March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

After years of listening to my own self-talk and failed attempts to include my private speech into my public speech, I listened to a singing performance. A friend of mine and his girlfriend got singing lessons and demonstrated to others what they had learned. It was a delightful event. After the performance was over I congratulated them. They introduced me to their singing teacher, who immediately asked if I would also like to take singing lessons with her. I agreed to try it. I had always loved singing and had performed in musicals during high school. When I came to my first lesson, she smelled cigarette smoke on my breath and said she wouldn’t teach me unless I gave up smoking. I gave up smoking and started singing. 

What is important in this is that one behavior was replacing another, because I was in a new non-smoking environment. In addition to this was the fact that I dressed up as nicely as I could, each time I went to my singing lessons, which took place in a little castle. To go to this castle, I had to take the bus and travel to another town. Interestingly, later on, I would buy a house in that town, after I had married my American wife. I studied classical singing for many years and became so good at it that I was admitted to the Royal Conservatory. My singing teacher was an older gay man. Since he preyed on me, I discontinued my study and after I gave up singing, I was faced with deep sense of loss. The years of listening to my own voice while singing had effected my self-talk. When I was talking out loud with myself it felt as if I was listening to a different kind of singing. I recognized my sound played a big role in how I wanted to communicate. Without the correct sound, my communication with others seemed utterly useless. 

One day, I was sitting by myself on a carpet in the empty attic of my house. I was trying to meditate, but I was restless and I began to talk with myself. In the corner of the attic was a small box. I pulled it closer to see what was in it. It contained some old novels and also a small gong and a stick with a ball. I hit the gong and instantly loved its sound. When I said this to myself, I noticed that my voice sounded exactly like that gong. My sound was calm and pleasant and I knew that this was the sound with which I wanted to communicate. I tried it and it worked. I spoke with myself for about ten minutes. It was so profoundly satisfying that it made me feel so peaceful that I lay flat on my back on the carpet. My cat, who was usually nowhere to be found, came to sit on top of my chest and started purring. I fell into a deep state of relaxation and felt confident that I had found what I had been looking for. 

The sound of the gong and my experience with listening to my singing had made me recognize that my voice is an objective phenomenon, an independent variable in scientific terms.

The dependent variable is our speech and the independent variable is the sound of our voice. How we sound determines what we say. If we speak with a voice that expresses anxiety, stress, anger, despair etc. this determines the content of what we say. In other words, what we say is a function of how we say it. If non-verbally there is well-being and relaxation this will predictably result into a different content. 

The how of what we say determines if we are understood. If the how of what we say is an aversive stimulus, it is likely to elicit an aversive response. This will elicit the sympathetic activation (fight/flight/freeze response) of our autonomic nervous system. When we consider operant conditioning consisting of stimulus, response and consequence, we can see how the consequence of our negative affect, or aversive stimulation, is NVB, but that consequence of our positive affect, represented by the sound of our voice (as well as by they way we look, move or breathe) is SVB.  

NVB is reinforced because SVB is not. Likewise, SVB is reinforced because NVB is not. The reason for why we get upset, hostile or defensive is not in us. It is something in our environment which reinforces our speech. The best way to understand this is by considering our affects as different languages. One will only learn Russian if one surrounds oneself with Russian texts or ideally with Russian people.