Kid who doesn't talk (is selective about who, when and where she talks)

CSGnet Archive CSG2009
1

[From David Goldstein (2009.02.16.23:55 EST)]

[About Rick Marken (2009.02.16.0845)]

The review articles are not mine. I was always trained to do a literature search and see what other people have done, found and are saying. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. It also shows respect for other people, regardless of whether their theoretical viewpoint is the same as mine.

I know how hard it is to do MOL Therapy with a passive, nonengaged adult person. With a child person who doesn’t talk, I think it is pretty impossible. Bill, do you recall the case of Brian?

The literature is pointing to anxiety as the condition which ‘not talking’ may be controlling. In my first session, I received the distinct impression that fear was playing a role. I was thinking of doing some relaxation exerices with the little girl and her mother. I will start with some simple breathing exercises and then skeletal muscle relaxation exercises. I will show and tell the mother and let her coach the little girl.

I was also thinking of having the mother and the little girl play some kind of simple card game while I watched and commented. This might tell me about the girl’s understsanding of numbers and cooperative play. The note from the school said that the little girl would look at other children to find out what to do after the teacher gave an instruction.

I was also thinking of having the mother read a children’s book to the little girl. Maybe the little girl will be willing to particpate in some kind of interaction.

I am not really sure how much this little girl understands. It might be worthwhile to see if she would take the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In this test, a person is shown four pictures on the same page. The tester says something like: Where is X? Show me X. If this little girl is willing to, can, cooperate with this task, I would get some idea of her vocabulary and understanding of pictures. Just watching the video the mother provides might provide the same or better information .

The point about not pressuring the little girl to talk is a good one. I was thinking about talking to the mother about things while the little girls was present. My experience is that children who are noncommunicative will sometimes pipe in.

Martin, thanks for clarifying why you don’t think that LPT has much to offer in this case.

And thanks again to the CSG listmates for your comments.

I have only seen this little girl for one session and don’t have much more to say at this point.

David

···

----- Original Message -----

From:
Richard Marken

To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU

Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 11:45 AM

Subject: Re: Kid who doesn’t talk

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.16.0845)]

  I have looked up some articles about it on the American Psychological Association website. The consensus seems to be that it is an anxiety disorder condition and that behavioral therapy methods work best.

Bill Powers (2009.02.16.0938 MST)–

David Goldstein (2009.02.16.10:04 EST)]

Do you agree with that diagnosis and proposal for treatment? Did the articles say that behavioral therapy (if you want to eat, start talking) works better than MOL?

I’d like to know, too, David.

  The PCT approach would be to find the controlled variable(s) that this little girl is controlling by means of her not talking.

I don't think so. That would be useful to an experimenter trying to validate PCT, but how would the therapist's knowing that what the little girl is controlling help her to reorganize?

Again, I completely agree. What’s up, David?

I would recommend MOL therapy

Me too. Actually, your first comment on this seemed to me to be right on target. You said:

How about just acting things out nonverbally with her for a while, for fun, and stopping all the fuss about her not talking?

I would say “Yes, for that dear girl’s sake just lighten up”.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

2

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.16.2230)]

David Goldstein (2009.02.16.23:55 EST)–

There is no need to re-invent the wheel.

I think of PCT as precisely a reinvention of the wheel (of psychology), a round one rather than the square one that’s currently in use;-)

It also shows respect for other people, regardless of whether their theoretical viewpoint is the same as mine.

I respect people (or not) based on the content of their character; I respect a theoretical viewpoint based on it’s consistency with data. I know lots of people whose theories I disrespect but who I nevertheless respect as people. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to people to disrespect their theory; that’s too liberal even for my permissive tastes.

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

3

[From Dick Robertson,2009.02.17.1020CDT]

[From David Goldstein (2009.02.16.23:55 EST)]

I know how hard it is to do MOL Therapy with a passive, nonengaged adult person. With a child person who doesn’t talk, I think it is pretty impossible. Bill, do you recall the case of Brian?

I would have agreed with your first statement here, but after seeing how Bill views MOL I think you might have additional resources to consider. It would be nice, I think, to have a play therapy setup for working with children, but I think I understand that kids are only a small part of your practice and it might not be very practical. How about the institutions you work with? I came away from my few years of doing play therapy with the belief that nondirectice therapy with a kid never failed–if you could let them (as I would phrase it now in PCT terms) be a fully “living control system.”

