October 11, 2015

October 11, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my fifteenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). It is very enjoyable to read my own earlier writings. I have come to like it just as much a listening to old audio recordings of myself. It is the subtlety of my explanations which are like music. I am happy that my writing is having this effect on me as it tells me it might have this effect on others as well. Yesterday’s discussion with my students was delightful. One female student had read her paper about what it is like for her to listen to herself while she speaks. It affected everyone and there was a lot of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). When the class came to an end a couple of students remained behind who still wanted to talk with me some more. They were all women. I praised them and told them that women have always been more open to SVB than men. 

The speaker’s voice is an unconditioned reinforcer that “strengthens the” listener’s “responses that precede them.” Listener’s responses are the responses of the listener who is not the speaker and responses of the listener who is also the speaker. “Second, at the same time that environment–behavior relations are strengthened, synaptic efficacies are being increased along other pathways leading from frontal cortex (and neostriatum) back to VTA (LCB, pp. 96–101; Donahoe, in press-b). As these feedback pathways are strengthened, the stimulus paired with the unconditioned reinforcer becomes able, by itself, to activate the VTA.” The voice of the speaker, experienced by the speaker-as-own-listener, comes to have an automatically reinforcing effect.

The voice of the speaker-as-own-listener is like the music being played by a violinist. The violinist or any other musician for that matter, listens attentively to how he or she sounds, and by perfecting his or her sound, he or she enjoys his or her play even more. Stated differently, the sound that is produced by the musician is self-reinforcing. This is possible because “the conditioned reinforcers exploit feedback pathways to activate the VTA.” Similarly, the voice of the speaker becomes a conditioned reinforcer for the speaker-as-own-listener. Speakers other than the speaker-as-own-listener can also become conditioned reinforcers, but start out as unconditioned reinforcers.

“Once these feedback pathways become functional, both unconditioned and conditioned reinforcers cause dopamine to be liberated and synaptic efficacies to be changed via a common cellular mechanism.” I have listened to myself often enough to make these “feedback pathways become functional” as I experience SVB on my own as well as with others. When I can’t have SVB with others I continue to have it on my own. Kudos to the authors, who, with a simple drawing, beautifully explain that the “Synaptic efficacies are strengthened along two sets of pathways: (a) those mediating reinforced behavior and (b) those leading back to the VTA (curved line with two right arrows). During the course of conditioning, these feedback pathways become capable of implementing conditioned reinforcement. After Donahoe and Palmer (1994).”

Interestingly, these authors have identified the neural mechanism of SVB, yet they do not recognize it at the behavioral level. May be when they read this, they are willing to explore and verify SVB with me and take time to talk about? In spite of much rejection and the ubiquity of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I was stimulated to continue with my exploration of SVB by speaking out loud and by listening to myself. Each time when I was frustrated with NVB, I withdrew from it and found SVB on my own. While sitting alone and listening to my own sound, while talking out loud, I attained the SVB again, which previously wasn’t possible. By going back and forth between the situations in which SVB could or couldn’t occur, I came to terms with the fact that I was the only one capable of maintaining SVB; I had been changed by “feedback pathways” which “are said to implement internal reinforcement.”

Discovering SVB was initially a very difficult experience for me. I knew that I had found something which only I knew and the more I talked about it with others the more this became apparent. Initially, I had no behaviorist knowledge at all to explain the workings of SVB, but in spite of that my explanations of what I called listen-while-you-speak were validated more and more often. Currently, in my function as psychology instructor, I am in the lucky position to work with groups of students for the duration of a whole semester. This gives me the ample opportunity to explain and verify the SVB/NVB distinction with them. Moreover, I have given many seminars for faculty and staff members of Butte College, who have given me the highest approval and appreciation.

