Language Enlightenment

Thursday, March 23, 2017

March 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fourth response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He explains the difference between respondent and operant conditioning. After describing the former, he defines the latter as follows: “The experimenter had to wait for the animal to perform the desired action before the pellet of food could be delivered as a reinforcer. Because in this case the food was paired with a response, Skinner called it Type R conditioning.”

Yesterday evening, I facilitated an Introduction to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Therapist, teachers, parents and couples participated. The evening was a success and each participant committed to sign up for the seven evenings of my course. During the beginning of the meeting, I explained to the participants the Type S or respondent conditioning that is involved in SVB, but towards the end of the evening the dialogue was primarily about Type R or operant conditioning.

It was effective to start my explanation, as Dinsmoor did, with respondent conditioning and then to move on to respondent conditioning. As Type S conditioning preceded developmentally Type R conditioning, it proved to be very helpful that I had been reading Dinsmoor’s tutorial. Also, because, unlike the psychology classes that I teach, in this course I can completely focus on behaviorism, it was possible for me to properly explain both of these forms of conditioning.

After demonstrating with my gong that our voice is an antecedent stimulus, which either sets the stage for SVB (no pins on the gong) or NVB (pins on the gong), participants talked about the extent to which they were affected as listeners by a speaker’s voice. Then, they realized how their voice affects others. Thus, they first explored classical conditioning aspects of the SVB/NVB distinction and then went on to explore operant aspects, that is, how they reinforce or punish others.

March 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my third response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Pavlov referred to the stimulus as an unconditional stimulus, the response to that stimulus as an unconditional response, and the relation between the two as an unconditional reflex.” There is overwhelming evidence that nonverbal babies have “an unconditional response” to the sound of their parent’s voice, which is “an unconditioned stimulus.” We can describe “the relation between the two as an unconditional reflex.”

In Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the nonverbal baby will respond positively to the mother’s voice as her sound will elicit a sense of well-being. However, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the mother’s voice will trigger negative responses in the baby. Most likely this is caused by the fact that the mother is tired, stressed, overwhelmed, confused, depressed or anxious, in other words, the mother is experiencing negative emotions.

To the extent that the mother or the caretaker is experiencing and expressing either negative or positive emotions, the baby’s nonverbal foundation for language will be NVB or SVB. Any time the sound of the mother’s voice was paired with appetitive stimuli, such as food, toys or caressing, the nonverbal basis for language was laid and these unconditioned stimuli became conditioned stimuli for SVB, the conditioned response. By contrast, to the extent that the mother’s negative-sounding voice repeatedly preceded neglect, abandonment, dysregulation or other abuse, such sound was the conditioned stimulus for a conditioned response and shaped beginnings of a different language: NVB. The sound of a speaker’s voice is either linked with appetitive or aversive stimuli. Skinner has labelled this as “Type S Conditioning”.

March 2, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my second response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Control by stimuli that are already present before the response occurs plays a much more significant role in everyday life than it is currently accorded in our research even in our textbooks.” How is it possible there is such a misrepresentation of the reality? Why do behaviorists, who should know better, give short shrift to respondent conditioning and only talk about operant conditioning?

If among radical behaviorists classical conditioning is not given much attention, we should conclude that their way of talking also excludes something, which should be included. In other words, the public speech of the radical behaviorists has not come under direct stimulus control of the crucial distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

If behaviorists had analyzed the dialogue that took place at the dinner table between Skinner and Whitehead (1937), in which Skinner tried to explain that science could account for all human behavior, verbal behavior included, it would have been clear that Whitehead ended the conversation by bringing in a negative antecedent. “Let me see”, he said, “account for my behavior as I sit here saying “No black scorpion is falling upon this table (1957).”” This is a plain example of NVB in which the speaker aversively affects the listener.

Unfortunately, this sort of intimidation happens every day. Since we have been conditioned by coercive NVB, we accept it as normal. Thus, hierarchical communication or NVB, in which the speaker negatively affects the listener, is given more importance than the mutually enhancing SVB interaction, in which the speaker and the listener can take turns. As Skinner’s conversation with Whitehead illustrates, NVB is NOT communication; it is oppression, forcefulness and abuse, in which the whip and shackles are replaced by the way in which we talk. The sound of Whitehead’s voice must have been perceived by Skinner, the listener, as an aversive stimulus.