The literature is pointing to anxiety as the condition which ‘not talking’ may be controlling. In my first session, I received the distinct impression that fear was playing a role. I was thinking of doing some relaxation exerices with the little girl and her mother. I will start with some simple breathing exercises and then skeletal muscle relaxation exercises. I will show and tell the mother and let her coach the little girl.

Well, maybe. I hope both you and mother are alert to what the little girl wants to do. As Freud seemed to say in his best moments: therapy can be a nice by-product of the search for how behavior really is working in a particular case.

I was also thinking of having the mother and the little girl play some kind of simple card game while I watched and commented. This might tell me about the girl’s understsanding of numbers and cooperative play. The note from the school said that the little girl would look at other children to find out what to do after the teacher gave an instruction.

I was also thinking of having the mother read a children’s book to the little girl. Maybe the little girl will be willing to particpate in some kind of interaction.

I am not really sure how much this little girl understands. It might be worthwhile to see if she would take the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In this test, a person is shown four pictures on the same page. The tester says something like: Where is X? Show me X. If this little girl is willing to, can, cooperate with this task, I would get some idea of her vocabulary and understanding of pictures. Just watching the video the mother provides might provide the same or better information .

The point about not pressuring the little girl to talk is a good one. I was thinking about talking to the mother about things while the little girls was present. My experience is that children who are noncommunicative will sometimes pipe in.

Of the four ventures you describe here, this last one sounds like the one least likely to be intrusive on the little girl’s control efforts. Not that we don’t ever try to disturb someone’s control to do the test, but isn’t there a risk of provoking counter-control that gets away from the kid’s self-healing processes?

Martin, thanks for clarifying why you don’t think that LPT has much to offer in this case.

And thanks again to the CSG listmates for your comments.

I have only seen this little girl for one session and don’t have much more to say at this point.

Well, good luck. I have a lot of faith in your genuine caring ability.

Best,

Dick R

···
4

I know how hard it is to do MOL
Therapy with a passive, nonengaged adult person. With a child person who
doesn’t talk, I think it is pretty impossible. Bill, do you recall the
case of Brian?
[From Bill Powers (2009.02.17.0831 MST)]

David Goldstein (2009.02.16.23:55
EST) –

Sure. I was on the phone with him for about 10 minutes, wasn’t I? Pretty
hard to do anything but verbal communication over the phone.

The literature is pointing to
anxiety as the condition which ‘not talking’ may be
controlling.

Anxiety is not a “condition” all by itself. It’s quite likely a
consequence of conflict, but who knows? Wouldn’t you want to get the
person to explore what is behind the anxiety? Anxiety is a word for how
you feel when you have problems. It’s not something that happens
independently of everything else. When the problems are solved you won’t
be anxious about them any more, but if you just stop feeling anxious (say
by taking a pill), the problems won’t go away.

In my first session, I
received the distinct impression that fear was playing a role. I was
thinking of doing some relaxation exerices with the little girl and her
mother. I will start with some simple breathing exercises and then
skeletal muscle relaxation exercises. I will show and tell the mother and
let her coach the little girl.

I really don’t like this approach to psychological problems one little
bit. If someone is anxious or afraid, can you solve that problem by
trying to make the person appear not anxious or afraid? Are anxiety and
fear things you just catch like measles, and when they go away the
problem is solved? What happens to whatever the person is anxious
about? Does that go away just because you get the person to relax?
What if the mother has been telling this little girl about the horrible
consequences of speaking to strangers who try to get her to talk? Is
getting the girl to relax going to fix that?

I was also thinking of having the
mother and the little girl play some kind of simple card game while I
watched and commented. This might tell me about the girl’s understsanding
of numbers and cooperative play. The note from the school said that the
little girl would look at other children to find out what to do after the
teacher gave an instruction.

How about having some private individual sessions with the mother and
teaching her how to do MOL with her daughter? There wouldn’t be any
“mutism” then, would there? One thing people who learn MOL say
is that it teaches them a lot about themselves and how to get along with
other people. And that it also shows them how to help other people.

I was also thinking of having the
mother read a children’s book to the little girl. Maybe the little girl
will be willing to particpate in some kind of
interaction.

