September 29, 2015

September 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my third response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). Let us now turn to these “three central points” on which these authors “and a broad sense of commentators agree.” The first one is: “the effects of reinforcers on behavior can be readily demonstrated under conditions in which the antecedents of behavior are not identified. That is, orderly functional relations emerge between operants and reinforcers when the experimental analysis of the effects of antecedents is impossible or impractical.” Why is “the experimental analysis of the effects of antecedents” considered to be “impossible or impractical?” I think, for the most part, it is because of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We dismiss antecedents as “impossible or impractical” as we don’t know how to talk about them. Once we know how to talk about them, that is, once we have Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), it becomes very practical to talk about them, even when we can’t immediately recognize antecedents of why we talk the way we do.

“Orderly functional relations” could “emerge between antecedents and reinforcers” as these authors  kept the conversation going. SVB always keeps the conversation going, but NVB stops it. There is, however, a big difference between writing about this and talking about it. Although different “antecedents and reinforcers” are involved in writing and reading than in speaking and listening there are of course “orderly functional relations” in both. Why are we are not talking more often about these “functional relations?” NVB prevents us from talking about it. Most of what we know about functional relations is because of what has been written about it, not because of what has been said about it.

With NVB behaviorists can’t really talk meaningfully about behaviorism.

These authors agree that “the effects of reinforcers on behavior can be readily demonstrated under conditions in which the antecedents of behavior are not identified” as they have read and studied publications about nonverbal empirical research involving pigeons or rats. However, this didn’t or couldn’t lead to nonverbal agreement in their vocal verbal behavior. There would have to be a focus on their own nonverbal speaking behavior for that to occur. Since most of their vocal verbal behavior is characterized by a fixation on the verbal, they are verbally biased and mainly involved in NVB. Moreover, in NVB, in which the “antecedents of behavior are not identified”, behaviorists are just like non-behaviorists as they can’t discriminate “the effects of reinforcers” on how they themselves speak. “Effects of reinforcers” have been demonstrated on other behavior than their own way of talking. In spite of their NVB, the “effect of reinforcers” can be “readily demonstrated”, but this doesn’t imply that they can demonstrate this effect while they talk and thus, they mainly write about it. It should be a mandatory aspect of behaviorist training to demonstrate, while they speak, the effect of reinforcers on SVB. As long as they can’t talk about the effects of reinforcers behavioral engineering will inadvertently reinforce NVB.  

The second point on which the authors agree is “response-contingent reinforcers most commonly alter the control of responses by their

antecedents. That is, discriminative control of responding is ‘‘practically inevitable (Skinner, 1937, p. 273).” In other words, if NVB is reinforced, people, behaviorists included, will have higher rates of it. Moreover, if NVB is reinforced and SVB is punished, people, behaviorists included, will prefer NVB over SVB. Since SVB and NVB should be easily grasped by behaviorists, as behaviorism focuses on environmental variables that cause behavior, I was surprised by the lack of interest of behaviorists to explore the SVB/NVB distinction with me. The more I learn about behaviorism, however, the more it is evident to me why this is the case.

It is comforting to read that Skinner said “discriminative responding is “practically inevitable.” It’s all about behavioral history.  The third point on which these authors agree is perhaps the most illustrative. “The manipulated antecedents of behavior are typically environmental events in cases that are amenable to experimental analysis, but may include covert or private (intraorganismic) events as well. Covert events (characterized behaviorally or neurally) invariably accompany environment–behavior relations and indispensably contribute to scientific interpretation.” During spoken communication we are always dealing with these “intra-organismic events.” SVB becomes possible when a speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. This unusual “antecedent of behavior” requires our conscious attention for “covert or private events.” Attention for covert events is stimulated by  SVB public speech in which this was reinforced. To the extent that we have been exposed to such SVB public speech, we are able to produce SVB public speech as well as SVB private speech. Exposure to SVB changes “covert events (characterized behaviorally or neurally)” which in turn increases our ability to manage our environment.

The combined effects of SVB covert and overt events “indispensably contribute to scientific interpretation”, but our exposure to NVB skews our scientific efforts as it prevents us from combining covert and overt events while we speak. In the name of objectivity science has had a long history of excluding covert events by calling them subjective. This dualistic split is caused and maintained by NVB. In SVB, the speaker realizes that he or she is and has always been simultaneously the listener. Stated differently, SVB is the only way in which scientific interaction can occur. Subjectivity must be included into our objectivity otherwise we are not truly objective. By steering away from talking and by focusing only on academic writing, scientists have not yet been able to achieve and capitalize on SVB. SVB is a natural phenomenon in which the speaker and the listener attain a sense of well-being. Our well-being informs us of whether we are having SVB. In absence of well-being we are having NVB. SVB is a learned skill which over time becomes more useful. The more we have SVB the less inclined we will be to have NVB.