This paper, which addressed the “unified reinforcement principle,” educates me about why this was possible. My explanation is about what happens at a verbal behavioral level. There can only be SVB in the absence of aversive stimulation. This is not some imaginary ideal to be strived for, but a reality which can be experienced and maintained. We can only talk, that is, have SVB, when there is nothing to fear. Behaving verbally, which is, phylogenetically, newer behavior than fight, flight or freeze responses, could only emerge in the absence of these responses, that is, in safe and stable environments. “Because feedback pathways from the cortex and neostriatum to the autonomic system appear to be absent, the inability to engage the internal-reinforcement mechanism may account for the failure of autonomic responses to be conditioned with operant contingencies: The delay between the occurrence of the autonomic response and the occurrence of the external (unconditioned) reinforcer may exceed the temporal requirements of the cellular mechanisms of reinforcement.”

No amount of artful sophistication of musicians or conductors can undo the disturbing effects created by someone who is crackling with a bag of potato chips or someone who is having his or her phone go off during a classical concert. Likewise, while we are talking together, no amount of self-reinforcement makes the reinforcement by others no longer needed.  Just as music can be disturbed by noise, so can SVB be intruded by NVB.

October 10, 2015

October 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my fourteenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). Another way of addressing what I was writing about was that the molecular perspective sets the stage for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), while the molar perspective sets the stage for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  Although I haven’t talked with them, the paper tells me the authors are capable of some SVB, as they didn’t see any reason to build their career around the molar-molecular distinction. 

Had I become familiar with his work years earlier, I would have, like the authors “nothing to add to Skinner’s position as supplemented by normative philosophy of science.” However, as I was not drilled into rigid behavioral thinking, I was able to come up with the SVB/NVB distinction. This distinction became clear to me as I made public , to myself, my private speech. I began to listen to my own sound, while I speak and thus I discovered SVB and NVB, in which I don’t listen to myself while I speak. It is the transition from private speech, which can’t be listened to, to public speech, which can be listened to, which sets the stage for SVB. Contingencies involving the exclusion of private speech from public speech keep setting the stage for NVB. SVB assigns an important role to private stimuli, because private stimuli are part of speech. “Our approach to conditioning assigns an important role to internal (private) stimuli (viz., Field; McIlvane & Dube), including those produced by motivational operations (viz., Michael). Clearly, such stimuli are essential to any comprehensive account of behavior.”

I disagree with the author’s “emphasis upon the control of behavior by environmental [external] stimuli” and consider this as a consequence of the high rates of NVB, which surrounds them on a daily basis. If they had higher rates of SVB, they would have found, that internal stimuli are more rather than less “directly manipulable” than external stimuli. Moreover, had they known about the SVB/NVB distinction, they would have been able to have more SVB and would have found a multitude of internal variables, which are “readily subjected to experimental analysis.” In SVB we verify that our “private events are ultimately traceable to the action of events that originate in the environment.”

During SVB, the listener and the speaker recognize that the listener, who mediates the verbal behavior of the speaker, as well as the speaker, who is reinforced by the listener, are indeed each other’s environment. In other words, neither the speaker nor the listener causes his or her own behavior. During SVB conversation this is not merely an interpretation, but a tangible shared experience, which is entirely different from the absence of such an experience in NVB. The contrast between SVB and NVB is such that there is very little left to be guessed. Our conversation is an empirical event when internal stimuli are expressed in our public speech as vocal verbal behavior in SVB.

Absence of SVB made these authors write “It is primarily with regard to interpretation rather than experimental analysis that internal stimuli make an appearance in LCB.” The reason that nothing about SVB was published in peer-reviewed journals is because I found this writing more important and reinforcing. I don’t want to be judged about what I say by what I write. I rather have the opposite: judge what I write by what I say, by how I speak. Engage in SVB with me and everything I write here will become clear. Without engaging in SVB, you will think that this doesn’t conform to what you know about behaviorism. If that happens to be the case, so be it. This writing is the cumulative record of my behavior. These results are mine alone. You can have SVB too, but you can’t accomplish these results by reading and writing. There needs to be SVB interaction between you and me. 