I thought of that, too. I’d say to the little girl, “Would you like
me to read to you out of that storybook? Just nod or shake your head
(showing her) – you don’t need to talk.” And then I’d read to her,
and see what happens. If she nods or shakes her head, communication is
established, isn’t it? Then you could ask things like, “Are you
afraid of something?” or even “Do you want me to stop talking
to you?”

As to what conventional psychologists have to say in the literature, I
have little respect for it, because it’s based on an entirely wrong
understanding of how people are organized and how they work. That is a
tremendous handicap, and I’d help them get over it if I could, but I
don’t really think that they would want me to. They know nothing about
PCT and all that it implies, so they don’t even realize how far from
reality their theories are. They’re doing their best and they think it’s
the best that can be done. We can’t blame them for that; it’s what we all
do. But it’s a pity, both for the psychologists and for the people they
try their best to help. It 's a good thing that so many people can
reorganize successfully even when little is done to make it easier or
more effective.

You understand PCT; how can you know so much about control theory, and
have known it for so long, and still think there is anything salvageable
in conventional psychology? Remember Priestley, discoverer of oxygen,
proclaiming on his deathbed that phlogiston was the true explanation of
combustion. What a waste of a talented life, how sad that he should die
without ever knowing that phlogiston was a figment of the imagination,
like anxiety or intelligence!

I wish there were some way I could persuade psychologists to learn the
PCT way of understanding behavior. When I first started thinking about
control systems as a model of human organization, following Wiener, I
naively thought that all I had to do was tell psychologists about it, and
they would immediately see how superior this new idea was to all the old
stuff about stimuli, responses, habits, instincts, traits, and what we
now call “disorders.” The new ideas made all those things they
were teaching in undergraduate psychology sound like something out of a
schoolbook from the Dark Ages – quaint, like the engineering concepts of
that time, but hardly worth paying much attention to any more. Boy, was I
wrong.

What I forgot about, or maybe never knew, was how fiercely people will
defend their way of doing and understanding things, not really caring
whether they are right or wrong but just not wanting to think they had
been misled or fooled – and that they had cooperated so sincerely in
letting that happen.

I try, most of the time, just to accept that people are as they are, and
accept that this is where we have to start every day. But sometimes it
does get frustrating to see how slowly changes really happen.

Best,

Bill P.

I am not really sure how much this
little girl understands. It might be worthwhile to see if she would take
the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In this test, a person is shown four
pictures on the same page. The tester says something like: Where is X?
Show me X. If this little girl is willing to, can, cooperate with
this task, I would get some idea of her vocabulary and understanding of
pictures. Just watching the video the mother provides might provide the
same or better information .

The point about not pressuring the
little girl to talk is a good one. I was thinking about talking to the
mother about things while the little girls was present. My experience is
that children who are noncommunicative will sometimes pipe in.

Martin, thanks for clarifying why
you don’t think that LPT has much to offer in this case.

And thanks again to the CSG
listmates for your comments.

I have only seen this little girl
for one session and don’t have much more to say at this point.

David

From: Richard Marken

To:

CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 11:45 AM
Subject: Re: Kid who doesn’t talk

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.16.0845)]

Bill Powers (2009.02.16.0938 MST)–

I have looked up some articles about it on the American
Psychological Association website. The consensus seems to be that it is
an anxiety disorder condition and that behavioral therapy methods work
best.
David Goldstein
(2009.02.16.10:04 EST)]

Do you agree with that diagnosis and proposal for treatment? Did the
articles say that behavioral therapy (if you want to eat, start talking)
works better than MOL?

I’d like to know, too, David.

The PCT approach would be to
find the controlled variable(s) that this little girl is controlling by
means of her not talking.

I don’t think so. That would be useful to an experimenter trying to
validate PCT, but how would the therapist’s knowing that what the little
girl is controlling help her to reorganize?

Again, I completely agree. What’s up, David?

I would recommend MOL therapy

Me too. Actually, your first comment on this seemed to me to be right

···

----- Original Message -----
on target. You said:
How about just acting things out nonverbally with her for a while,
for fun, and stopping all the fuss about her not talking?

