June 20, 2016

June 20, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I think the authors are on the right track in their “focus on epistemological barriers to accepting a position.”

Translated by someone who is knowledgeable about the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) / Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, they would be in favor of having SVB over NVB, as only SVB can bring our attention to the different contingencies that maintain SVB or NVB.

Emphasis on “accepting a position” applies to both a position purported by a SVB speaker as well as one purported by a NVB speaker. By accepting the difference between bi-directional and uni-directional exchanges, we realize that only SVB can be considered communication.

Everyone who has explored the SVB/NVB distinction agrees that NVB is NOT communication as it is a one-way-street, from the speaker to the listener. Certainly, the NVB speaker can force the listener to do all sorts of things and there are many reasons why the listener will allow this to happen, but the coercion and effort involved in NVB will always have different consequences than the effortlessness, the absence of aversive stimulation and the presence of comfort and safety in SVB.  

As the aversive control, which characterizes NVB, sets the stage for counter-control, it makes total sense to consider NVB as our greatest barrier to accepting a position. Participants who explore the SVB/NVB distinction will agree that NVB always involves a struggle for attention.

It is the experience of struggle, more than anything else, which is the barrier in accepting a position.  I agree with the authors “that the clarity of presentation is not usually the issue in psychology and also believe that there is rarely much prerequisite knowledge needed to initially understand positions in psychology.” However, rather than focusing on what we say, how we say it needs to get the attention.

June 19, 2016

June 19, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fifth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). When people have trouble understanding each other and one party is trying to explain things, while the other is trying to understand, this often does NOT result in understanding. The more attention people give to explaining things with what we say, the less attention they have for how they say it. 

The more those who try to understand what is being said focus on what is being said, the more they are distracted by how the speaker speaks. During Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the speaker fixates on what he or she says. There can be no congruency between the content and how he or she speaks. The difference between what we say and how we say it is the difference between our verbal and our non-verbal expressions. 

Listeners only make an effort to understand NVB speakers. They don’t need to make any effort to understand a Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) speaker as such a speaker will be effortlessly understood. We don’t notice or acknowledge this, but the listener’s effort that is involved in understanding the speaker is always a consequence of NVB. 

Donohue et al. (1998) posit that “overcoming epistemological barriers to understanding a position” is not as important as “overcoming barriers to accepting a position.” Presumably, if we would do a better job at “overcoming barriers to accepting a position”, we are more likely able to overcome the barriers involved in “understanding a position.” In SVB experience is most important thing and understanding is a by-product.  Only when the speaker and the listener experience SVB will they be able to understand under what circumstances they are having it.

June 18, 2016

June 18, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fourth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). Although my writing may appear like more of the same to you, if you read it carefully, if you read it out loud and listen to the sound of your voice while you read it, you will find out that what I am saying is at the same time very similar, but also very different from the authors of this paper have been writing.

Donohue et al. (1998) write  “Although Bachelard did not make the distinction between overcoming epistemological barriers to understanding a position and overcoming barriers to accepting a position, we believe that this distinction is important.” In other words, they use Bachelard’s words to introduce the reader to their distinction between understanding and accepting. In my view this distinction doesn’t get us to the core of the issue. By splitting the concept of “epistemological barriers” in two, we are now dealing with two kinds of epistemological barriers. In other word, Donohue et al. (1998) have NOT decreased epistemological barriers, they have increased them.

This continues to be very common in science as our writing and reading is considered to be more important than our speaking and listening. My distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), on the other hand, which makes us acknowledge that in SVB speaking and listening happen at the same response rate, while in NVB speaking and listening happen at very different response rates, reliably decreases epistemological barriers. However we need to talk.

I am not asking you to believe me. I want you to verify my distinction. If you do that, you find the results I am writing about. Interestingly, the difference between accepting and understanding maps perfect onto my SVB/NVB distinction.  If non-behaviorists accept behaviorism or if an autistic child accepts the behavior of the behavior analysts, who teaches it verbal behavior, this it is going succeed because of SVB.

June 17, 2016

June 17, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). The historian and philosopher of science Bachelard “argued that scientific progress is particularly dependent upon liberation of science from restrictive ways of previous thinking.” Behaviorists agree that “thinking” got started as public, overt speech, which receded to a covert, private level. We talk with ourselves in the exact same way as others have talked with us. 

To the extent we have been involved in and conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the so-called interaction in which the speaker separates him or herself from the listener, we accept this separation as normal and get imprisoned by “restrictive ways of previous thinking”, which are of course a function of “restrictive ways of previous” talking. 

We can only be “liberated” from our NVB private speech by another way of talking. There are only two different ways of talking: NVB and Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In SVB the speaker and the listener don’t become one, but are one. Moreover, in SVB they realize that unless one can be the other, because one is the other, there is no interaction! Stated differently, NVB is NOT interaction, but coercion oppression and abuse, which has continued in the name of interaction. 

There are no “restrictive ways of previous thinking” to be considered anymore after we have been introduced to SVB. Indeed, SVB public speech will always result into our positive private speech, that is, in non-restrictive, creative ways of thinking. As Bachelard didn’t know anything about the SVB/NVB distinction, he could not “propose practical steps that would be beneficial to overcome such barriers.”

June 16, 2016

June 16, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

If what I do in this writing was done while I was speaking, there would be no need to repeat things so often as the listener would experience the nonverbal stimulation that comes from the speaker’s voice. Right now you don’t hear my voice, you only read about it. Hearing someone speak is entirely different from reading what someone has written. 

We believe it is more important to read than to hear someone speak as we have become more accurate in our textual verbal behavior than in our vocal verbal behavior. The scientist’s insistence on written words, on accurate definitions of dependent and independent variables, was a consequence of the inability to accomplish this while they were talking. 

Distractions occurring while talking have incorrectly been believed to be insurmountable and thus writing and reading have become elevated above our speaking and listening.  As science has progressed, the discrepancy between written and spoken words has become only bigger.

The gigantic gap between our textual and our vocal verbal behavior can only be bridged by something which they have in common. Although written words are often not sounded out, they can in principle be spoken out loud and be evaluated to the same level as spoken words. 

If you read these words out loud, you will hear and become aware of your own sound. The production and observation (or listening) always happen in the here and now and make you into a conscious speaker. Conscious speech can only be achieved through the continuous activation of the speaker-as-own-listener. The speaker who speaks and listens simultaneously engages in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but the speaker who is either focused on speaking or listening engages in NVB.