November 15, 2015

November 15, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Student, 

This is a second response to the paper “Seeing with ears: Sightless human’s perception of dog bark provides a test for structural rules in vocal communication” (2009) by C.Molnar, P.Pongracz and A. Miklosi. Before I will further comment on this paper, I first want to tell you about the wonderful day I had yesterday with my wife Bonnie. We had our thirty year marriage anniversary. In the morning, we went for a nice walk in the park. Then we went shopping and bought two honeysuckle plants, which I planted in our garden. It was a day filled with joy and peace. I had a wonderful skype conversation with Arturo, my behaviorist friend from Colombia. It was so nice to share our happiness with him. After a lovely lunch and some wine I took a blissful nap, while Bonnie was watching her favorite show on TV.

In the evening, I was interviewed by Sue Hilderbrand. She has her own talk-show called “The Real Issue” at KZFR, the local radio station. The interview went very well and my message of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) had a big impact on her and on many others. Ben, a friend of Sue, also joined the conversation and was explaining in his own words what I was talking about. Jake, an environmentalist, who was to be interviewed after me, also said many validating things about our need for SVB. Sue, who is involved in local politics, said that she would definitely have me in her show again. Bonnie was reading a book in bed when I came home. It was cozy to join her. I also read a little, but soon I was overcome by sleep. I slept well and long and had a beautiful dream about the history of my knowledge. I was feeling so grateful that I almost started to cry, but I didn’t. I slept much longer than usual as I was having these positive emotions. 

My body feels rested and my thoughts about the distinction between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are clear. To my knowledge nobody has analyzed spoken communication in the way I do. There are immense implications of my analysis. Sue, who interviewed me, brought up the issue of fear for being open. I said that our fear is not for SVB, but for NVB or rather, our fear signifies the absence of SVB. She agreed. We talked about how SVB public speech causes SVB private speech and how such SVB private speech allows us to recognize, avoid and ultimately prevent NVB public speech. Jake, the environmentalist, believed  it is because of NVB that our environment is in decline and Ben said we must learn to talk about difficult issues with SVB.

In spite of the fact that humans have language, our spoken communication is very much like that of animals. “Perhaps the best known examples can be found among alarm calls, which refer to different types of predators of a given species and elicit type-specific avoidance behavior(Diana monkeys, Cercopithecus diana , Zuberbuhler, Noe, & Seyfarth, 1997; suricata, Suricata suricatta , Manser, Seyfarth, & Cheney, 2002; prairie dog, Cynomys spp., Slobodchikoff, Fischer, & Shapiro, 1986; chicken, Gallus gallus, Evans, Evans, & Marler, 1993).” Like monkeys, we too produce “alarm calls”, that is, we produce NVB; like prairie dogs, we too produce NVB sounds “which refer to different types of predators”; and, like chickens, our sound too changes when we are threatened by predators, who produce NVB. NVB is produced by those who threaten as well as those who are threatened. NVB is the language of threat, fear, intimidation and aggression. SVB, on the other hand, is the language of affiliation, sociality and peace. Unfortunately, “These calls are” mistakenly “considered as functionally referential.” Animal researchers anthropomorphize by thinking that humans are different from animals as they have language. Although we have language, we are, biologically speaking, more similar than different than animals. 

As we misunderstand our verbal behavior, as we believe to be causing it, we explain animal behavior in terms of reference too. Presumably something inside of the animal, the “caller’s inner state”, causes it to call. Consequently, ethologists wrongly continue to “emphasize animal communication is more than simply sending signals about the caller’s inner state: Showing the proper behavioral response to a referential signal also requires learning from the receivers.” Let’s leave out “a referential signal” as it doesn’t explain anything. “The proper behavioral response” only “requires learning” or conditioning due to environmental stimuli, in other words, behavior is selected by consequences. Another way of describing the process, in which the caller, the speaker, learns from the receiver, the listener, is by emphasizing the two can’t exist separate from each other. 

The caller doesn’t only learn from the receiver, but the receiver also learns from the caller. Calling and receiving are bi-directional rather than uni-directional phenomena. These authors misrepresent the research by Owren and Rendall (1997), which points out that this whole information processing business is wrong. The organism-environment relationship is sufficient for explaining behavior. Their ““affect-conditioning” model for nonhuman primate (and many other animal) vocalizations”, also accounts for human vocalizations and doesn’t involve a self.  

