much better way than NVB of controlling behavior verbally.  Unless we address the great difference between SVB and NVB and acknowledge that only the former can make scientific thinking possible, while the latter will keep us stuck in various pre-scientific coercion traps, we will neither be stimulated nor inspired to begin to replace NVB by SVB.

This writer, who was at the receiving end of a lot of aversive control while growing up, who, like many others who grew up under such circumstances, has been profoundly affected and deeply troubled by this, is relieved to have found Skinner’s radical behaviorism and now Ledoux’s behaviorology. 

Without the scientific knowledge about how his behavior is and has always been a function of environmental variables, he wouldn’t have been able to come to terms with his problems. He is well aware that many others, like him, are struggling with similar problems, but can’t make any progress because they are not taught behaviorology. All they receive in the name of mental health, is NVB, coercive communication. 

This writer has studied psychology and has worked in mental health for more than ten years and has seen and heard NVB over and over again. It is not intentional, as it is the contingency of reinforcement which keeps NVB and SVB going. Even with the best of so-called intentions or unconditional positive regard, even with all the so-called knowledge involved in ‘eclectic’ approaches, practitioners are still producing mainly NVB, while they are pretending to have SVB. 

Interestingly, behaviorologists and behaviorists have repeatedly been accused of circular thinking. They were blamed for insisting on and thus repeating their scientific explanations and coming up with even better and improved scientific explanations. Yet, the empirical data they accumulated doesn’t speak for itself and is unfortunately mostly ignored.  How can this be? Scientific explanations of behavior cannot be comprehended as long as people are not taught about it and changed by it. In other words, teaching requires a new way of communicating. NVB will not and cannot bring about the changes which require SVB. Although radical behaviorists like Skinner and behaviorologists like Ledoux, have amassed irrefutable evidence, they haven’t and couldn’t  begin to address the much-needed new way of communicating: SVB.  

January 25, 2015

January 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Given his high and steady rate of responding and the fact that only once in while this writer is postcedently reinforced, his Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) can be said to be on a variable ratio (VR) schedule of reinforcement. Approximately, as little as three out of hundred of his SVB responses are praised. When he was full-time employed, he would have said five out of hundred, but lately reinforcement dropped to almost nothing and the rate of responding, as usual under this VR-contingency, has gone up, leading to a bit of a burn-out.  Even thinking about SVB at this point is punishing to this writer. Just as a gambler who is losing money, while operating the slot-machine that pays out a response-to-reinforcer ratio of one out of thousand, this writer now feels very sad, spend and run out of resources.  

Like a gambler, who lost his shirt, this writer hoped for reinforcement, but he lost his job. He was made to believe that he would win the jackpot: he was hired and praised for his SVB. Of course, he ‘won’ a couple of times: they praised him and they liked him and then he got hooked, in spite of the fact that over time, their reinforcement became and less and less. He has lost friends, family, jobs, opportunities and years of his life in this process.  There is not enough reinforcement for SVB. 

Although right now he is feeling depressed, this author knows that once the school semester has started, he will feel reinforced again for his SVB by his students. This prediction is reliable and it gives him solace to think of this. Right now, however, since the semester hasn’t started yet, and since he has no employment other than this part-time teaching job, he hasn’t had much reinforcement for almost a whole month. 

The call he received from Stephen Ledoux wasn’t reinforcing, but punishing. Ledoux, whose book he is reading, doesn’t realize that SVB is behaviorism and behaviorology.  Once this writer is again in front of his class, due to his behavioral engineering, SVB will be on a different schedule of reinforcement.  Right now, however, reinforcement for his SVB depends on his wife and the very few people he may run into here or there, who happen to have a similar behavioral history, due to which they are open to his SVB and are capable of reinforcing it. Attempts to meet them have, as they have done in the past, led to a lot of rejection. Ledoux is a case in point. Even though Ledoux can sense this writer has identified something important, he insists SVB only matters if it is written about. He even invited this writer to submit a paper to the behaviorology journal.

When this author was younger, he would ride his bicycle all over town and change from one environment to another multiple times because he was so mobile. He would visit different people and places, sometimes he enjoyed the crowd and other times he appreciated just being alone. His genetic predisposition equipped him with a vibrant body. Although his lifeliness was reified and dispositionalized as ‘restlessness’, reinforcers would accumulate faster since his presumed ‘urgency’ for SVB produced such a high rate of responding. He was literally all over the place to be able to tell everybody about SVB, whether they wanted to hear it or not. Even though he didn’t call it SVB back then, he knew he was onto something because enough people had reinforced him. However, life is catching up with this writer. He is no longer rides his bicycle through town like he used to.  Besides, he emigrated to the United States and started a new life in this totally different environment. This led him to go back to school and study psychology and eventually behaviorism and behaviorology. Now the “counter-controlling contingencies” (Ledoux, 2014, p.339) like paying  mortgage of the house, wanting a steady job and thinking about old age and having money for retirement, compete with those needed for SVB.