We keep having NVB as we don’t differentiate between SVB and NVB. Once we do that it becomes clear that we want to have SVB, but we simply don’t know how to have it. It is no exaggeration to state that we are deprived of SVB. If we achieve it all, we only do so in an accidental, momentary fashion. We have never achieved SVB deliberately, reliably, consistently, skillfully and consciously, yet this is the only way in which it can be maintained. Our inability to achieve and maintain SVB makes us do all sorts of other things, which don’t accomplish it and prevent us from accomplishing it. These behaviors, all related to NVB, need to be decreased before we can increase SVB.

“In our formulation, deprivation may affect behavior in several ways (LCB, pp. 35–36). For one, by depriving an organism of contact with a stimulus, that stimulus typically becomes a more vigorous elicitor of behavior.” Emergence of pathological behaviors can be explained. “As such, the stimulus is able to function as a more effective reinforcer because its presentation evokes a larger behavioral discrepancy.” This evocation of a “larger behavioral discrepancy” leads to development of adaptive as well as maladaptive behaviors. NVB is a maladaptive behavior that prevents positive interaction and relationship. If we replace “stimulus” with person or speaker and if, because of his or her NVB, “the organism”, that is, someone else or the listener, is “deprived from contact with that stimulus”, that is, from the speaker, it becomes apparent that the speaker’s verbal behavior plays a crucial role in the maintenance of maladaptive behaviors of the listener. NVB speakers can’t ever endorse SVB. The listener who is always aversively influenced by such a NVB speaker will inadvertently behave ineffectively.

If the condition of inescapable aversive stimulation continues, it will surely create pathological behavior. It has been fascinating for me to work at a psychiatric hospital, where I was able to introduce patients to SVB. Nobody reinforces SVB more than those who are presumed to have a mental illness. How is this possible? Although they are troubled, about one thing they are clear: they immediately recognize SVB. While I was a Ph.D. candidate and gave groups during my practicum at John George Psychiatric Hospital in San Leandro, California, the staff stood by and was amazed by my ability to communicate calmly with so many people so quickly and so effortlessly. I started a conversation with just one person, but soon others would gather as they noticed something unusual was happening. Patients urged me to teach SVB to the hospital staff. They told me the staff mainly gave them NVB. I withdrew from my Ph.D. study as I could not tolerate the high rates of NVB in academia. At the time, I was still ignorant about behaviorism, but because I withdrew from this hostile Ph.D. environment, I was able to discover and study on my own the science which explains what I have practiced for years.

October 9, 2015

October 9, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my thirteenth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). The authors hypothesize about the “eventual resolution of an integrated molar-molecular account”, but they don’t refer to the spoken communication that is necessary to make that happen. I claim that only Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) can make this happen. Molar behaviorists would have us believe that behavior cannot be understood by focusing on events in the moment. Moreover, they accuse Skinner’s molecular behaviorism, which holds that behavior can be broken down into its atomistic parts or molecules, as being inconsistent with his “Selection by Consequences” (Skinner, 1981).  This is total nonsense.

Skinner found that “response-contingent reinforcers most commonly alter the control of responses by their antecedents.” His research led him to state that “discriminative control of responding is ‘‘practically inevitable’’ (Skinner, 1937, p. 273). Although the authors of the paper under review agree with Skinner that “There are no inherently molar or molecular levels of analysis; these are relative terms, either of which can be applied to the very same observation depending on the frame of reference at that moment”, they don’t seem to appreciate Skinner’s molecular perspective is absolutely needed if we are to ever have any decent conversation with each other. Molar behaviorists, by contrast, who view behavior as the ultimate product of a person’s history, have accused molecular behaviorists of committing a fallacy by inventing fictitious proximal causes of behavior, but while they are doing this, by writing more papers, they back out of the conversation in which we could agree that molar and molecular are indeed “relative terms”.

Since behaviorists haven’t acknowledged the SVB/NVB distinction they  remain divided among themselves. I write about SVB due to “effects of selection by reinforcement.” In spite of high rates of rejection, I have continued with SVB as it is incredibly reinforcing. I feel more accepted than ever, but this wasn’t always the case. Due to self-experimentation I am able to commit to SVB. As a teacher, I receive feedback from my students, who explore SVB with me. Also, I received positive feedback from faculty who participated in my seminars. This is not to say that I am not constantly challenged, but I love that challenge. It is because of this challenge that I keep learning to have more SVB and avoid NVB. I keep creating the situations in which I can rise to the occasion.

