December 30, 2015

December 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

Here are some of my comments on “The Concept of Reinforcement: Explanatory or Descriptive” by Tonneau (2008). Philosophical discussions about description versus explanation have been going on since time memorial and will never be resolved by written words. Only spoken communication provides the situation in which we can be attuned to one another. The sound of our voices is a moment-to-moment indication of how our conversation is going. 

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) hair-splitting about whether reinforcement is explanatory or descriptive comes to an end. “Of course, one does not explain a phenomenon (B) by describing it; rather, what one must do in order to explain B is to describe a phenomenon A distinct from B.” The sound produced by the speaker elicits a positive or a negative emotion in the listener. 

The speaker’s voice has an appetitive or an aversive effect on the listener. The speaker produces SVB in the former, but in the latter, he or she produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Thus, the SVB speaker produces a sound which is different from the NVB speaker. It is by describing the difference between SVB and NVB that these mutually exclusive response classes are explained. 

No matter how well somebody else may be able to describe the SVB/NVB distinction, your own experience explains it best. Only when you listen to yourself while you speak can you sense your experience of both SVB as well as NVB. To get that experience, it doesn’t even matter how well you describe it or explain it, what matters is that you listen to it and hear the sound of it.

You will not have SVB as long as you remain verbally fixated. SVB is not a matter of explaining or describing things exactly, what matters is to hear the sound of your description or your explanations, regardless of how incomplete or inaccurate they may be. It is true that your descriptions and explanations will make more sense to you the more you are able to achieve SVB. 

It will be apparent that none of what you say makes sense to your as long as you keep producing NVB. Whether you produce SVB or NVB is subjectively experienced by you. Your body responds differently to one or the other; it is happy, relaxed, energized and conscious in SVB, but in NVB it feels tense, tired, drained, stressed, agitated and stuck. Moreover, you will find, that is, in retrospect, that during NVB you dissociate from your body. Each time you engage in NVB you disembody your communication, but each time you engage in SVB you really embody what you say.           

December 29, 2015

December 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my final (thirteenth) response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). Bostow concludes “My hope is that these words may tip the balance towards behaviors the reader is already inclined to do.” I don’t think that words can or will tip the balance. Besides, I don’t “hope” for anything, I predict and everything I predict comes true. 

My predictions are not grandiose, but scientific. The results have achieved in my classes were as I predicted. So, yes, not words will tip the balance, but the sound our voice will do that. Stated differently, what we say makes more sense because of how we say it. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) there is an alignment between verbal and nonverbal behavior, but in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) there is no alignment and we get carried away by what we say, by our verbal fixation. 

In NVB we disconnect from the nonverbal, from our embodied sound, as we are focused on and obsessed with the content. In academia and in society at large this means that written words have become more important than spoken words. SVB restores the importance of our experience of how we sound while we speak. We already achieve SVB each time we talk with those who love us, care about us, support us, respect us and welcome us. 

SVB isn’t anything new or something we don’t know. However, only a few us are familiar with SVB that goes on for a longer period of time. Not enough is known about the contingency needed to make that possible. We can discover this if we keep on listening to ourselves while we speak. Although contingencies that make this possible come “necessarily from our contact with others”, it is important to recognize that we can have SVB on our own. 

This self-experimentation, talking out loud and listening to our tone of voice while we speak, prepares us for both achieving and maintaining our SVB with others. To the extent that we can have SVB with ourselves we will be able to have it with others. 

“Stimulus control” of our voice is important, but “differential reinforcement gives prior stimuli their power.” We don’t need to wait for others to approve of us and tell us we sound good. Once we hear our own calm voice, we have achieved a behavioral cusp and know this makes social reinforcement possible. SVB develops the “interlocking local contingencies for personal behavior”, which “support our own direct contact with the world.”      

December 28, 2015

December 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my twelfth response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). It doesn’t come out of nowhere that Bostow writes “The task of developing behavioral technologies that reach into the most personal lives of behavior analysts is not an easy one, because scientific rigor requires independent verification of procedures and effects.” 

Anyone who knows the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) immediately realizes that such a remark is the result of being conditioned by NVB. In SVB, the “task of developing behavioral technologies that reach into the most personal lives of behavior analysts” is easy. We are so used to things being difficult, that we distrust anything that is easy. 

Rigorous “Independent verification of procedures and effects” is a matter of verbal behavior. NVB is not up to the task; it is too blunt and too insensitive. Only SVB creates the appropriate scientific conversation. The real issue is NOT “climate change” or “reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources”, but changing the way in which we talk, because only that can change our other behavior. Our behavior has not changed as we haven’t addressed or explored the NVB which causes and maintains it.