January 24, 2015

January 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is a third and final writing about the discussion which went on in the Dutch parliament about the radicalization of muslims in Holland and how to prevent violence attacks such as the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris. The increased call for curbing the influence of Islam is not isolated to Holland, but it happens across Europe. It took a long time for the free western verbal community to rise up against this globally-competing muslim verbal community. The argument that one represents modernity and the other, in the eye of the former, barbarism, doesn’t and can’t begin to address how our verbal behavior is maintained by our environments. If we want to change our verbal behavior, we must change the contingency that maintains it. This requires the exploration of the SVB/NVB distinction. 

Another speaker started out by appealing to SVB by saying “I am certain that the whole Dutch parliament is against extremism”, but he then followed with the NVB accusation that the anti-muslim politician was “feeding hate and extremism.” Moreover, he strongly warned that “continuing to speak out against the one million muslims in Holland would be very dangerous.” His plea for another analysis than the one from the anti-muslim politician was again one in favor of SVB. This writer agrees that polarization equals NVB and will only make things worse, but unless the distinction between SVB and NVB is made clear, we are surely going to end up there. What is missing from the discussion of “what is really dangerous” is the objective understanding about how human interaction, that is SVB, really works. Vague allusions about SVB are made, but scientific understanding is still completely lacking. 

The only female politician in this debate expressed SVB understanding for the fact that the anti-muslim politician “must be very afraid and upset”, but wondered if his “spreading of fear was not a victory for the terrorists.” Here again we see the switch, from one moment to the next, from SVB to NVB. The anti-muslim politician redirected the discussion, because he didn’t want it to be about his personal fear, he wanted to discuss the fear that is felt by the many people he represents. He was trying to be more objective about fear and consequently he moved into SVB. In effect he was trying to discuss the actual conditions which create and maintain fear. By appealing to the fact that he must be feeling very angry and fearful, since he is constantly threatened to be killed, another NVB attempt was made to make it into a personal matter. Also, the refusal by most Dutch politicians to collaborate with him was raised as a personal issue, because supposedly it was caused by him. The anti-muslim politician refused to make it into something personal, because he wanted to do something about it. His reasoning for changing behavior of others was SVB. His ability to step away from himself, allowed for a calm description of the independent variables pertaining to the killings of thousands, by people who can be characterized by a striking similarity in their verbal behavior. In answer to the SVB-facts by the anti-muslim speaker, the female speaker then increased her NVB by accusing him of “creating fear and helping the terrorists”, but the SVB anti-muslim speaker refused to respond.

At the end of the debate, in which the Paris killings and the problems with muslim radicalization in Holland were discussed, one of the speakers asked what practical steps can be taken to increase security? This was a SVB request. The anti-muslim speaker, however, answered in a NVB manner as he expressed his frustration that the law he had proposed ten years ago, to prevent jihadist from re-entering into Holland, had not been discussed, let alone passed. What is clearly visible here is a pattern which was repeated over and over again: as on person produced SVB, the other increased his or her NVB, but when that person then produced NVB, the other person increased his or her SVB again. Of course, none of this requires any reference to some inner agent. None of these politicians speak the way they do, because inside of them there is a self which is directing and controlling their verbal behavior. How they speak is mostly rule-governed, that is, they adhere to common rules about how they as party-members are expected to speak in the Dutch parliament. Their verbal behavior is also contingency-governed, that is, it is affected antecedently and postcedently by environmental stimuli, which change as a consequence of the dynamics of the debate.


Because of the content of the debate it is apparent that various politicians felt personally upset about the uncommon and confrontational verbal behavior of the anti-muslim politician. They spoke about being afraid, angry and appalled, by the killings, but when confronted by the anti-muslim speaker with their lack of decisiveness, they accused him of being like the terrorists. However, his behavior is not much under control of the other politicians, but is determined his party who wants him to address this issue. 

     

Let’s summarize some pertinent aspects of SVB and NVB. As the debate illustrated, NVB continues and is likely to increase. There are reasons why NVB occurs. When what is said becomes more important than how we say it, when verbal expressions are incongruent with and disconnect us from our nonverbal behavior, we will have NVB. When we want others to listen to us, but when we are not listening to ourselves, we have NVB. When our environment, which consists of other speakers, is aversively affecting us and we are constantly trying to change how others talk, we are having NVB. More precisely, we will elicit NVB responses, because the sound of our voice functions as an aversive stimulus to our listener. We may start out with SVB, but we will revert to NVB at the drop of a hat. The rapid ongoing changes from SVB to NVB and from NVB to SVB, always involve fluctuating environmental variables, which must be controlled if we want to continue our  SVB. Such control is made possible and preceded by our familiarity with and understanding of the SVB/NVB distinction. This distinction brings us to the essence of human interaction. 

