March 7, 2016

March 7, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Why would a behaviorist write a paper that is titled “Humble Behaviorism” (A. Neuringer, 1991)? And, why would a peer-reviewed journal like “The Behavior Analyst” even publish such a paper? After reading only the title of that paper I had the following thoughts. Someone who is said to be humble is unassuming, unpretentious and respectful. We wouldn’t call a person humble if he or she behaved arrogantly, brazen or privileged. It wouldn’t make any sense for Neuringer to urge his fellow behaviorists to become more humble, if he didn’t believe that they were missing out on something very important that only he knew would further their cause. Likewise, the Dalai Lama wouldn’t repeatedly urge people to be kind, if he wasn’t convinced that most of us are cruel and inhuman and missing out on happiness. Similarly, it is only the unhappy person, who keeps thinking and talking about happiness. A happy person is not trying to be happy; he or she is simply happy and happiness is not his or her concern. Also, someone who is humble is not busy trying to be humble. Only he or she who is not humble is preoccupied with trying to be humble. The same is, of course, true for the author, who thinks that behaviorists should become more humble; he is motivated to do this because he believes behaviorists are arrogant. Moreover, as he wasn’t able to change the environment that gave rise to his own arrogance, he decided to write a paper about it.  

March 6, 2016

March 6, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He states “Because it operated on the surrounding environment to produce the reinforcing consequence, he [Skinner] called this form operant” [added]. The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB)of the speaker operate on the environment, on the listener, very differently.

The SVB speaker’s voice has an appetitive effect on the listener, but the NVB speaker’s voice has an aversive effect on the listener. Surely, SVB speakers control listener behavior with positive reinforcement, while the NVB speakers punish listing behavior. Especially in during our conversations we should realize that “stimulus control is always present.” Moreover, “all behavior is under the exquisite detailed control of surrounding stimuli, some impinging from outside the organism, others arising from within its boundaries.” 

As we have not yet acknowledged that SVB public, overt speech will ALWAYS give rise to SVB private, covert speech and NVB public, overt speech will ALWAYS give rise to NVB covert speech, “it is not always obvious in the way we talk and write about the subject” that SVB or NVB “does not occur as random stings of unrelated responses but in organized sequences, called chains, in which each successive response produces the stimuli, internal and external, that determine what comes next.” 

As “control by antecedent stimuli would be much easier to identify than control by the organism’s history of reinforcement”, since “one form of control lies in the present, the other in the past”, the usefulness of the SVB and NVB chains should be apparent to the reader.         

March 5, 2016

March 5, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifth response to “Tutorial on Stimulus Control, Part 1” (1995) by Dinsmoor. He writes “Skinner also distinguished two types of behavior that corresponded to the two types of conditioning.” Just as nonverbal behavior precedes developmentally our verbal behavior (phylogenetically as well as ontogenetically), so too respondent behavior precedes operant behavior.

“Pavlov’s procedure could be applied only to behavior that could be elicited, prior to training, by a specific stimulus.” As Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) occur in response to a stimulus (Voice II or Voice I, respectively), both categories should be seen as respondent behaviors in the pre-verbal stages of speech development. 

Even in utero babies can distinguish between the sound of the voice of the mother or the father. It isn’t until infants begin to speak their first few words that they enter the operant chamber, the verbal community. It can only be said about a rat, not a human baby, that “for behavior like bar pressing, no equivalent stimulus could be found.” The first words of a baby are always echoics which only later become conditioned as tacts. 

Only certain echoics are reinforced as tacts, and, given the different rates of SVB and NVB in the speech of parents, certain sounds will lead to the development of an entirely different language in children who have experienced more NVB than those who were conditioned by more SVB. Stated differently, the baby is biased to certain sounds and when exposed to those sounds he or she will either produce NVB or SVB. The bar press is a stimulus to which the rat was not exposed, but the baby is already familiar with the sound it hears first.

March 4, 2016

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

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”.