“Which effects are produced depend on the specific environmental and behavioral events that are reliably contiguous with the reinforcer (i.e., with the stimulus evoking a behavioral discrepancy).” I call myself a verbal engineer as I create and maintain the contingency for SVB with my verbal behavior. In spite of problems, I set myself this difficult task which is appreciated. The authors propose a “unified reinforcement principle.” However, “Because the nonspecific dopaminergic system does not directly innervate the autonomic nervous system, our position is consistent with early speculations by Skinner (1937) regarding the inability to condition autonomic responses using operant reinforcement contingencies (see Donahoe, in press-b).” SVB is made possible due to the absence of aversive stimuli. Stated differently, the voice of the speaker doesn’t trigger a fight, flight or freeze response in the listener.

I think that SVB is necessary for operant conditioning, but NVB involves respondent behaviors that limit operant learning. Another way of talking, SVB, is needed to create a level of analysis which will help us to understand “anomalous findings”. “The inability of autonomically mediated responses to be modified directly by operant contingencies illustrates a case in which the interpretation of anomalous findings at the behavioral level (some responses are affected by their consequences, whereas others are not) may be resolvable by information from another level of analysis.” This information can and must be obtained while we engage in SVB. Moreover, we can’t have SVB and NVB simultaneously as we only in engage in one or the other.   

“Autonomically mediated responses are simply excluded as candidates

for direct selection by operant contingencies, but they are nevertheless acquired when operant contingencies are implemented.” What this means is that during instances of SVB, NVB stops, but during instances of NVB, SVB stops, that is, if we are going to have more SVB then NVB will be extinguished. SVB could never be extinguished by our increased rates of NVB as SVB is the essence of a happy, healthy life. I noticed in my life that less and less respondents are selected and predict that this process will continue based on my behavioral history, which was often troubled by respondents. Also, I became more studious and began to write about my increase of operant learning. “The contention that both operants and respondents are selected during operant contingencies is noncontroversial, and is explicitly endorsed by a number of the commentators (Galbicka; Dworkin & Branch; see LCB, pp. 44–45).”

As we achieve more SVB, more operants and less respondents will be selected. My life as well as this writing is proof of that. Reading this paper makes me realize how far I have come. “Indeed, one of the most important implications of the unified reinforcement principle is that the outcome of conditioning depends on interactions, if any, among stimuli and responses that are candidates for inclusion in the selected environment–behavior relation.’’ Authentic relationship (interaction), among people (stimuli) is possible, who behave (responses) in ways that are adaptive (candidates for inclusion) to maintain peace (selected environment-behavior relation). In other words, SVB is “one of the most important implications the unified reinforcement principle.”

I insist that “the outcome of conditioning depends on interactions,” but not between stimuli, but between people. If we can’t consider people as stimuli, we miss out on interaction. NVB is not interaction. It stops it, as it increases fearful respondent behavior which constrains operant learning. We must re-define what interaction is. Only SVB is interaction as puts an end to our long and dreadful history of aversive stimulation.

October 8, 2015

October 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my twelfth response to “The Unit of Selection: What Do Reinforcers Reinforce?” by J.W. Donahoe, D.C. Palmer and J.E. Burgos (1997). Public ‘listenings’, not observations of SVB as well as NVB, will make us realize that these response classes occur in every language. It is only when we shift our attention from seeing to listening, that we can validate the SVB/NVB distinction and become aware of what happens at the level of the organism, that is, what happens to our own body when we speak and listen simultaneously. Skinner’s position was that such “principles [of public observation] are validated by independent observations at their own level of analysis, and, when validated, are said to explain the observations.” I claim, however, that observations are not helping us to improve our relationships. I insist that we must focus our attention on listening.  “The principles themselves are” NOT “explained” either “by observations at levels lower than those at which the principle was formulated.” We only make sense with what we say to each other by how we are saying it. In SVB the speaker speaks and takes turns with the listener, but in NVB the coercive speaker speaks at the listener and never really gives him or her the opportunity to speak.