“The most effective signals are” NOT “those that directly affect the receivers’ inner state”, and consequently the behavior, but those that directly change “their behavior.” This phenomenon can be experienced when our interaction changes from SVB to NVB. If we pay attention to how we sound while we speak, we immediately notice that as soon as a threat occurs this changes the sound of our voice. We are used to talking about feelings as inner states and that is why we are so bad at expressing emotions. As long as we continue to think emotions represent some imaginary inner state, we have an inaccurate account of how we are immediately affected by our environment, that is, by each other. There is a distinction between contingency-governed and rule-governed behavior. Due to language we overestimate the importance of rule-governed behavior, behavior that is function of verbal instruction, and underestimate the importance of contingency-governed behavior, behavior that is a function of other people.

Not surprisingly, these researchers don’t go into Owren’s & Rendall’s (1997) “Affect-Conditioning Model.” They mention it only in passing, but they don’t and can’t acknowledge the importance of this model for human interaction. Similar to primates, during human interaction “responses of receivers can be unconditioned, when the response is being produced by the signal itself, and conditioned, when the receiver’s response is a result of past social interactions between them—that is, where the caller elicited affective responses in the receiver through other means." They mention here the difference that behaviorist make between contingency-shaped versus rule-governed behavior. However, they completely misrepresent the “Affect Conditioning Model” by using it to validate research which was debunked by Owren and Rendall. The whole issue of “referentiality” is bogus.

Nothing can stop these authors from writing “This latter approach [Affect Induction Model], especially in nonhuman animal species, is not far from the definition of functional referentiality and gives further support for those opinions, which argue beside the dual (affective/referential) nature of many of the animal signal” (e.g.,Seyfarth& Cheney, 2003). Owren and Rendall wouldn’t give any support to this definition of “functional referentiality,” which is based on the debunked “Information Processing Model”. This is a classic example of what is described in entry-level psychology books as confirmation bias, “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities”. They hang on to their NVB of the “referential/affect-conditioning paradigm.”

November 14, 2015

November 14, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Student, 

This is a response to “Seeing with ears: Sightless human’s perception of dog bark provides a test for structural rules in vocal communication” (2009) by Molnar, Pongracz and Miklosi. Researchers “played prerecorded family dog barks to groups of congenitally sightless, sightless with prior visual experience and sighted people (none of whom had owned a dog)”. They found  “blind people without any previous canine visual experiences can categorize accurately various dog barks recorded in different contexts, and their results are very close to those of sighted people in characterizing the emotional content of barks.”

These research findings confirm the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, as they “suggest that humans can recognize some of the most important motivational states reflecting, for example, fear or aggression in a dog’s bark without any visual experience.” There is no doubt that these findings “can be generalized to other mammalian species—that is, no visual experience of another individual is needed for recognizing some of the most important motivational states of the caller.” This research corroborates the biological basis for SVB and NVB.

“Several studies have reported more efficient perceptual  processing (e.g., shorter reaction times)in blind than in sighted people, both in auditory and in tactile discrimination tasks” (Kujala, Lehtokoski, Alho, Kekoni, & Naatanen, 1997; Roder, Rosler, Hennighausen, & Nacker, 1996). Naturally, blind people focus on hearing since they can’t see. Moreover, “Neurophysiological recordings have revealed similar neural changes in the blind to those observed in populations with a specific history of perceptual experience (e.g., musicians).”

My history of singing and listening preceded my discovery of the SVB/NVB distinction. My interest in written words for a long time was much lower than my interest in spoken words. And, I was only interested in spoken words if the speaker, according to me, sounded good. I was and I still am less preoccupied with visual stimuli as I was and am more open to auditory stimuli. These neurophysiological data tell me that I must have similar neural activity as the people who are blind. However, I am not blind.  I have that similarity to blind people when we talk. Why? I listen! “Both musicians (Pantev et al., 1998) and blind adults (Roder, Rosler, & Neville, 1999) show an enhanced excitability of neural systems important for auditory processing.” And, “Since blind people rely more heavily on auditory information, it has been argued that they should show superior memory for input delivered through this modality.” I don’t care very much about taking pictures or showing pictures of myself to others.  

