February 4, 2016

February 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016) by Kraus & Slater, the authors refer to research by Johnson & Jusczyk (2001), who found “evidence that stress patterns in speech outweigh statistical cues for determining word boundaries when conflicting cues are pitted against each other.” In my analysis of our spoken communication, we distinguish between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), which is interaction that is based on the listener’s experience of safety and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is interaction that is based on the listener’s experience of threat. The above should be re-worded in: NVB stress patterns outweigh SVB cues of safety. 

From an evolutionary perspective this makes total sense. As long as the SVB/NVB distinction is not made, the extent to which aversively-sounding threatening patterns of communicating impair learning is not properly understood. Although the authors mention that “sensitivity to durational patterns is particularly important for understanding speech under degraded listening conditions” (read NVB) and acknowledge that “violations of expectation can also influence processing”, they can’t and do not explain the “tension between conformity and deviation” as SVB and NVB. 

“Nuanced relationship with patterns” is not arbitrary, but biological. Without describing the pattern of safety (SVB), which is absolutely necessary in learning how to speak, read and write, the authors state it “is important to note that patterns therefore provide a framework that can modulate processing in two ways, either by emphasizing the importance of elements that are consistent with the pattern or by drawing attention to elements that do not fit with the pattern.” In NVB, the speaker’s sound impairs the listener’s ability to synchronize and “separate words into their individual sounds”, but in SVB listening  skills are stimulated and increased due to the sound of the speaker.

February 3, 2016

February 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016) by Kraus & Slater, the authors write about the connection between “the patterns of sound we create and the movements that create them.” By “examining” their own verbal descriptions, they seem to go “beyond words”, which form the “principles of information processing that are common to human communication and music.”

These authors try to suspend their cognitivist interpretations, but fail, yet they are able to “peel back these layers” and uncover “the biological foundations of human communication.” Since every healthy human being is born as a vocal, but not as a verbal organism, it should be clear to us that, ontogenetically, our words are always embedded into our sounds. More importantly, since, as a species, it was only fairly recent in evolutionary history that our vocal cords came under functional control of the environment, the phylogenetic origin of our vocal behavior is determined by our body’s ability to produce and observe sounds.

Sounds produced by and observed with or rather, listened to with our body only have two functions:  signaling safety or threat. This brings us to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), two universal response classes, which we have not analyzed due to our infatuation with words. The authors emphasize survival value of speech patterns, but do not recognize the two most basic patterns of vocal verbal behavior, which are involved in the experience and expression of safety and threat. We keep “searching for patterns” that presumably “tell us something about the physical world” as long as we feel threatened and engage in NVB. Only during SVB can we embody our spoken communication. The author's claim “we are not disembodied listeners” refers to SVB. We disconnect from our body during NVB.   

February 2, 2016

February 2, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 125) Skinner writes “The struggle for freedom and dignity has been formulated as a defense of autonomous man rather than as a revision of the contingencies of reinforcement under which people live.” 

I argue “the struggle for freedom and dignity has been formulated as a defense of” a particular way of talking rather than “as a defense of autonomous man.” Because of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the illusion of “autonomous man” can be continued, but once we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), this illusion disappears. Only in NVB do we struggle, not to defend “autonomous man”, but to continue NVB. 

This is a paradoxical phenomenon: we struggle to formulate, to verbalize, to communicate, only to be able to continue the struggle; NVB never gives rise to SVB. Only when NVB, the communication that involves struggle, has been recognized and stopped, can SVB begin. 

The rates of SVB and NVB determine a culture. Skinner writes (p.131) “We tend to associate a culture with a group of people. People are easier to see than their behavior, and behavior is easier to see than the contingencies which generate it. (Also easy to see and hence often invoked in defining a culture, are the language spoken and the things the culture uses, such as tools, weapons, clothing and art forms)” (bold italics added). 

Skinner’s emphasis on seeing instead of on listening prevents behaviorists from paying attention to how we sound while they talk. Consequently, they have remained ignorant about the two most obvious response classes which occur in every language of the world: SVB and NVB. Even if we formulate, write, read and study their accurate descriptions, the contingencies which generate SVB or NVB cannot be seen; they can only be observed by speakers who listen to their own sound while they speak.

February 1, 2016

February 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 108), in Chapter 6 about Values, Skinner writes “A fact is no doubt different from what a person feels about it, but the latter is a fact also.” However, acknowledgment of the latter is more difficult as it deals with how we talk about our feelings. Although Skinner states “What causes trouble here as elsewhere, is the appeal to what people feel,” he doesn’t explain that verbal behavior regarding our feelings is often inaccurate due to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which occurs due to the presence of aversive stimuli. 

Only during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we feel safe and supported, can we become accurate in our verbal descriptions about what we feel. Indeed, “conditions of the body are much more important.” And, “to make a value judgement by calling something good or bad is to classify it in terms of its reinforcing effects.” Thus, to make a value statement is really to describe the condition of our body. 

Skinner states that the “person who is teaching a child to distinguish among his feelings is like a color-blind person teaching a child to name colors. The teacher cannot be sure about the presence or absence of the condition which determines whether a response is to be reinforced or not.” It would be more accurate to say that such a teacher is more or less tone-deaf; unless he listens to himself while he speaks, he cannot hear what the speaker-as-own-listener is hearing. The color-blind metaphor is not working. “The language of emotion is not precise” as long as we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak and inadvertently engage in NVB.  Surely, “We describe our emotions with terms which have been learned in connection with other kinds of things, almost all the words we use were originally metaphors.” However, we need to discriminate the two universal response classes: SVB and NVB.     

January 30, 2016

January 30, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The Framers weren’t behavioral scientists, but believers in God who did the best they could in writing a document which would “first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself” (The Federalist). Had they been behavioral engineers, they would have only written about the “external control of government” and leave the “internal control on government” to their angels and God. Benjamin Franklin, who believed in a “beneficent Ruler in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being”, espouses Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as he has “so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence.” The fact is that priest and politicians have attempted, but failed at behavioral engineering. 

  

Also, George Washington, who stated “The adoption of the Constitution will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it,” is carried away by religious make-believe, which has nothing to do with how environmental variables determine the behavior of those who govern as well as those who are governed. Although it says in the Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” our behavior is not determined by an imaginary higher power, but by our surroundings, that is, by other people. 

The person who grows up in an abusive environment is, of course, negatively affected. The laws about human behavior trump religious fantasies about “unalienable Rights.” Besides, there is nothing “self-evident” about how schedules of reinforcement determine the frequency of behavior. To know about this requires study which is only possible if we suspend pre-scientific beliefs about the causes of behavior.  America has produced a B.F. Skinner, but it still hangs on to a Declaration of Independence, which firmly relies on “the protection of divine Providence” and states  that “the character” of “the Prince”, who answered “our repeated petitions” for “redress” only “by repeated injury”, is defined as “a Tyrant,” who is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” It is time to let go of these Founding Fathers and to honor and respect Skinner’s work.