October 14, 2014

October 14, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Although it may seem capricious, spoken communication, like any behavior, is an orderly process. Regardless of what language we may speak, we talk the way we do because eliciting and evocative stimuli occur.  Without environments in which verbal behavior-controlling contingencies make such stimuli available, language cannot and will not develop. Granted a healthy body and a relatively safe and caring environment, our listening and speaking behaviors develop in sequence; we learn how to speak by listening. That is, listening behavior develops prior to speaking behavior. Without the ability to listen first, speaking will be impaired. 

All of our problems of spoken communication can be explained by two response classes: Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and Sound Verbal Behavior (NVB). NVB is regressive in that evolutionary more ancient, respondent behaviors constrain learning, which must involve operant conditioning processes. Our ability to listen to, understand and verbally respond to each other is made impossible as long as more primitive behavior keeps being stimulated. This is why We keep having NVB. 

During SVB, because communicators listen to themselves while they speak, operant conditioning processes are made possible by respondent conditioning processes. The safe environment which makes SVB possible evokes synchronization of speaking and listening behavior. During NVB, by contrast, listening and speaking cannot come together and thus the speaker and the listener cannot come together. It should come as no surprise, however, that although it creates disorder, NVB itself is an  entirely orderly process, which continues to deny mankind access to language. 

Stated differently, contingencies that maintain SVB or NVB are incompatible. The conflicts which each individual experiences between his or her own behaviors occur because we are again and again afraid in one environment, but safe in another. 

Our individual oscillation between threatening respondent processes and safe operant processes continues unless we take note of the fact that this is caused by the punitive contingencies, which maintain NVB and make reinforcing contingencies that maintain SVB less effective. Moreover, the aversive contingencies, which elicit NVB, always lead a decreased SVB response rate. 

The aforementioned conflicts that each individual experiences are usually only observed, as Vargas (2013) has argued, by a “public of one.” In part, this is because “covert stimuli occur inside the body where others cannot be privy.” While it is true that a contingency of “a public of others” makes us talk about distinctions such as covert and overt, this does not translate into SVB. To create and maintain the contingency for SVB, we must learn to voice the “public of one.” 

Human interaction has remained problematic, because we try in vain to analyze it from the artificial, scientific contingencies, which emphasize overt, presumably, accessible, observable and measurable responses. Access to each other’s covert behavior is not, as Ledoux (2014) believes, going to be made available by “appropriate physiological measurement instruments.” Supposedly, these instruments would eventually create access to stimuli experienced during “single-observer observation.” However, this self-centered emphasis on covert verbal behavior is part of the contingency for NVB, which, as stated, makes SVB impossible. 

Our assumed need for access to each other’s covert behavior decreases and will completely dissolve in SVB. This fear-based need is only there because of NVB, in which we are threatened and limited in our operant learning by reflexive behavior. The contingencies which maintain SVB become more effective once we recognize that contingencies for NVB also maintain fictitious explanations and thus are anti-scientific. NVB is inherently biased because it lacks subtlety.

It is obvious that SVB and NVB are mutually exclusive, but the environmental stimuli, which maintain these behaviors, will only become visible if we look for them. As long as behaviorologists do not deliberately create and maintain the contingencies for SVB, they too will perpetuate the same explanatory fictions which they say they want to demolish. Even behaviorologists and behaviorists have remained in conflict with themselves and with each other due to their NVB. 

During SVB speakers listen to themselves while they speak. This self-listening makes other-listening possible. In absence of self-listing, other-listening does not occur. NVB is characterized by the verbalizer’s inability to listen to him or herself.  This lack of sensitivity on the side of the NVB speaker elicits respondent behavior in the mediator, who is distracted by the verbalizer’s nonverbal behavior, which is always incongruent with his or her verbal behavior. During SVB the nonverbal behavior of the verbalizer doesn’t elicit negative physiological responses in the mediator because the verbal and the nonverbal behavior of the speaker, that is the speaking and listening behavior of the speaker are synchronized. 

“The Poly Vagal Theory” (2011) by Stephen Porges explains why the activation of the "Social Engagement System" requires that the "Mobilization System", which mediates a mammal's fight-flight responses and the "Immobilization System" which mediates the freeze response, remain deactivated. Although Porges doesn't talk about SVB and NVB, his Poly Vagal Theory of phylogenetically embedded systems shines a bright light on this important distinction. We can still talk and have NVB while the Mobilization and the Immobilization System are activated, but we are unable to produce SVB.