This research gets very interesting as “Cobb and colleagues (Cobb, Lawrence,& Nelson, 1979) did not find any differences in long-term memory for environmental sounds, nor for common tactile objects, between sighted and blind adults.” These long-term effects can only become apparent when we ‘look’ for them. Only under certain circumstances is the listener turned off or turned on by the sound of the speaker. Stated differently, in NVB speakers induce negative affect, but in SVB speakers induce positive affect in the listener. However, these ethologist researchers are not behaviorists and, consequently, they write about people possessing “different memory strategies” instead of referring to selection of behavior by environmental variables. 

When “Contrary to sighted pupils, blind participants recalled words better if they heard them than if they generated them themselves” this was “attributed to” (presumably: caused by) “an impaired or less well elaborated semantic network, which was assumed to be a consequence of the lack of visual input in the blind.” Although we can go deeper and deeper into the metaphoric rabbit hole, no behavior is explained this way and we are left with imaginary constructs. “As blind people have to acquire many concepts through language with less or without direct sensory experience, Pring (1988) hypothesized that their semantic networks contain more abstract concepts. Furthermore, it was consequently argued that blind people prefer data-driven strategies.” However, if we go into the brain, we neither find a self, a concept, a semantic network nor a strategy. All of these are of course covert verbal behaviors which are functionally related, that is, caused by, overt behavior or public speech.

These researchers still mainly believe in the supremacy of the information-processing model of spoken communication. This is why they write that “Verbal information is considered as mostly referential for humans.” Presumably, verbal behavior is caused by and referring to something inside of us. However,  “Spoken words can carry additional affective information about the inner state of the speaker, but as humans also understand, for example, written text, it is clear that language mainly contains other than emotional (non-referential) information.” They do seem to realize the lack of explanatory power of the information processing model. Yet, not this model, but their ignorance about the SVB/NVB distinction, causes them to write “Contrary to human words, animal vocalizations were considered predominantly to be affective (inner-state-based) communicative signals.” Had they known about this distinction, they would have never written that “animal vocalizations” are different from “human words” because they are “affective (inner-state-based) communicative signals.” Human vocalizations, like animal vocalizations, are primarily affective. The many problems we have around expressing and understanding our own emotions are directly related to our unscientific assumptions about these so-called inner-states.

Although we may talk day in day out about our feelings, there is no entity, no self who possesses a feeling. Although we speak about having a language or possessing language skills, there is nobody inside of us owns these abilities. We find ourselves without words under certain circumstances in the very same way that we can only find ourselves with German words under German circumstances. The language we speak has nothing to with us, individually. The common belief that we cause our own behavior is a falsehood, which wreaks mental health problems of gigantic proportions. Shooting ourselves in the foot could be a good thing if it would make us aware about why we were doing that. We turn our theoretical, metaphorical gun on ourselves as there is nowhere else to aim than at our own head. The uni-directionality of what can be considered ‘gun-logic’ doesn’t and can’t explain the bi-directionality of the environment-organism relationship.

If we stop being carried away by ‘our’ words, by the “meaning” of ‘our’ language, it can become clear to us that all organisms produce different sounds under different circumstances. Humans sound very different too, depending on whether they are in a threatening or a safe situation. “Morton concluded that atonal, low-pitched signals bear aggressive meaning, while tonal and high-pitched signals express sub-ordinance or the lack of aggressiveness.” No matter how much language we acquire, we still sound like that. This biological account of how we sound is needed to make sense of why we talk the way we do. 

“As this observation was based on acoustic signals of several unrelated species, Morton therefore assumed that these rules could be “universal”, at least among mammals and birds.” Our vocalizations are not learned, ontogenetic processes, but they are innate, phylogenetic processes. “So in many species”, humans included, “such vocalizations seem to have a clear genetic basis and emerge during development without significant environmental influence.” There is, of course, “significant environmental influence” on how we sound. We sing sad or happy songs depending on our circumstances. If we were raised with love and care, we produce different sounds than when we were raised with harshness and neglect. No matter how much this is hidden by what we say, how we sound always informs us about our behavioral history. 

Stated differently, we produce higher rates of SVB, if we were securely attached, but we will produce higher rates of NVB, if we were insecurely attached. Certainly, our rates can differ and during our lifetime either our rates of SVB or NVB go up. “More recently several studies found that vocal signals of many species can be also strongly context specific, while they share probably the same motivational state.” These researchers keep assuming that “they share probably the same motivational state” in spite of the fact that these observed behaviors are already parsimoniously explained by classical and operant conditioning.