September 28, 2015

September 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my second response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). It amazes me that the first sentence of that paper produced so much writing in me. I like to write as it allows me to explore my verbal behavior in a manner that speaking often will not allow. When speaking allows the exploration of the chains of functionally antecedent events, I call that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I know what it takes to have SVB. Since most people miss the behavioral history which makes it possible, 

I used to explore SVB alone, by talking out loud and listening to myself while I speak. I made many audio-recordings of that and occasionally I still listen to them. This phase in my exploration of SVB paved the way for what I am doing right now: writing about it. For many years I have resisted writing about SVB as I found speaking about it more important. I still think that way, but am no longer against writing about it, as I read  behaviorist literature every day. Writing about behaviorism is my way of studying it and of producing an account of SVB which I find satisfying. 

As far as I am concerned, there are no hidden causal variables of SVB. I can have SVB all by myself as well as with you. To the extent that I have had and have SVB with you, I had and will continue to have SVB with myself. Since I have had more and more SVB with others, I have it more and more with myself, so much so that I can now write about it. In essence, I write to thank others for the fact that they have had and continue to have SVB with me. My writing then is a function of feeling gratitude and I enjoy it just as much as I do talking. 

I still want to write more in response to the paper’s first sentence “We begin by stipulating three central points upon which we and the broad consensus of commentators agree.” Agreeing that these written words have meaning is experiencing the reinforcing effects they produce. If the reader doesn’t experience such an effect, he or she loses interest. If we agree, there is nothing to say about it and we are still. Since stillness is often missing, we can conclude that there is often disagreement. Our disagreement is most apparent in the separation of our private speech from our public speech. If we agree, our private is part of our public speech, but if we disagree, there is a conflict between what we say to ourselves and what we say to others. In the former, we have SVB, but in the latter, we have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is called that way because the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as a noxious stimulus. Agreeing requires us to pay attention to how we sound, not only to how other speakers sound, but to how we ourselves as speakers sound. If we don’t pay attention to how we ourselves sound while we speak, we will have NVB. The conflict in NVB is created and maintained by the separation between the speaker and the listener, which in turn separates our public speech from our private speech. In SVB, private speech is once again experienced and therefore understood as part of public speech.  Our conflicts end when the speaker’s sound changes.

The sense of oneness, which occurs as a consequence the speaker’s sound, makes us still and makes our public speech unnecessary. Our silence is possible due to the absence of verbal behavior. We can still do all sorts of things, but we neither talk with each other nor with ourselves. We can do what we do without having any covert self-talk.  This possibility, however, can only be achieved due to SVB and cannot be achieved by what is known as meditation. People have practiced many techniques to quiet down their self-talk, but these techniques never involved the exploration of the link between their public speech and their private speech. Only SVB can make us quiet and this is based on peaceful relationships. SVB private speech is a function of SVB public speech, but NVB private speech is function of NVB public speech. 

As most lawyers will tell you, agreement in writing is more important than a verbal agreement. I will tell you, however, such legal nonsense is a perversion of the possibility of vocal verbal agreement. It is possible that we are attuned to ourselves and to each other, but how can we be attuned to each other if we are not attuned to ourselves? In NVB, the other, the speaker, is more important than the listener. In NVB the speaker’s voice forces the listener to listen. In NVB the listener nonverbally submits to the forcefulness of the speaker, because he or she knows that he or she will be punished by the speaker if he or she doesn’t give in. In NVB the speaker dominates the listener, who, as a consequence, always has negative private speech. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker is attuned to the listener and the listener is attuned to the speaker. In other words, in SVB there is bi-directional communication, but in NVB there is uni-directional communication. I don’t think that this uni-directional communication is real communication. It is a form of violence which continues to justify many other forms of violence. We have not understood the difference between SVB and NVB because we have not, while we speak, been able to make the distinction. Only when we discriminate this difference while we speak, will we recognize that experiencing this difference precedes understanding this difference. Without experience we can’t understand the SVB/NVB distinction and so we must talk to explore this experience. Agreement with each other will release us from our verbal prison, which prevented agreement with ourselves. We cannot agree with ourselves as long as we cannot agree with each other. Only if we acknowledge the circumstances in which we agree what agreement means, will our agreement be meaningful. Such circumstances can be identified and maintained by SVB in which each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. SVB speakers dissolve negative self-talk in the listeners who become utterly quiet and peaceful. The speaker’s goal in SVB is always the same: to stop talking. When we have said what can and must be said a silence will descent on us. Silence is the natural outcome of the behavioral cusp of listening to ourselves while we speak. Nothing reinforces us more than this silence.  This is an answer to the title question “What Do Reiforcers Reinforce?