I would say “Yes, for that dear girl’s sake just lighten
up”.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

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www.avg.com

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5

From Jim Wuwert 2009.02.17.1500EST

[From Bill Powers (2009.02.17.0831 MST)]

I wish there were some way I could persuade psychologists to learn the PCT way of understanding behavior. When I first started thinking about control systems as a model of human organization, following Wiener, I naively thought that all I had to do was tell psychologists about it, and they would immediately see how superior this new idea was to all the old stuff about stimuli, responses, habits, instincts, traits, and what we now call “disorders.” The new ideas made all those things they were teaching in undergraduate psychology sound like something out of a schoolbook from the Dark Ages – quaint, like the engineering concepts of that time, but hardly worth paying much attention to any more. Boy, was I wrong.
What I forgot about, or maybe never knew, was how fiercely people will defend their way of doing and understanding things, not really caring whether they are right or wrong but just not wanting to think they had been misled or fooled – and that they had cooperated so sincerely in letting that happen.
I try, most of the time, just to accept that people are as they are, and accept that this is where we have to start every day. But sometimes it does get frustrating to see how slowly changes really happen.
What would it look like if the “psychologists” thought that PCT was superior?

What would it look like if the change happened fast?

I am not really sure how much this little girl understands. It might be worthwhile to see if she would take the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In this test, a person is shown four pictures on the same page. The tester says something like: Where is X? Show me X. If this little girl is willing to, can, cooperate with this task, I would get some idea of her vocabulary and understanding of pictures. Just watching the video the mother provides might provide the same or better information .

The point about not pressuring the little girl to talk is a good one. I was thinking about talking to the mother about things while the little girls was present. My experience is that children who are noncommunicative will sometimes pipe in.

Martin, thanks for clarifying why you don’t think that LPT has much to offer in this case.

And thanks again to the CSG listmates for your comments.

I have only seen this little girl for one session and don’t have much more to say at this point.

David

From: Richard Marken
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 11:45 AM
Subject: Re: Kid who doesn’t talk

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.16.0845)]

Bill Powers (2009.02.16.0938 MST)–

I have looked up some articles about it on the American Psychological Association website. The consensus seems to be that it is an anxiety disorder condition and that behavioral therapy methods work best.
David Goldstein (2009.02.16.10:04 EST)]

Do you agree with that diagnosis and proposal for treatment? Did the articles say that behavioral therapy (if you want to eat, start talking) works better than MOL?

I’d like to know, too, David.

The PCT approach would be to find the controlled variable(s) that this little girl is controlling by means of her not talking.

I don’t think so. That would be useful to an experimenter trying to validate PCT, but how would the therapist’s knowing that what the little girl is controlling help her to reorganize?

Again, I completely agree. What’s up, David?

I would recommend MOL therapy

Me too. Actually, your first comment on this seemed to me to be right on target. You said:
How about just acting things out nonverbally with her for a while, for fun, and stopping all the fuss about her not talking?

I would say “Yes, for that dear girl’s sake just lighten up”.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

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···

----- Original Message -----

6

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.17.1220)]

Bill Powers (2009.02.17.0831 MST) to David Goldstein

You understand PCT; how can you know so much about control theory, and have known it for so long, and still think there is anything salvageable in conventional psychology?

Why indeed. Isn’t this the same thing that’s gonig on with Martin as well. Maybe we could call it the “Priestley phenomenon”; the double entendre is rather appropos too;-)

I wish there were some way I could persuade psychologists to learn the PCT way of understanding behavior. When I first started thinking about control systems as a model of human organization, following Wiener, I naively thought that all I had to do was tell psychologists about it, and they would immediately see how superior this new idea was to all the old stuff about stimuli, responses, habits, instincts, traits, and what we now call “disorders.” The new ideas made all those things they were teaching in undergraduate psychology sound like something out of a schoolbook from the Dark Ages – quaint, like the engineering concepts of that time, but hardly worth paying much attention to any more. Boy, was I wrong.

I suspected that there would be a problem when I first got into it. But I had no idea how big of a problem it was going to be. Boy, was it big!

What I forgot about, or maybe never knew, was how fiercely people will defend their way of doing and understanding things, not really caring whether they are right or wrong but just not wanting to think they had been misled or fooled – and that they had cooperated so sincerely in letting that happen.

Yep, that was the problem.

I try, most of the time, just to accept that people are as they are, and accept that this is where we have to start every day. But sometimes it does get frustrating to see how slowly changes really happen.

You are obviously a heck of a lot better at it than I am!!

