March 3, 2015

March 3, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

During Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the phylogenetically determined neural musculature of a speaker makes production of sound possible, which we shall call Voice I, which is reinforced by listeners, whose bodies have been conditioned so that they mainly reinforce and maintain NVB. In NVB, the listener’s neural behavior, activates  private speech or thinking, which, to the extent that the listener was conditioned by Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), distracts from the speaker’s public speech. In NVB, the listener will only be permitted to speak, to the extent that he or she reinforces the speaker, that is, when he or she produces SVB. However, this SVB of the listener, who becomes a speaker, is not and cannot be reinforced by the speaker, who was mainly conditioned by NVB. To the contrary, SVB of the listener, who is only occasionally is allowed to become a speaker, is only tolerated because it is reinforcing or ‘enabling’ the NVB speaker. 

SVB is only possible for us to the extent that our bodies were changed by it. Since we produce mostly NVB, it is evident that we have been mainly exposed to and conditioned by NVB. The different neural behavior of SVB speakers is audible in the sound of their voice. In SVB speakers speak with a voice which we shall call Voice II. This sound can only be reinforced by  listeners whose bodies have been conditioned to do so. Thus, SVB fits with the refinement of the definition of Verbal Behavior as “Behavior that is reinforced through the mediation of other people, but only when the other people are behaving in ways that have been shaped by a verbal environment or language.” (Skinner, 1986, p. 121). It refers to the listener who speaks! 

Speakers and listeners only interact to the extent they can take turns. In NVB turn-taking happens at a minimum, whereas in SVB turn-taking happens at a maximum. Any conversation consists of a proportion of positive and negative exchanges. Any verbal episode can be considered as more or less noxious or as more or less sound. The conversation in which speakers and listeners voluntarily take turns, is one in which speakers will speak with Voice II. Such an episode consists mainly of SVB instances. 

Speaker’s and listener’s repertoires are learned at different times and under different circumstances, in other words, they are functionally different and analytically separate repertoires (Ledoux, 2014, p. 446). In SVB speaking and listening happen at more or less a similar rate, but in NVB speaking and listening happen at very different rates. Speaking and listening are only “virtually inseparable” during SVB. The “neural behavior of verbal thinking” or the “simultaneous speaking-listening” (Ledoux, 2014, p.446), only occurs due to SVB. In NVB, by contrast, the listener’s covert speech contradicts the speaker’s overt speech and to the extent that the listener can become a speaker (after first being affected by the speaker’s antecedent stimulus, Voice I), to the extent that the listener's covert speech becomes overt, that listener who became a speaker will also distract the NVB speaker. This will even be more the case if the listener who became the speaker experienced more SVB than the NVB speaker. 

By calling the speaker the “verbalizer” and the listener the “mediator” Julie and Ernest Vargas (1990) intended to “better address the nonvocal forms of verbal behavior.” Nevertheless, this change of name has only strengthened the already existing focus on what is now called the verbalizer. It couldn’t and didn’t bring any attention to the sounds of SVB and NVB, two universally occurring subsets of vocal verbal behavior. This writing is addressing the important issue of how mediators are stimulated to become verbalizers, which will enhance SVB and replace NVB.

March 2, 2015

March 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound and Noxious Verbal Behavior are two subsets of vocal verbal behavior. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the listener becomes the speaker and the roles between speaker and listener alternate. Since the speaker doesn’t own the contingency, there is no aversive control in SVB. During Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), on the other hand, the listener never, seldom or only minimally becomes the speaker, who aversively controls the behavior of the listener. 

SVB and NVB refer to episodes and are measured as a proportion of positive and aversive exchanges within each episode. In the analysis of vocal verbal behavior most attention has historically been given to the speaker, as the stimuli of the speaker effect the behavior of the listener in more or less the same way than any other nonverbal stimulation, such as gesturing. However, the SVB/NVB distinction points out this similarity is only occurring in SVB, but not in NVB. Only during SVB is the speaker’s behavior verbal and the listener’s behavior mostly nonverbal, because, although the listener in SVB responds to the speaker's verbal behavior, he or she is not forced to be verbal as would be the case in NVB.  

In SVB the listener doesn’t make any effort to listen to or understand the speaker. In NVB, by contrast, the listener strains him or herself to listen to and focus on what the speaker is saying. Moreover, in NVB the listener is primarily verbal or verbally fixated as there is a mismatch between his or her negative private speech and the aversive public speech. Since it is the listener as a body who mediates the speaker, NVB has very different physiological conditioning consequences. NVB affects the contingency, that is, the neural behavior within our own skin, such that the listener  becomes more likely not to speak and is coerced into only listening behavior and such that it only makes the speaker speak, but not listen.