We need SVB to be able to talk about NVB. Without SVB, we will talk in a NVB-way about NVB and we will be unable to describe NVB correctly. Our inability of describing what is happening will increase our NVB to higher and higher levels. Absence of SVB is the absence of relationship. Presence of NVB is the absence of SVB. The either-or-effect of our way of communicating is like electricity; speakers either turn the listener on or off. “Another way of saying this is that SVB allows mediators to talk about how they experience the verbalizer. SVB is the mediator’s perspective of the verbalizer. Unless the listener likes, recognizes, understands what the speaker says, interaction is not happening. NVB is not communication.

January 23, 2015

January 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is a continuation of yesterday’s observation about how we keep going back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It describes the debate among Dutch politicians who tried to talk about muslim radicalization. It is good there is a third party, a “madam speaker” who stimulates some disentanglement of the knots created by NVB, but it is also clear that this is not sufficient. 

Although people try to focus on what they say, emotions take over and when that happens we have an emotionally-loaded NVB. This writer claims that since most conversation is NVB, we are not really rational even when we are trying to be rational and we are not really honest about emotions even when we try. Only in SVB are we and can we be truly rational and authentically emotional. In NVB, by contrast, our reasoning is convoluted with our emotions and our emotions are distorted by our rationalizations. During NVB, someone is always either overly rational or overly emotional. 

When madam speaker had spoken of “the many balls that are in play” and urged speakers “to remain rational”, she was presumably referring to emotions that may prevent rational issues from being addressed. However, she was not realizing her own emotional NVB-talking was causing negative feelings that were not triggered by the muslim issue. Her fear that the debate might get out of hand, besides being emotional, of course only added fuel to the flames. In NVB there are many attempts by speakers to tell other speakers how to speak. As long as people are trying to correct each other on how to communicate, they are going to have NVB. 

Only in SVB do our emotions maintain our healthy relationship. In SVB people talk with each other, not at each other. Interestingly, during the debate, SVB was more often happening when the speaker was directing him or herself to madam the speaker, to a third party and not to the other speaker. There were moments in which the third party didn’t even seem to exist and in those moments the speaker’s NVB attacks were the most vicious.

When one listens to thirty minutes of this debate, it is astounding how many times one speaker accuses another that his or her way of speaking is not the right way of speaking. The utter futility of these attempts, which are the trademark of NVB, doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Everybody seems to be thinking that this is how we should talk. When one person decreases his or her NVB, the other person immediately increases it. While they keep appealing to SVB, they never maintain it.

One speaker wondered how we can “make sure the tension in society is not increased, but decreased” and wanted to know from the anti-muslim speaker if “he ever even thought about how he could contribute to this process?” This was initially an appeal to SVB, but when that speaker ended his momentary peace-making by insinuating that the anti-muslim speaker doesn’t contribute to this process, he was back to NVB again. The speaker didn’t fall for the set-up and continued to explain his view. 

Another speaker spoke about the elevated tone of voice of the anti-muslim speaker, who, for ten years has lived under the constant threat of death. According to this speaker it was difficult to collaborate with him, because he elicited negative responses. He made a correct analysis. However, his SVB only fueled the NVB of the justifiably fearful anti-muslim speaker, whose argument is that nobody is really listening to him. This too was an absolutely correct observation: in NVB nobody is listening to anybody. 

The leader of what has now become Holland’s biggest political party, who came to power because he articulates the population’s resentment about the Islamization of their country, remarked that he would “only sing in a lower key if others would listen to him.” In other words, he would only stop his NVB if others would stop their NVB and he pledged to increase his NVB if others increased their NVB. This is exactly how we have dealt with each other across the globe and this is why NVB is everywhere and why SVB can’t happen. Unless we see that NVB prevents SVB, we will ratchet up the conversation and we will prevent SVB from happening.

Because of the constant death threats against him, the anti-muslim speaker is more familiar with the elicitation of fear than most of his opponents. This allows him to debate in a style which completely eludes others. He is capable of unleashing his emotions much more effectively than anyone else.  Yet, in spite of the life-and-death situation he lives in every day, he is able to have more SVB than others. The force and impact of his words derives from the congruence between his verbal and nonverbal expression.