There is nothing “circular” about the fact that NVB will make us look for something that can only be found if we listen more closely.  Once we do this and have verified the existence of these two response classes (SVB and NVB), we will realize how much of our “reductive reasoning” is based on NVB and how little it is based on SVB.  I agree with Skinner that “The unending nature of reductive scientific explanation is not a source of embarrassment; it is simply the way science proceeds”, but I have good reason to believe people will feel embarrassed once they find out about the SVB/NVB distinction. When scientists don’t realize that their NVB is unscientific their endeavors are fruitless.

Sadly, “in behavior analysis, the levels-of-analysis issue most often surfaces in the context of the molar–molecular debate.” This “debate”, like any other debate, is based on NVB and continues to create division in the behaviorist community. SVB, on the other hand, dissolves this division, which is artificial as the distinction between the environment within or outside of the skin. The authors agree that although “orderly relations exists between variables defined over appreciable intervals of time” these orderly relations also “exist between individual events within the session.” In other words, “Order exists at both levels simultaneously; which orderly relation is most useful depends on the question at hand.” This either/or dichotomy is maintained by NVB and dissolved by SVB in which we accept both levels. SVB is a fine-grained way of talking in which things can be expressed which cannot be expressed as long the speaker doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. The way of talking in which behaviorists agree that “There are no inherently molar or molecular levels of analysis; these are relative terms, either of which can be applied to the very same observation depending on the frame of reference at that moment”, has to be different from the way of talking in which they are only talking about one or the other. The latter is an example of NVB, but the former is an example of SVB. Thus, the authors have given a verbal description of SVB. The question remains, however, if there are behaviorists who have enough SVB in their behavioral history to be able to talk about it.

I just finished reading a paper by A. Neuringer “Self-experimentation: A Call For Action” (1981). Without now going into that paper, I think that Neuringer would understand me. SVB is a form of self-experimentation. One can sit by oneself and speak out loud and figure things out about relationship and interaction, which are almost impossible to find out while we are talking together. Establishment of speaking and listening behavior that occurs at the same rate is easily disturbed by those who are not familiar with it, which is most of us. I have found SVB while I was alone and also had to go back to it again and again by being alone. 

Returning to the “Unit of Selection”, it needs to be made clear that in SVB the speaker and the listener are experienced and understood as  one, by both the speaker as well as by the listener. Other authors have formulated this differently as they never engaged long enough in SVB which would have allowed them to formulate it how I describe it. Their account is very far-removed from day to day human interaction and consequently “Even if an adequate molar principle of choice were formulated, it would, at most, ‘‘govern’’ the behavior of the scientist, not the subject. A molar choice rule may be a valid induction from observations of behavior, but the moment-to-moment contiguities of environment, behavior, and reinforcer are the events that make contact with the organism (Galbicka; Hutchison; Marr; Vaughan). In SVB “the moment-to-moment contiguities of environment, behavior, and reinforcer are the events that make contact with the organism.”

When I first discovered SVB I called it ‘the language that creates space.’ As anyone who engages in SVB agrees, this space-creating dimension is also experienced as freedom, relief, unburdening, opening up, calming, understanding, revealing and validating the communicator’s individual behavioral history. Things can be said because they can be said. The speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks and cultivates awareness about NVB, in which many things cannot be said. Likewise, in SVB feelings are felt and expressed and thoughts are articulated, because they can be felt and because they can be thought and they can be expressed. The difference between SVB and NVB introduces the speaker to the silence which comes with this novel way of talking. The more we have SVB, the more we become silent and peaceful. This silence is qualitatively different from silence that was imposed. It is caused and maintained by our SVB expressions. We express hesitatingly but with increasing confidence the noise that bothers us as our NVB private speech is included once again into our public speech. As we can all hear and agree that our NVB private speech is and was part of NVB public speech, it will transform into SVB public and private speech.