I totally agree with Bostow that we do not “need to wait for a better life to happen; it could be designed using a science of behavior” (Skinner, 1987a, 1987c), but I believe that without the SVB/NVB distinction, Skinner’s science remains incomplete. 

Although many people have tried to refer to SVB and NVB, SVB is NOT about having epiphanies. To the contrary, it is down to earth. Thus, “understanding that behavior does not begin inside of us” didn’t and couldn’t bring us any closer to SVB. It is a matter of whether necessary communication skills are learned.

Many solutions to our problems will come from “contingencies in our personal environment,” but these contingencies will not be accessible to objective scientific scrutiny with NVB. NVB must be controlled before we can have SVB scientific dialogue. With SVB our culture becomes less superstitious and more scientific and will “contrive contingencies” to “support self-management.” I agree with Bostow “It is our personal environment that must be changed”, but I differ with him how to change it. I propose the change from NVB to SVB and have good reason to believe this will generalize to many other behaviors. Bostow may have “given up trying to change a larger world”, but he has NOT discovered SVB.

December 27, 2015

December 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my eleventh response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). It is remarkable how writing only one page a day in my journal has such a reinforcing effect on me. Not too long ago, I wrote entries of seven pages long each day, but now I like to keep it short and simple. It stimulates me to write even more as I have worked days ahead. 

If, for whatever reason (having the flu), I don’t feel like writing, I still have daily entries in my journal. I like to keep that continuity going and never believed I would be able to accomplish this by writing. “To change our behavior, we change the contingencies, but the ‘‘we’’ who are to do the changing are not originating agents (Baum, 1995; Skinner, 1971).” 

Since I am happy with my wife Bonnie, since I am so successful as a teacher, since I feel so acknowledged and stimulated by my two dear, PhD-educated, behaviorist friends, I feel less and less like I have to prove myself about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The contingency has changed and now I confidently can write about what I know and enjoy. 

I think it is a good sign my dear student that I completely forget that I am writing for you. I am happy with the level of comfort which has come into my writing. It couldn’t be this way as long as my private speech was about my need for approval and the negative emotions I felt because of rejection. Due to SVB I have developed new controlling repertoires, such as this writing, which increased the probability of effective actions. 

Of course, “these repertories are created, maintained, and altered by others in our culture (Skinner, 1953). The individual does not ‘‘act on his own’’ in his personal life for long without supporting contingencies from others.” Because I now share SVB, in both spoken and written form, others reinforce and stimulate me to perfect my teaching. SVB feels to me as if I am playing my flute and I want to play as best as I can for others.

In SVB it is all about the connection between the speaker and the listener. NVB, on the other hand, creates and maintains a separation between the speaker and the listener. However, the NVB speaker is not NOT-listening to him or herself while he or she speaks, because he or she can’t listen to him or herself, but, because he or she is not stimulated by others. Once we are stimulated to listen to ourselves while we speak, we are often surprised that nobody has ever stimulated us like this before.

December 26, 2015

December 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my tenth response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). My Chinese mother-in-law once noticed about me: “when you happy, everybody happy!” When we are happy together, I will let you know. It is my nature to do so and I’ve found I am not the only one who is inclined that way.  Aren’t we all happy when everyone around us is happy? Such a situation makes Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) possible, the kind of interaction in which everyone is positively affected. 

I was at such a situation yesterday night at the Open-Mike at the Grange in Paradise. I felt welcome and the people were so kind and appreciative. I sang a sad gypsy song, but it came out really good. I never performed that song before, but I was able to bring out many of its profoundly emotional nuances. 

Bostow suggests “We can recover the strengthening effects of personal daily accomplishments”, “reduce our carbon footprints”, and “restore the connection between our behavior and its strengthening effects,” but he doesn’t describe the verbal behavior that is needed to make this possible. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) could not accomplish this. How can interaction in which the speaker negatively affects the listener lead to any positive consequences? It couldn’t and it didn’t.

During SVB our verbal behavior is under stimulus control of the pleasant sound of our own voice. We sound good and feel peaceful and calm. During SVB we do not only let each other know that we like to listen each other’s voice, but we also let ourselves know that we enjoy and relax into our own tone of voice. 

Denial of what happens within our skin, which is in my opinion much more important than what happens outside of our own skin, occurs only during aversive circumstances in which we produce NVB. In SVB there is no such dissociation. To the contrary, in SVB we are conscious of what we experience within our own skin and we can describe it. Our accuracy depends on the environment which makes SVB possible. 

In SVB, we stimulate each other to listen to ourselves while we speak. This is NOT a matter of careful planning. Such future orientation characterizes NVB and prevents our individual focus on the-speaker-as-own-listener. “It is the time for each of us to develop a broader repertoire of vocations in which we apply our behavior-analytic technical skills.” SVB is a behavioral cusp which will make many other reinforcing behaviors possible.