March 1, 2015

March 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writer woke up from a nightmare in which his computer was on fire. He screamed in horror because all of his writings were lost and the UFB stick had molten beyond recognition. Although he was upset, he knew things would be all right. It was not clear how the fire had broken out. His wife and a lady friend were at the scene, but they had nothing to do with it and he felt that being frustrated was useless. As he began to calm down, he woke up. 

Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957) is extended with two universal subsets of verbal behavior: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). SVB refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with positive reinforcement. NVB, on the other hand, refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. The discrimination between SVB and NVB is a result of what could be seen as an excavation process during which SVB is uncovered by NVB. We have to use NVB to get to SVB and without NVB we cannot get to SVB.

The place to dig is in our spoken communication. Much is hidden due to our way of talking and will become available if we just start talking. Talking must be seen as digging; not digging into someone else, but digging into ourselves. By listening to our sound while we speak, we discover how we relate to others. Excavation only makes sense if we find something. If we find nothing, we are digging in the wrong place. Fruitless talk is based on attempt to dig into others. There are many things to talk about and places to dig where we are more likely to find something. If we find something, it is important that we don’t destroy what we find with our crude tools. 


Even though we use NVB to get to SVB, we must do so very carefully. To remove the thick layers of earth that don’t contain anything, we use our heavy equipment, but when we get closer to the sediments which may contain what we are looking for, we use smaller and finer tools and use less and less NVB. Eventually, we may use tiny brushes and very little NVB.

If our talking doesn’t become more refined, we will pulverize our humanity. We have already squandered a great deal because of NVB. It is because NVB was not used for the purposes that it is good for, that we didn’t and couldn’t discover SVB, but once we begin to use NVB pragmatically much of value will and can be found. We must be able to call a spade a spade. 

Words are tools only as long as they have meaning. Their meaning is a function of how we use them and under what circumstances we use them. We can and should use them to uncover SVB. Meaning can be discovered in the places where people have once lived, that is, in our behavioral history. 


When we dig in the right place, we can find the archeological evidence of an ancient civilization. After we have found pieces of pottery, we may be able to piece together the whole pot. The more artifacts we find, the more an ancient culture will speak to us and comes alive. If we don’t find anything, our conversation must change; we must dig somewhere else where we can find something. Once we find some traces, we are motivated to be careful and to work very hard. Our own findings, but also the finding by others are reinforcing and they determine where, how and with what we dig. We start out with NVB, but as we become more organized and more sure of our findings, our vocal verbal behavior will become adjusted. 


This writer once helped excavate a temple on a hill side in somewhere in Israel. It was apparent that at different times different people had built a different temple. There were layers of sediments; at one time it was a synagogue, then it was a mosque and then it was a synagogue again.

The computer may burn and the UFB drive may be destroyed, but some of these writings were already send, received and saved. Likewise, ancient man also had to face that that death is immanent and so they made tombs, graves and temples that would surpass their lifetime. Life has meaning only because it doesn’t last forever. It is when our conversations begin to adjust to this reality that we begin to have appreciation and respect for every human being. In SVB our words will create new temples, palaces, art, jewelry, pottery, science and music, but above all happy relationships.

February 28, 2015

February 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are two subsets of verbal behavior. This extension of Skinner's verbal behavior is particularly useful in answering the important question: why do we have so many communication problems? SVB is an operant behavior, because it refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with positive reinforcement. However, NVB is a respondent behavior as it refers to all the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. 

Skinner, who initially defined Verbal Behavior as "the behavior that produces reinforcers that occur through another organism’s behavior" (Skinner, 1957), later refined his definition with “behavior that is reinforced through the mediation of other people, but only when the other people are behaving in ways that have been shaped by a verbal environment of language “(Skinner, 1986, p. 121) (italics added). He referred to the verbal community, whose members are conditioned by a set of verbal responses which signify a language. He didn’t write ‘shaped by a nonverbal  environment’, but he wrote “shaped by a verbal environment of language.”