November 13, 2015

November 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear reader,

I changed my letter type as I am feeling more serious about explaining the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) than ever before. Students have noticed that their rate of SVB has increased and their rate of NVB has decreased over the course of the semester. This is not a miracle, but a consequence of my teaching. I have given them positive feedback for their SVB and I have ignored and extinguished their NVB. Without that an increase in the rate of SVB and a decrease in NVB cannot and will not occur. Each of the  papers that were written is evidence that I was successful in increasing their SVB. As I had stated at the beginning of the semester: their success in achieving more SVB is my success and we have enjoyed this class together. I have kept my promise. Since I do as I say, I want the reader to take time to reflect on the importance of correspondence between saying and doing.

To the extent that there is correspondence between what you say and do, you engage in SVB and to the extent that you say one thing, but do something else, you engage in NVB. Your actions are in tune with what you say only when you produce SVB. Your behavior could not, was not and is not going to be in tune with what you say as long as you are having NVB. The reason for this discrepancy is that you make a difference between talking and acting, while both are, of course, behaviors. The saying that “actions speak louder than words” is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Presumably, we create a bigger impact by what we do then by what we say. Supposedly, there is a difference between the two. The word “louder”, which can only be understood as an increase in volume while speaking, is used here metaphorically, and presumably it expresses something of greater importance.

When we sound louder while we speak we raise our voice and the intensity of what we say is increased by the sound of our voice, which is bound to be experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus. We only do this to force, attack, dominate, distract, upset, challenge or harass each other. We don’t do this if we are at peace with each other and happily affiliating. Thus, we have NVB in the former and SVB in the latter. What we do can be just as aversive or as appetitive as what we say. That there is a difference between the two is a fabrication maintained by NVB.

The fiction that there is a difference between what we say and what we do is perpetuated by NVB. SVB, by contrast, dismantles the way in which we are not only befooling each other, but also ourselves. The words we speak so loudly are ineffective actions. Likewise, actions that supposedly speak louder than words are ineffective actions too. We only feel the need to turn up the volume and scream when we are frustrated as we know we are ineffective. When we are effective we have no such inclination. When we respect and like each other, we get along well as our impact on each other is positive. The false notion of action speaking louder than words doesn’t occur when we have SVB.

Your rate of SVB didn’t increase as you decided to increase it. Also, your habit to have NVB was not your choice. We created an environment in class in which SVB could happen and it happened. It only happened to the extent that we created and maintained this environment together. You have seen and heard each time it was no longer the case and NVB took over. Our classroom is a miniature version of our world which consists of many different environments. Wherever we are, either we enjoy our relationships as we create and maintain a good atmosphere together or we find ourselves on own, competing and struggling with one another. 

I have demonstrated to you we are no longer alone, but together. I have given you an experience of what being together is like and what it sounds like. We sound very different when we are connected or disconnected. I believe that we are isolated due to how we talk. Even if we are together and talk, we don’t really connect with each other. NVB separates the speaker from the listener and this separation already occurs within each speaker.

No matter how much or how loud we speak, no matter how much we demand the attention from each other with our actions, no matter whether others can be forced to listen to us or can be told what  to do, our NVB can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again. The separation between the speaker and the listener within the skin of the speaker him or herself is a natural consequence of our repeated exposure to NVB. This separation dissolves with more exposure to SVB. Moreover, as the separation between the speaker and the listener within the speaker dissolves, it will also dissolve in the listener. When the listener began to speak and listen simultaneously, you my dear reader, began to participate again in SVB. Me, the teacher, and you, the student, we were having SVB as there was no separation between me as the speaker and you as the listener. I, as a speaker am also the listener. I am, but I also was like you and I am listening to myself each time I speak with you. You could also speak and simultaneously listen. I reinforce your SVB in spoken and in written form.

November 12, 2015

November 12, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students, 

This is my ninth and last response to “Effectiveness as Truth Criterion in Behavior Analysis” by Tourinho and Neno (2003). Indeed “scientific verbal behavior [SVB, when it is spoken] is a function of the scientist with his subject matter but also of contingencies provided by the scientific verbal community.” Skinner created his own contingencies. He once stated (I paraphrase) he would remake the whole field if he had to. “Considering that and assuming that the behavior-analytic approach to behavioral research and intervention leads the scientist to study the relationship of the organism as a whole with its surroundings”, Skinner steered clear from NVB as in NVB the organism is clearly threatened by its surroundings. The fact that he was more effective in arranging his own SVB than others made his “references to effectiveness as a truth criterion” more precise rather than “imprecise”, as these author argue.