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

7

[From David Goldstein (2009.02.18.05:35 EST0]

[About Bill Powers (2009.02.17.0831 MST)]

Bill: Wouldn’t you want to get the person to explore what is behind the anxiety?

David: How would I know what the little girl is exploring if she doesn’t talk?

Bill: If someone is anxious or afraid, can you solve that problem by trying to make the person appear not anxious or afraid?

David: A person can take on the goal of relaxing his/her body even if anxious for unknown reasons. Why do you think that medication can result in a person feeling more relaxed? When a person is calmer, he/she is in a better position to self-exlore.

Bill: How about having some private individual sessions with the mother and teaching her how to do MOL with her daughter?

David: I like this. However, why couldn’t I do this with the girl present? The mother could do it at home and maybe discover the reasons why the girl doesn’t talk sometimes.

Bill: As to what conventional psychologists have to say in the literature, I have little respect for it, because it’s based on an entirely wrong understanding of how people are organized and how they work.

David: If you looked at some of the review studies before rejecting them out of hand, you would find that many of them involve structured interviews of people who had Selective Mutism and then recovered. I don’t see anything wrong with structured interviews regardless of the theory that the researcher prefers.

Bill: You understand PCT; how can you know so much about control theory, and have known it for so long, and still think there is anything salvageable in conventional psychology?

David: I take the attitude of looking at what the ‘conventional psychologists’ have done before proceeding to strike out from a PCT viewpoint. Isn’t that what we did when we studied the case of synesthesia?

Bill: What I forgot about, or maybe never knew, was how fiercely people will defend their way of doing and understanding things, not really caring whether they are right or wrong but just not wanting to think they had been misled or fooled – and that they had cooperated so sincerely in letting that happen.
David: Maybe because you were never trained as a conventional psychologist, you were not in conflict. However, resolution of an internal conflict requires a person to see both sides at the same time. I would like to think that this is what I am in the process of doing.

Rick has solved his internal conflict by rejecting one side of it. He phrases the conflict as open-loop versus closed-loop. I can’t think of any open-loop studies. Even if the method of naturalistic observation is used, without the person being studied knowing that he/she is being studied, the person assumes his/her own goals. So, it is closed-loop. Maybe this is Rick’s point. The conventional methods are open-loop ones which are being used to study closed-loop organisms.

8

[From David Goldstein
(2009.02.18.05:35 EST0]

[About Bill Powers (2009.02.17.0831
MST)]

Bill: Wouldn’t you want to get the person to explore what
is behind the anxiety?

David: How would I know what the little girl is exploring if she doesn’t
talk?

It’s more important for the little girl to know. She might not want you
to know what she’s thinking about, but if she’s thinking about it she may
be usefully reorganizing something.

But there are ways of communicating other than talking. Turn you
attention to them. Also, don’t forget that the little girl can probably
understand you, so you can say things like, “Would it be all right
if I asked you things and you just nod for yes, like this, or shake your
head for no, like this?”

Bill: If someone is anxious or
afraid, can you solve that problem by trying to make the person appear
not anxious or afraid?

David: A person can take on the goal
of relaxing his/her body even if anxious for unknown reasons. Why do you
think that medication can result in a person feeling more relaxed? When a
person is calmer, he/she is in a better position to self-exlore.

I’ve heard that reasoning a lot of times by now and it doesn’t impress me
as much as it used to. Reorganization is driven by intrinsic error: if
you turn off the intrinsic error with a pill or some other treatment, you
will also turn off reorganization. Exploring your conflict calmly and
reasonable is probably not going to have much effect. Don’t you
psychotherapists call that “intellectualizing”?

The main objection I have is to thinking of anxiety as a kind of
stand-alone problem, as if you could solve it just by making the feelings
of anxiety go away. If a person comes to a doctor with a sharp pain in
the lower left abdomen, does the doctor simply inject novocain, or does
the doctor take out the appendix? The anxiety is how having a large error
feels, and it points you and your patient to what the error is. If you
explore the error in MOL style, it will probably go away, and then the
feelings of anxiety will go away, too.

Bill:
As to what conventional
psychologists have to say in the literature, I have little respect for
it, because it’s based on an entirely wrong understanding of how people
are organized and how they work.

David: If you looked at
some of the review studies before rejecting them out of hand, you would
find that many of them involve structured interviews of people who had
Selective Mutism and then recovered. I don’t see anything wrong with
structured interviews regardless of the theory that the researcher
prefers.

