July 8, 2016

July 8, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-third response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). It is not the “number of these barriers” which “may prevent students from ever becoming “used to it,””(to radical behaviorism), but rather, it is the absence of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and the high rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in teaching, which induces negative affect and prevents learning.

One only needs to read some of the blatant “misrepresentations” of radical behaviorism by Chomsky to get a sense of the visceral repulsion he must have felt when he first heard about it. I can attest to that as I once had a brief phone conversation with him. I was naïve to think that he might be interested in learning about listening to ourselves while we speak, what I now call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

I had written Chomsky an email which apparently peaked his interest and his secretary had scheduled a time for us to talk. As I didn’t know anything at that time about radical behaviorism, this was not part of our conversation. However, Chomsky apparently already knew that I was a behaviorist. Our ‘conversation’ lasted less than one minute. 

Since he had shown interest in my view about how the sound of the speaker affects the listener, I felt no hesitation to bring his attention to the sound of his dreadful, antagonizing, NVB-voice. He immediately said he wasn’t going to talk about that and then he hung up on me. It is only in retrospect I came to interpret Chomsky’s bullyish reaction as solid proof that I am indeed a behaviorist. He instantly realized that talking about the sound of his voice required him to be open with me.

July 7, 2016

July 7, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my twenty-second response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). In college many students dread taking math classes. They find it so difficult that they postpone taking math classes as long as they can. If, however, these students get the help they need, work with a tutor or take a math lab, they find out that the problem was not with math, but with how math was taught.

If someone, other than the teacher, instructs and helps the students, they learn to solve math problems. The exact same is true for radical behaviorism. From an educational perspective it is not productive to say “many such barriers do exist, and that these barriers can make it more difficult for individuals to accept radical behaviorism.”

Learning doesn’t depend on the difficulty of some topic, but on the interaction between the student and the teacher. Once we have that clear, there are teachers as well as tutors, who, as speakers, induce positive and there are those, who induce negative affect in the listener, the student. The former teaches by means of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), while the latter cannot be a good teacher or tutor as he or she is teaching by means of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Responding to problems that people have in learning about behaviorism, Skinner himself reportedly once said “I wish to testify that, once you are used to it, the way is not so steep or thorny after all" (p.49). I think he made an unnecessary concession by acknowledging that the way of behaviorism is “steep” and “thorny.” There is nothing “steep” or “thorny” about any knowledge as long as it is taught with SVB. 

That even Skinner himself admits that his constructs are “steep” and “thorny” tells us something about what happens when in a conversation, that is, during teaching, knowledge is presented which contradicts and debunks our previous understanding. Even if the teacher teaches with SVB, responses of the nervous students can quickly turn it into NVB.  

July 6, 2016

July 6, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my twenty-first response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). Is there a reason why cognitive psychologists think it is “unnecessary to causally account for the origins of the mental causes themselves?” (Charter & Oaksford, 1997; B. R. Smith, 1997). Cognitive psychologists are bound to have higher rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) than behaviorists.

In NVB the speaker basically doesn’t want to be held accountable by the listener and as a consequence this listener is not allowed to become a speaker. Moreover, in NVB the speaker doesn’t become a listener; he or she is neither listening to him or herself nor to others. Behaviorists, by contrast, are more likely to account for the speaker’s as well as the listener’s side, which both make up the complete verbal episode.

When cognitive psychologists, as speakers, declare “free will,” they superimpose some kind of man-made law onto reality, onto the listener, which is similar to the American constitution and which has nothing to do with science. They might as well say it: all men are created equal.

The essence of forceful NVB is the so-called “free will” of the speaker to imprison the listener. Thus, NVB is also characterized by the lack of accountability of the speaker.  In NVB the speaker can get away with whatever he or she says or does as he or she is having more power and has a higher status than the listener. Indeed, in NVB there is always a separation between the speaker and the listener, because presumably the speaker is more important in the social hierarchy than the listener.

The fictitious idea of “free will” has covered up a whole lot aversive behavioral control by the speaker. Where is the “free will” for the listener, who is not allowed to speak? And, where is the “free will” in the speaker, who is incapable of listening to and engaging in the feedback he or she is receiving from the listener? Without the listener, the speaker dissociates and is no longer grounded in reality.   

July 5, 2016

July 5, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my twentieth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). “There is nothing explicit or implicit in cognitive psychology (or in its offspring, cognitive therapy) to suggest that human behavior should be captured by a limited set of principles, many of which are shared by nonhuman animals.” However, once we consider the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we realize that we have stumbled upon an overlooked, but obvious principle of our spoken communication.

My students like knowing about the SVB/NVB distinction and they tell me that there is SVB and NVB in every culture. Furthermore, it is apparent to everyone who has experimented with this distinction that SVB only occurs in the absence of aversive stimulation, which means when no fight, flight or freeze response is triggered, while in NVB such responses are always elicited. Although animals as dogs or cats have no verbal behavior, they have many behaviors which are similar to humans.

Cats and dogs are mammals and their autonomic responses are much like ours. The SVB/NVB distinction makes us realize the nonverbal basis of our verbal behavior. Whether verbal behavior is a function of us experiencing a threat or safety makes an enormous difference. This can only be sorted out if we listen to how we sound while we speak.

Once the distinction between SVB and NVB has been pointed out there is agreement on whether a speaker produces SVB or NVB. Such verbal agreement is based on nonverbal, neurobiological attunement. In SVB we become accurate in verbally expressing our nonverbal experience.

The SVB/NVB distinction is parsimonious. It identifies whether a speaker induces negative or positive affect in a listener and allows the communicators to explore the role of their sound in their interactions. Thus, the SVB/NVB distinction is a listener’s view of the speaker.