March 9, 2016

March 9, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

If we put things more plainly, the paper “Humble Behaviorism” by A. Neuringer (1991) would never have been written nor published, if it wasn’t for the fact that behaviorists, at least some of them, recognize that they are unscientific. “An explicitly humble behaviorism could reduce the threat of behavioral research perceived by many in our society; meliorate fights among sub-disciplines of psychology, so that adversaries might work toward common goals, and encourage researchers to identify and admit their own arrogance and error, thereby motivating research.” As this second sentence demonstrates, something should be said about how behaviorists talk with each other as well as with non-behaviorists. In spite of all his so-called “explicit humble behaviorism”, Neuringer probably because he doesn’t know much about it, only indirectly refers to the how behaviorists communicate. 

Neuringer circumvents the important issue of ineffective communication by placating and reassuring his colleague behavioral scientists that they are no less arrogant than any other scientists. He distances himself further from what should be considered the elephant in the operant chamber, by stating that neither “behavioral science, or science generally” is “unusually arrogant.” Presumably, his paper is a function, not of his frustration, but of his magmanimity. We are supposed to believe that he is not upset about anything and that he is perfectly okay with the fact that “arrogance and humility in science coexist.” All of this is done to present his hypothesis that “humility will prove to be functional.” What a complete nonsense!       

March 8, 2016

March 8, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Now that I have given my thoughts about the title “Humble Behaviorism” by A. Neuringer (1991) let me comment on the content of that paper. It starts out with the sentence “If behaviorists were more humble, their effectiveness as scientist would increase.” I don’t know at what point in his life Neuringer came to this conclusion, but I suspect it was late in his career. It sounds like something that someone would say who is looking back and who is having regrets. However, I fully agree with the statement; it is about time that behaviorists stop being arrogant. Yet, a paper couldn’t and didn’t make any difference. There is no such a disembodied thing as “Humble Behaviorism”; there can only be embodied humble behaviorists. It is not behaviorism which needs to become more humble, but behaviorists! 

The only way in which behaviorists and non-behaviorists will be able to be humble is by changing the way in which they talk. Our common arrogant, insensitive way of talking I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The language of humility, by contrast, I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). It is due to NVB that behaviorists are not as scientific as they would be if they would learn what it takes to maintain SVB and extinguish NVB. They didn’t learn that and nobody is talking about it except me. Thus, the issue is not whether behaviorists are humble, but whether they are scientific!

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.