According to Skinner’s refinement, only SVB is Verbal Behavior. NVB is not Verbal Behavior as there is no verbal community that is benefitted by the generation and maintenance of Verbal Behavior. Moreover, NVB makes impossible and lacks the exact, refined, verifiable kind of verbal behavior needed to produce peer-reviewed written verbal reports that describe our scientific investigations. It is no longer acceptable that scientists, as they have always done, only bother about written and not vocal verbal behavior. 

SVB is scientific vocal verbal behavior which can also be written down. Unless written scientific verbal behavior results in and maintains vocal verbal scientific behavior, we will not be able to address and solve our communication problems. Once we distinguish between SVB and NVB, we will realize that the structure of language, what we say, including the illusion that inner agents are causing our verbal behavior, is a function of how we say things. We can no longer remain unscientific if we relax and feel peaceful with one another. In other words, we get realistic only if we are no longer afraid, angry, forceful, frustrated, negative or defensive. 

 

  

The analysis of Verbal Behavior didn’t historically require any different concepts or principles for dealing with our verbal or nonverbal behavior. No scientific papers have improved our ability to deal with the problems involved in our vocal verbal behavior. What has not found its way into our relationships is that those who are involved in teaching others how to speak, read and write, are successful only if they provide reinforcement.  If we did this consistently in our interactions, we would be having SVB, but as we don’t do this, we keep having NVB. The difference between SVB and NVB is only going to become apparent to us if something stimulates us to become more focused on our nonverbal behavior while we speak. 

The distinction between SVB and NVB will make us discriminate a safe environment as safe and a threatening environment as threatening. Due to the ubiquity of NVB, we are often unable to make this distinction. We are so used to NVB that we have accepted it as normal. Seen from a SVB perspective, NVB will be considered as abnormal. Only during SVB do we find ourselves in the circumstance in which we can and will be able to listen to ourselves while we speak, but during NVB we cannot and will not be considerate about the verbalizer and the mediator within each person.    

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writer takes a critical look at Skinner’s definition of verbal behavior. He is convinced that Skinner's definition makes behaviorists focus less on spoken communication than on written communication. Verbal behavior, which focuses on mediation by other organisms, considers environmental variables of which it is a function. This is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't explain why written language has taken precedence over spoken language. There is a need to treat vocal verbal forms separately from written verbal forms and to remind ourselves that vocal verbal behavior is behavior that is reinforced through the responses of another organism (Skinner, 1957).  If we don’t do that, written forms of verbal behavior take, as they have already done and will continue to do, our attention away from vocal or spoken forms of verbal behavior. Our writing and reading takes our attention away from speaking and listening and from the crucial question why we talk the way we do, or rather, why we adhere to coercive and therefore problematic communication. No internal agents or evil individuals are causing this, but identifiable environmental variables.

We live in age in which vocal verbal behavior is diminished by our rapidly developing technology. Technology-driven contingency changes confuse the means by which we disseminate information, such as TV, radio, computers, I-phones, etc., with the methods, such as sequencing, prompting, priming and other techniques (Vargas, 2012). Not without reason, even most long distance education is based on an outdated Lecture Model, which couldn’t and never did match the behavioral variability of students. This Lecture Model, however, is a product of our still important, but neglected vocal verbal behavior, which not only “constrains our technologies” (Vargas, 2012), but also undermines our relationships.

Although most behaviorologists are familiar with the definition of verbal behavior and changed their way of talking accordingly, this change in their terminology did not and could not affect how they communicate, which is still represented by this outdated Lecture Model. A lot of behavior is considered as verbal behavior, but it elicits rather than evokes another organism’s behaviors. Moreover, the mediator can not and does not mediate such direct, nonverbal behavior, because he or she is not in the position to provide reinforcers, while he or she is coerced to reflexively produce whatever the higher status, forceful verbalizer demands. This mediator-unfriendly Lecture Model is only useful for making clear that much respondent behavior is masked as operant behavior. 

The Lecture Model is essentially based on the speaker's nonverbal way of communicating. When the dominating verbalizer speaks at the mediator, the mediator's respondent behavior is not to be confused with mediation. Verbal behavior, however, only occurs if the verbalizer speaks with the mediator, that is, only if the mediator can mediate the verbalizer. 

As there is a difference between operant and respondent behavior, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are recognized as two subsets of verbal behavior. SVB refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with positive reinforcement, while NVB refers to the verbal episodes in which the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency. Once agreement is reached about this distinction, NVB will no longer be considered as verbal behavior. This writer suggests that we should call it what it is: coercion, intimidation, abuse, domination and exploitation.