March 30, 2014

March 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

My verbal behavior has become increasingly more under control of behaviorism. Knowing about the complexity of behavior, which Skinner has described as the three-term contingency, I became aware of 1) the discriminative stimuli that set the stage for 2) responses to occur, which then result in 3) consequences, which either increase or decrease the likelihood of these responses in the future, if similar circumstances were again to occur. 

There is great relief in knowing that my behavior, that all behavior is a function of my environment. This has decreased many of my problems and tensions.  If it was up to me, I would write about behaviorism every day. Since this is, due to my jobs, as a teacher and mental health worker, not possible, I talk about it as often as I can. However, writing about it gives me something that talking doesn’t and this writing is meant to go deeper into that. 

  

I am not saying that writing about behaviorism is better than talking about it, it’s different. Since I want to point out the importance of this difference to others, I want to explore why it matters to me. These words proof that it matters to me. I want to present this proof. My spoken words are gone and only matter to the extent that they affect the person who has heard them. Although my spoken words have positively influenced people, I know that spoken words are not valued as much as written words. What is written somehow magically becomes more important then what is said.

A big difference between what I say and write is that what I say is only available to the small amount of people, who talk with me. The times that I am in front of a larger audience are not that many and I don’t believe a video-recording will broaden the reach of my message. The reason for that is that those who watch the video are not addressed on the recording. There is actual conversation going on between me and an audience, but there is no communication between me and audience if my lecture is heard on a video recording. This is why, so far, no video recordings have been made.

Each time we tried to video record my seminar, it had a disturbing effect on the participants and because of that I disallowed it. It is important why this is the case. Participants don’t mind being video-taped, they readily consent, but they find that someone, who stands aside and doesn’t participate in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) disrupts the process. This writing is useful because it gives me an idea which I didn’t have before: someone who films it must participate in it as well. I think it could work that way and I am going to try it. 

There may be a video recording of SVB after all. Only if the person who holds the camera is involved in the process will the audience who watches the video be able to have a sense of what it is. A similar process is involved in writing about it. SVB can’t be written if one is not involved in it. There has to be a subjective experience for the writing to make any sense. This is interesting. The writing as well as the speaking requires both the writer and the speaker to have SVB to be able to write or speak about it. 

In the psychology classes I give at Butte College, students get opportunity for  extra credit by writing a two-page paper about the sound of their voice. The paper starts with the sentence “If I listen to the sound of my voice while I speak then I……” They are instructed to sit alone by themselves and to listen to the sound of their voice and to write whatever comes to their mind. Their writing is under control of self-listening, the operational definition of SVB, and they write the most wonderful papers in which they discover all sorts of new things about themselves and about their relationships with others. 

These papers are testimonials to the workings of SVB. Without any previous knowledge my students explore its working and they write the most wonderous papers about it. Remarkably, all their findings concur with what I have said and often they add new perspectives. Surely, there is an objective process involved in listening to ourselves while we speak and it is no accident that our subjective experiences are very similar. During SVB we become objective about our subjective experiences. This is not to say, however, that our experiences are the same, but that they have the same quality. In SVB we talk and write about what reinforces us. It is so exciting to hear and read that we can be enriched by what is said and read.