September 1, 2014

September 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

The seminar yesterday at the Chico Branch Library of Butte County was a great success. In addition to explaining the ins and outs of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), this writer emphasized the fact that people don’t cause their own behavior. This proved to be very fruitful and it led to fascinating interaction. It helped explain SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) better than anything he previously had talked about. Also in the psychology class he teaches, this writer made a similar focus. Like nothing else this sets the stage for change.

Towards the end of the seminar an important discovery was made. This writer had known for many years that while an individual speaks, he or she has dominant left or right-sided body language and leans with most of his or her weight on either the right or on the left foot. He had experimented extensively with the de-activation of the active body-language-side and the activation of the inactive body-language- side, which involves a deliberate shift of a person's weight from his or her left foot to his or her right foot or visa-versa. 

Although the effect of changing a person's body language on how this person speaks had always been evident to all the participants to whom it was demonstrated, the discussion which followed had often been muddled by vague assumptions about the causation of behavior by the left brain or the right brain. It can be easily observed, however, that a person's left-sided dominant body language, co-occurs with entirely different verbal behavior than a person's right-sided dominant body language. The notion that our right brain, along with  left-sided dominant body language 'causes' more emotional output and that our left brain, along with right-sided dominant body language,  'causes' more rational output, contaminated the actual experiment. 

In the aforementioned scenario participants in previous seminars had been so baffled by the difference which they had noticed in another person’s verbal expressions that they would easily get carried away by their verbally-fixated talk about how the right brain supposedly causes rational speech and how the left brain presumably causes emotional speech. This brain-based causation-conversation would then lead to unverifiable speculations, which diluted the effects that reliably occured when a person's left-sided dominant body language was methodically de-activated and right-sided inactive body language  activated or when right-sided dominant body language was de-activated and left-sided inactive body language activated. Causation of speech by our brains is another version of an inner agent and had confounded repeatedly the scientific experiment this writer had wanted to do.

During yesterday's seminar,this mistake was caught and this writer was able to ignore speculations about how the left brain supposedly causes other verbal behavior than the right brain. By remaining focused on only the observable behavior, on what the participants said and on how they sounded and how they moved, the participants, who had changed their dominant body language, created new experiences within their own skin, a part of the environment, which had been almost completely overlooked during their spoken communication. 

Those who experimented with this phenomenon, as well as those who witnessed and validated the changes they perceived in the expressions of others, moved away from talking and thinking about causation of behavior by a self or a brain, to talking about observable behavior.

To experience and simultaneously talk about what happens within our  skin as something that happens in our environment is a new concept. To speak about this more clearly, as Ferreira (2013) has suggested, it makes sense to call our outside environment, the ecto-environment and our inside environment, the endo-environment. Stimuli within our own skin are endo-stimuli and those outside are ecto-stimuli. 

Of course, our endo-environment is caused by our ecto-environment, which is not to say that endo-stimuli produced by micro-structural changes of our body can't produce our behavioral responses. Also, it became very clear during the seminar (even though we weren’t yet using this terminology) that we needed to distinguish between our endo-responses and ecto-responses, the former being noticeable only individually, the latter always noticeable and verifiable by others.

If we speak about our endo-responses at all, it is as if they occur in a world that is different from others. Our supposedly ‘mindful’ way of talking disconnects us from ourselves and from each other and signifies our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). NVB is defined as the behavior which occurs as long as we believe that we cause our own behavior. SVB, by contrast, only occurs when we pay attention to the ecto-stimuli, such as the verbalizer's voice as well as his or her body language, which causes the endo-responses in the mediator. 

NVB is reinforced by mediators, who were taught to speak about their endo-responses as if they themselves were responsible for them. Only those who were taught to speak about endo-responses more properly, that is, in terms of how they were caused by ecto-stimuli, were able to acquire some of the components which would later become SVB.

In NVB, ecto-stimuli, the nonverbal punitive behaviors that are exhibited by the verbalizers, force the mediators into submission. The mediator's approval of the NVB verbalizer is a conditioned fear-response, in other words, it is respondent and thus has major consequences for how the mediator speaks. In NVB the mediator does not ask, and, is not asked to speak about his or her fear of the verbalizer. The NVB mediator either obeys the NVB verbalizer or he or she simply overrides his or her fear by arguing and fighting with the NVB verbalizer. This struggle then is audible in the sound of the verbalizer's voice, once he or she stops being a mediator. 

NVB is based on the lack of turn-taking and derives its name from the noise which is produced when we pretend to communicate. During NVB our voices grab, stab, push, pull, choke, force and distract. NVB verbalizers are so insensitive to themselves and so callous to others that they become warriors, who are willing to give their lives and  claim that they have no fear. By expressing their negative emotions, NVB verbalizers bully, overwhelm and coerce mediators and easily turn them into NVB self-talkers. 

Those who grew up in an environment of relative care and kindness don't want to mediate NVB, but, while being forced by others to listen to it, they inadvertently reinforce it. This is because the listening behavior of the SVB mediator is more developed than his or her SVB speaking behavior. Only when SVB mediators stop listening to NVB verbalizers will they be able to become SVB verbalizers. 

To become a SVB verbalizer, one must listen to oneself while one speaks. Moreover, one must speak to be able to hear oneself. SVB speech will only continue with those who reinforce it. Each time SVB stops, NVB will take over. Only those who can differentiate between the two are able to notice this. SVB communicators are neither responsible for themselves nor for each other. Their conditioning allows them to create and maintain environments in which SVB can happen. They avoid NVB, because know how to avoid it. Their escapes from NVB have become so effective that they hardly occur. They can approach SVB, because their avoidance of and escape from NVB works. Skinner’s life was an excellent example of this.

In SVB, inactive body language becomes activated and dominant body language will be attenuated. In NVB, on the other hand, we speak with our usual body language and our inactive side will not be activated. Of course, in both SVB and NVB there is body language on both sides. To see which side is the active body language side, the experimenter  carefully observes on which foot the verbalizer rests with most of his or her weight while he or she speaks. When this verbalizer is asked by the experimenter to de-activate his or her active body language, this will predictably create discomfort. 

The verbalizer will try to move back to his or her familiar body language side, but when he or she is coached to ease his or her way into activating his or her inactive side and de-activating his or her active side, he or she will demonstrate that his or her new body language creates an entirely novel set of experiences. The mediators, who hear and see such a verbalizer, will fully acknowledge this. 

The contrast that is created by leaning one's body weight on one's  right or on one's left foot, appears to stimulate new forms of verbal behavior. The experimenter can instruct the verbalizer to let his or her right-sided body language interact with his or her left-sided body language. To maintain the contrast between both sides, only the left or the right-sided body language is initially activated. If both sides are activated simultaneously, this contrast dissolves. 

After the inactive body language side has been activated, there occurs a change on the over-active body language side. As a result of the expression of the inactive body language side; the dominant body language side becomes more relaxed. Consequently, the dominant body language body side becomes less dominant. Moreover, the dominant body language side becomes approved and supported by the until recently inactive body language side. Thus, due to the activation of inactive body language SVB becomes possible and NVB is decreased.