Pragmatism “emphasizes functional aspects of the processes of constructing and validating our beliefs about reality” and in doing so it is an argument in favor of SVB. Skinner took James’s pragmatism to the next level by asserting that “the pragmatic truth criterion requires, preliminarily, agreement with its basic beliefs concerning behavior.” We can only continue to reason from a SVB perspective, if we actually engage in SVB as SVB is a natural phenomenon. We either engage in SVB or in NVB. Although we have instances of SVB, we remain mostly engaged in NVB. “To appeal to the successful working of a belief, not taking into consideration that coherence requirement, either leads to inconsistencies or makes it impossible to check the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior.”

SVB and NVB each have their own internal coherency. Any incoherence always derives from the fluctuating rates of SVB and NVB in any verbal episode. To think that incoherence is a function of representationalism or mentalism is not the point. It is because SVB is so easily disturbed, that we are still dealing with “inconsistencies” that make “it impossible to check the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior.” Skinner’s radical behaviorism still depends on our spoken communication to be spread and behaviorists have been slow to acknowledge this fact.

It is for good reason that Skinner considered his book Verbal Behavior (1957) his most important work. However, as long as the SVB/NVB distinction has not been made, behaviorists (as well as cognitivists) are  verbally beating around the nonverbal bush. Consistent results will require consistent relationships. Such relationships require agreement and therefore SVB. SVB is based on agreement, but NVB is based on disagreement. Presumably, in NVB we agree to disagree, but in SVB we agree to agree. When we agree in SVB, we agree explicitly as well as implicitly. We often explicitly agree, but implicitly we disagree. This inconsistency is a product of NVB. NVB overt public speech results in NVB covert private speech. Once we know this, we realize there is no need to “work out the consequences of the disagreement.”

What we call disagreement are different rates of SVB and NVB which occur due to our different histories. By all means, we need to “take into account” the “beliefs about behavior within the context of which effectiveness is being evaluated.” As long as we are trapped by NVB, we cannot be pragmatic, effective or coherent. Neither James’s pragmatic philosophy nor Skinner’s explanatory model will be of much use to us if we keep messing things up with our different rates of SVB and NVB.

Progress has depended and will continue to depend on the extent to which SVB increases and NVB will decrease. Of course, this can only occur if we discriminate and maintain contingencies which make this possible. Skinner didn’t make “imprecise references to effectiveness as a truth criterion”, to the contrary, he only made us more precise.  

The scientific community has yet to provide the contingency for SVB. James and Skinner and the authors of this paper, who link the two, are among the few scientists who can make arrangements which can make SVB possible. Since they are not doing this deliberately or consciously, SVB is more of a byproduct than an immediate result of their actions. Their study of “the relationship of the organism as a whole with its surroundings” hasn’t yet focused on how we sound while we speak. What they have been doing is listening to what they say, but after they have said it. This is an example of NVB. In NVB speakers listen to or privately think about what they say before they speak or after they have spoken. In SVB, however, we attain the possibility of listening to ourselves while you speak. This can happen as listening and speaking behavior occur at the same rate. Moreover, we continue to fine tune speaking and listening behaviors due to the total absence of aversive stimulation. In an operating room we keep the place free of germs, likewise in a SVB environment we control for aversive stimulation. A new kind of order, coherence, effectiveness, control and pragmatism emerges as we prolong our experiences of SVB.

Last night I had a dream. I was rowing a makeshift raft near a swamp. All my books were stacked on this raft and also some rocks. Somebody ask me to remove one of the rocks. The raft slowly tilted and all my books slid off and disappeared into the swamp. Initially, I was horrified, but there was the thought that I knew what was in these books and didn’t need them anymore. In this dream I was once again affected by NVB. Due to the amount of SVB public speech that I have experienced nothing was lost and my SVB private speech continued. Ultimately, that is, individually, checking “the validity of a presumed explanation of behavior” depends more on spoken than on written language. NVB makes us overestimate the importance of written language and ignore spoken language. Like Robinson Crusoe, we can speak with ourselves in the absence of others. Only to the extent that we have done that can we understand others who have also done that.