We will probably have this argument for the rest of our lives. Actually,
you could convince me rather easily that you are right: just show me how
many people were cured of Selective Mutism by structured interviews and
how many were not, in a given study. If most of them were cured, I will
be interested. I would then look to see if the interviewers were actually
conducting an MOL session, or if perhaps there was something else about
the interviews that was effective. But the first question is always just
how well it works, and how you know.

Bill:
You understand PCT; how can
you know so much about control theory, and have known it for so long, and
still think there is anything salvageable in conventional
psychology?

David: I take the attitude of looking at what the ‘conventional
psychologists’ have done before proceeding to strike out from a PCT
viewpoint. Isn’t that what we did when we studied the case of
synesthesia?

I have been looking at what conventional psychologists have done for
50-odd years. I don’t look down on them or think they are stupid; they’re
just trying to work with one hand tied behind their backs, and sometimes
both hands, because what they have been taught about human nature is of
almost no use to them. They’re trying to operate with a stone axe where
what they need is a scalpel.

Bill:
What I forgot about, or maybe
never knew, was how fiercely people will defend their way of doing and
understanding things, not really caring whether they are right or wrong
but just not wanting to think they had been misled or fooled – and that
they had cooperated so sincerely in letting that
happen.

David: Maybe because you were never trained as a conventional
psychologist, you were not in conflict. However, resolution of an
internal conflict requires a person to see both sides at the same time. I
would like to think that this is what I am in the process of doing.

Yes, I know, and realize what it must be like for you. If all
psychologists faced this conflict as you are doing, I would have nothing
to complain about. I have confidence that when people reorganize, they
will eventually arrive at a resolution that works for them – and it
probably will work for me, too.

I was trained, for a year, as a conventional psychologist, but the result
was just the opposite of giving me a feeling of belonging and loyalty to
my mentors. Too bad; those are nice feelings. But it’s a good thing that
didn’t happen, isn’t it?

Best,

Bill P.

9

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.18.1210)]

David Goldstein (2009.02.18.05:35 EST0)

Rick has solved his internal conflict by rejecting one side of it. He phrases the conflict as open-loop versus closed-loop. I can’t think of any open-loop studies. Even if the method of naturalistic observation is used, without the person being studied knowing that he/she is being studied, the person assumes his/her own goals. So, it is closed-loop. Maybe this is Rick’s point. The conventional methods are open-loop ones which are being used to study closed-loop organisms.

My internal conflict, which I resolved years ago, was whether the psychological research methodology that I had learned (and taught and written a textbook on) was really invalid if organisms are closed-loop systems or whether it was still valid in some cases (as Martin seems to think). Bill’s 1978 Psychological Review paper, in which, among other things, Bill reported a demonstration of the behavioral illusion, convinced me that, indeed, conventional methodology is never a valid approach to studying control systems.

So whatever conflict existed within me (stick with some conventional methodology or go with methodology appropiate to the study of closed-loop systems) was resolved by 1979 (one year before my textbook on research methods was published), after reading and demonstrating to myself, using computer demos, that conventional methodology is not a valid approach to the study of clsed-loop systems. I didn’t have to read every research study in psychology to know that this was true, by the way. Bill’s demonstrations are demonstrations of principle; of how things work when you are dealing with a closed-loop system. That’s why it isn’t necessary for me to know the details of the study Martin described to know that the resultss doesn’t mean what he thinks they means.

Bill shows (in the 1978 Psych Review paper) that the relationship between IV (S) and DV (R) when studying a closed loop system is the inverse of the feedback connection between R and a controlled variable (CV). I think it’s great to go through the details of experiments (as Bill is doing with Martin’s example) to show how this “behavioral illusion” might play out in specific experiments. But I think it’s usually very difficult to tell what the CVs are in specific experiments because the experiments themselves are so complicated.

So you are right about my main point: it is inappropriate to use methods for the study open-loop (causal) systems to study closed loop (control) systems. Until psychologists are willing to accept this fact I’m afraid they are going to get nowhere (without knowing it) and PCT is not going to be accepted. That is what my “Revolution” paper is about.