September 27, 2015

September 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my first response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). The authors write “We begin by stipulating three central points upon which we and the broad consensus of commentators agree.” I will use their paper to explain to the reader the importance of talking about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Only when we talk – and not when we read – can and will behaviorists grasp and agree with the difference between these unexplored, but completely obvious response classes. In this writing I can only write about talking, but we need to be talking about talking, to be able to learn more about talking. The illusion, that we are part of a conversation while writing and listening while we are reading, continuous to distract us from having SVB and is generating only NVB. To be on the proverbial, visual (not auditory) same page we need to listen to ourselves while we speak, we need to agree on how we sound.

We can’t agree on how we sound together if we aren’t even aware of how we sound by ourselves. To the extent that we have been exposed to and conditioned by NVB, we aren’t even aware of how we sound and as a result, we don’t notice that we sound horrible when, presumably, we interact. NVB is the assumption of interaction. We think we are knowledgeable and we do what we can, but without the SVB/NVB distinction we are ignorant and create and increase our trouble. We try to sound good, we try to sound happy, knowledgeable, self-assured and in control, but all these failed attempts are remnants of a non-existing behavior-directing inner agents, which continued unabated in our NVB. Every time a behaviorist engages in NVB, he or she still believes that he or she is causing his or her own behavior. If they would talk with each other about the SVB/NVB distinction, they would be able to recognize and acknowledge this and come to terms with this immense problem.  

  

When I discovered radical behaviorism and was excited as it explains the workings of SVB as well as NVB, I thought that behaviorist would soon embrace it, but this didn’t happen. These authors refer to what is written and read, when they and others write about what they and others have written. Their so-called “broad consensus” with which the “commentators agree” is biased towards writing and in total denial of how we actually talk with each other. However, they too experience the verbal episodes which are characterized by high rates of NVB and they too experience the relief which is felt when circumstances permit them to have more SVB. This difference never stands out, because, as authorities, they are used to talking at instead of with the graduate students they supervise. It is only probably in their personal lives, with wives, kids, family members and friends that the difference between SVB and NVB can become apparent, but this doesn’t seem to affect them professionally. To the contrary, they use behaviorism to hide from reality and escape in the safe world of academia, a world in which they can write and read and do as little talking as possible. Although they  don’t realize this, many have written about behaviorism in a manner which puts people off who want to talk about it. Moreover, the failure of behaviorists to communicate their science is caused by the fact that they have as high rates of NVB as any non-behaviorist. Their constant emphasis on what they say ignores and dismisses the importance of how they speak. As behaviorists expose superstitions that go on in the name of science, they are considered to be a threat. Their rejection by mainstream academia didn’t make them sensitive about how they interact with others, since they, after all, are right. They agree in their writings that they are right, but once they talk with each other, all sorts of disagreements emerge, as they, like everybody else, also don’t know how to talk with each other. Their so-called agreement is a paper tiger, which doesn’t have any power. How different it would be if they would  agree while they talk with each other and show to the world on a video what this looks and sounds like? Movies in which actors and actresses act what agreement looks and sounds like simply don’t cut it.

In SVB speakers are no longer acting as if and the effect of this on the listener is of great importance. SVB cannot be replaced by anyone who is speaking in a scripted manner. Such speech is NVB and, if listened to more carefully, we agree that it doesn’t sound good. Once we finally listen to how we sound, we are amazed that we agree. In other words, nonverbally we already agree, but we have yet to accurately express this verbally. As long as we are not deliberately creating environments in which we can and will listen to ourselves, we don’t and can’t hear the difference between SVB and NVB. Consequently, we can only achieve SVB in an accidental, irregular and limited manner. However, our body always experiences the stress, fear, frustration and anger, which is involved in NVB. We, that is, the speaker, may not notice, but the listener always notices. Moreover, this listener is not only someone else, that listener is also the speaker him or herself. Thus, the speaker who doesn’t listen to him or herself stresses him or herself as well as others. By contrast, in SVB, the speaker listens to him or herself and agrees with him or herself that he or she sounds good. The SVB speaker is like a musician, who plays his or her instrument with great skill and deliberateness. The process of self-listening unfolds during SVB, which becomes more refined as it continues. This happens as the sound of the speaker reinforces the speaker and the listener. To the extent that a musician enjoys his or her music, he or she lets others enjoy what he or she enjoys. His or her practice is as joyful as his or her performance.

Consensus about SVB is made possible by the verifiable experience that self-listening includes other-listening. Only when we listen to ourselves can and will we listen to each other. In NVB, other-listening excludes self-listening. NVB is hierarchical and thus the NVB speaker separates the speaker from the listener. The NVB speaker prevents the listener from listening to him or herself. He or she achieves that by preventing the listener from speaking. Only when the listener speaks out loud can he or she hear him or herself. As long as behaviorists keep emphasizing writing and reading, they can’t have the actual experience of SVB.