March 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Tutorial about Stimulus Control, Part 1”, Dinsmoor (1995) writes “Increases and decreases in stimulus control occur under the same conditions as those leading to increases and decreases in observing responses, indicating that the increasing frequency and duration of observation (and perhaps of attention) that produces the separation in performances during discrimination learning.” This statement is pertinent to the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/ Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction. We will only be able to achieve and maintain SVB for any period of time for as long as we observe, listen to ourselves while we speak.

The activation of the speaker-as-own-listener does not occur at any time during NVB. Only to the extent that the speaker is stimulated by the other communicators (speakers as well as listeners) to pay attention to his or her own sound, will he or she be able to acknowledge that he or she either goes back and forth between SVB and NVB or he or she continues with only SVB or NVB. As this distinction is as of yet unknown, most interaction even among behaviorists falls into the NVB category.

To someone familiar with SVB/NVB distinction, it is clear that NVB, in which the speaker’s voice negatively affects the listener, is NOT conducive to a complete account of behavior. “In the analysis of behavior, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the control of responding by stimuli that follow the response (e.g. reinforcing stimuli), but comparatively little attention has been given to control by stimuli that precede the response (e.g. discriminative stimuli).” Although Dinsmoor wrote about it, neither he nor any other behaviorist emphasized the necessity to speak about it. Only by speaking about this matter will we acknowledge that the SVB/NVB distinction is needed.

February 29, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

A while ago I read a paper about autism as a contingency-based disorder of verbal behavior. If there is a treatment for autism, and there is a treatment (applied behavioral analysis), this treatment is effective because we decrease the environmental variables that maintain the autism behavior and we increase those variables which stimulate and reinforce a person’s verbal behavior. This means: the behavior of the parents or caretakers of autistics has to change.

Only if this environmental change occurs will the behavior of autistic be able to change. It is not a matter of putting blame on anybody, but a matter of effectively changing the contingency that maintains the autistic’s behavior. Naturally, such changes can only be made with professional help from someone who is informed about applied behavioral analysis. Likewise, it can be argued that so-called mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depressive disorder, etc. are also maintained by environmental variables. If treatment is effective and there is effective treatment, this means that symptoms have nothing to do with a person’s inner disposition. To treat these disorders, the environment, that is, the behavior of the persons who are most influential in the patient’s life, will need to be changed.

Great progress can be made when parents or caretakers of those who suffer from mental health problems are taught how to decrease Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and increase Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). It is my contention that high rates of NVB always exacerbate any kind of mental health problems. When higher rates of SVB are produced this will predictably result into a decrease of symptoms.

How is this possible? With SVB the speaker doesn’t have an aversive effect on the listener, but with NVB, the speaker affects the listener with a negative contingency. We must focus on how the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener. The listener who hears the speaker is either turned off and wants to escape or avoid him or her or he or she feels safe and wants to engage in SVB with the speaker.

February 28, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The paper “Understanding and Pavlovian Processes” by Tonneau (2004)has made me realize that behaviorists have over-emphasized the importance of operant conditioning and downplayed classical or Pavlovian conditioning. I think this is the reason why behaviorists are not well-accepted in academia. If they would have included respondent conditioning in their approach, they would have had a much broader basis to explain behavior. It is in my opinion absurd that behaviorists ignore the importance of classical conditioning.

Without classical conditioning behaviorism remained incomplete. Paradoxically, behavioral science is undermined due to its lack of in interest in what laid the foundation for its very existence. Although it is understandable that Skinner elevated operant conditioning over classical conditioning, the explanation of behavior is inadequate as long as responses which can occur without reinforcement are not explained by classical conditioning. I used to think that behaviorism didn’t get much traction in academia as behaviorists didn’t know about the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, but now that I learn that SVB and NVB are actually best explained by respondent conditioning, it is clear to me that Pavlovian conditioning plays a much bigger role in human behavior than radical behaviorist have been willing to acknowledge.

Implementation of behavioral technology continues to be gravely impaired due to an unfortunate process of historical lopsidedness which favored operant over classical conditioning. I think that more operant conditioning will be possible only once we take serious the respondent processes that are involved in our verbal behavior. It amazes me to find out that this has not happened yet and that radical behaviorists have maintained a bias towards classical conditioning. The SVB/NVB distinction makes us re-consider Pavlovian processes that make operant conditioning possible in the first place.