Best

Rick

···

–
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com

10

[From David Goldstein (2009.02.18.19:58 EST)]

[About Bill Powers (2009.02.18.01:43 MST)]

Bill: But there are ways of communicating other than talking. Turn you attention to them. Also, don’t forget that the little girl can probably understand you, so you can say things like, “Would it be all right if I asked you things and you just nod for yes, like this, or shake your head for no, like this?”
David: I tried this in the first session. She refused to use this nonverbal way of communicating for me or her mother.

Bill: I’ve heard that reasoning a lot of times by now and it doesn’t impress me as much as it used to. Reorganization is driven by intrinsic error: if you turn off the intrinsic error with a pill or some other treatment, you will also turn off reorganization. Exploring your conflict calmly and reasonable is probably not going to have much effect. Don’t you psychotherapists call that “intellectualizing”?
David: As a person who has experienced big error signals after surviving a plane crash, I have learned that the cognitive machinery becomes very impaired. This tells me that too little or too much in the way of error signals is not the best condition for reorganization.

Bill: Actually, you could convince me rather easily that you are right: just show me how many people were cured of Selective Mutism by structured interviews and how many were not, in a given study.

David: I didn’t make myself clear. The structure interviews were not a treatment. They were simply the way the people were interviewed after the recovery took place.

Bill: I was trained, for a year, as a conventional psychologist, but the result was just the opposite of giving me a feeling of belonging and loyalty to my mentors. Too bad; those are nice feelings. But it’s a good thing that didn’t happen, isn’t it?
David: Maybe so if you think that this would have stopped you from developing PCT and MOL. However, it might have also given you a position in a Univeristy where you would have graduate students looking for thesis topics.

11

[From David Goldstein (2009.02.18.20:47 EST)]

[About Rick Marken (2009.02.18.1210)]

Thanks for the interesting bit of history.

You might want to take a look at a book by Douglas S. Riggs, published in 1963, entitled 'The Mathematical Approach to Physiological Problems. Take a look at Chapter 4.

He seems to be making the same point to physiologists.

David

···

----- Original Message -----

From:
Richard Marken

To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.ILLINOIS.EDU

Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 3:10 PM

Subject: Re: Kid who doesn’t talk (is selective about who, when and where she talks)

[From Rick Marken (2009.02.18.1210)]

David Goldstein (2009.02.18.05:35 EST0)

Rick has solved his internal conflict by rejecting one side of it. He phrases the conflict as open-loop versus closed-loop. I can't think of any open-loop studies. Even if the method of naturalistic observation is used, without the person being studied knowing that he/she is being studied, the person assumes his/her own goals. So, it is closed-loop. Maybe this is Rick's point. The conventional methods are open-loop ones which are being used to study closed-loop organisms.

My internal conflict, which I resolved years ago, was whether the psychological research methodology that I had learned (and taught and written a textbook on) was really invalid if organisms are closed-loop systems or whether it was still valid in some cases (as Martin seems to think). Bill’s 1978 Psychological Review paper, in which, among other things, Bill reported a demonstration of the behavioral illusion, convinced me that, indeed, conventional methodology is never a valid approach to studying control systems.

So whatever conflict existed within me (stick with some conventional methodology or go with methodology appropiate to the study of closed-loop systems) was resolved by 1979 (one year before my textbook on research methods was published), after reading and demonstrating to myself, using computer demos, that conventional methodology is not a valid approach to the study of clsed-loop systems. I didn’t have to read every research study in psychology to know that this was true, by the way. Bill’s demonstrations are demonstrations of principle; of how things work when you are dealing with a closed-loop system. That’s why it isn’t necessary for me to know the details of the study Martin described to know that the resultss doesn’t mean what he thinks they means.

Bill shows (in the 1978 Psych Review paper) that the relationship between IV (S) and DV (R) when studying a closed loop system is the inverse of the feedback connection between R and a controlled variable (CV). I think it’s great to go through the details of experiments (as Bill is doing with Martin’s example) to show how this “behavioral illusion” might play out in specific experiments. But I think it’s usually very difficult to tell what the CVs are in specific experiments because the experiments themselves are so complicated.

So you are right about my main point: it is inappropriate to use methods for the study open-loop (causal) systems to study closed loop (control) systems. Until psychologists are willing to accept this fact I’m afraid they are going to get nowhere (without knowing it) and PCT is not going to be accepted. That is what my “Revolution” paper is about.

Best

Rick

Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com