September 26, 2015

September 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my eight response to “Establishing the Macrobehavior of Ethical Self-Control in Arrangement of Macro Contingencies in Two Macro Cultures” (2014) by Aécio Borba, Emmanuel Zagury Tourinho and Sigrid S. Glenn. Although these authors believe that they are scientific about the culture, they are biased towards directly acting variables, which are causing most behavior. To take into account these antecedent events would require a new way of talking: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The notion that it is difficult or even impossible to take into account every variable that pertains to the way in which we talk derives from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

During NVB we remain insensitive and we are talking at instead of with each other. Talking with each other in SVB is possible by the sound of our voice. In SVB the voice of the speaker is perceived as an appetitive stimulus, but in NVB the sound of the speaker is perceived by the listener as aversive. When the speaker talks at the listener his or her voice grabs, stabs, pushes, pulls, drains, chokes, upsets, intimidates and dysregulates the listener.  Such a way of talking is not conducive to tracing the variables of which speech is function. Only during SVB, in which the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, can the listeners become the speaker, who can detect antecedents which determine NVB. In NVB listeners can only refer to antecedents that inaccurately describe the negative emotions which the speaker induces. In SVB our conversation becomes so refined then that we can detect the real antecedents, which dissolves our urge to fill in the blanks with explanatory fictions.

It is remarkable how these (and many other) authors keep beating around the bush. “Malott and Glenn (2006) emphasized that when describing a macro-contingency we refer to the operants of multiple individuals that generate a cultural cumulative effect in addition to the individualized consequences of each response. An intervention in a cultural problem of this nature would involve establishing contingencies to alter individual operants.” Which contingencies can alter individual operants? How can their cultural interventions be effective if they overlook the importance of why people talk the way they do? They are obviously oblivious of the SVB/NVB distinction, which brings into view, or rather, within hearing range, contingencies that set the stage for SVB and NVB. They write about vague matters such as meta-contingencies.

Their example of limiting “the number of fast food restaurants in each zone of the city” as “an intervention to reduce the number of individuals whose diets are rich in sugar and fat” is typical in that it represents a bias to visual stimuli. Although, of course, visual stimuli are very important, our attention for visual stimuli often takes attention away from our ability to pay attention to what we hear when we speak with each other. Culture is transmitted by our vocal verbal behavior.

The authors fantasize about the workings of the macro-contingencies. “However, it is possible that an individual sensitive to traffic congestion or the pollution caused by traffic congestion would prefer not to drive his or her own car to work, thus producing a consequence that is beneficial to the culture. In these cases, individuals are likely to behave this way because these phenomena are associated with other social contingencies, such as the existence of ethical sanctions contingent on impulsive responses.” It is possible, but only likely if they are reinforced for making choices which are “beneficial to the culture.” People make choices based on what is good for them individually and “other social contingencies, such as the existence of ethical sanctions contingent on impulsive responses” are punishments, not reinforcements. Stated differently, the authors advocate NVB instead of SVB and I disagree with that. Aversive control of behavior has been practiced for way too long. Only as a side-note they write “However, opportunity for verbal interaction among participants appears to enhance the frequency of self-controlled responses.” The observed effects could be explained entirely by the “verbal interaction among participants”, which is a more parsimonious explanation than meta-contingencies. Interestingly, the condition which was manipulated in the experiments which were done by Borba et al. (2014), was whether participants could interact verbally and had access to each other. This directly maps onto SVB. In NVB, on the other hand, we cannot interact and have no access to each other.

Although it may seem as if people are interacting in NVB, participants don’t “have access to one another’s choices in real time.” During NVB, we are scheming, dominating, manipulating and faking it. It comes as no surprise “The results revealed a higher number of self-controlled responses in the groups exposed to Conditions 2 and 3, i.e., those in which there was a possibility of verbal interaction.” Although we keep mainly having NVB, there is occasionally a possibility to have SVB and this is how culture evolved. Cultures around the globe have different rates of SVB, but this is not recognized. In Holland, my country of origin, I experienced higher rates of SVB than in the USA. “The microculture that could interact verbally throughout the entire experiment produced self-controlled responses reaching 100% in most sessions.” However, it goes unnoticed that the microculture is more likely to set the stage for SVB. When people are given the choice to have SVB or NVB, they will choose SVB each time. Santana and Tourinho (2011) found “the results demonstrated the importance of verbal behavior in the implementation of ethical self-control responses.” Although the authors don’t address why cultures transmit high rates of SVB or NVB, it is a start that at least they address the importance of verbal behavior. If they knew about the vocal SVB/NVB distinction they would have linked the “opportunity for verbal interaction among participants” with SVB, because only SVB “appears to enhance the frequency of self-controlled responses”.