December 20, 2014

December 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

In Red Bluff, one has to slow down one’s speed to 25 miles an hour when one drives along the school, but once one has passed this speed zone, the road signs indicate it is okay to increase one' s speed again to 45 miles an hour.  This example demonstrates that we must behave differently under different situations or our driving behavior will lead to what is called positive punishment, a speeding ticket. 

The behavior of driving within the speed limit is negatively reinforced, since we avoid getting a speeding ticket by slowing down.  Our driving behavior is controlled by the situation; within the speed-zone, we slow down, but outside the speed-zone, we may go a little faster again. Once in a while, we see cars that are being stopped by the police for speeding and we want to avoid being stopped like that.  Repeated exposure to this stretch of road has made us familiar with the situation. Someone from out of town may not be as familiar with the situation as we are. It wouldn’t surprise this writer that more speeding tickets are written for such outsiders, who are without stimulus discrimination and may overlook these signs to slow down.

Discrimination between the two opposing ways of communicating, Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), requires that we detect the two situations in which they occur as being very different. In one situation, we must have SVB, but in the other, we must have NVB, otherwise we get in trouble. In other words, we need to be able to recognize when we can have SVB and when we can’t have it and must produce NVB. Generally speaking, we engage in superficial conversation with someone who is not really listening. If, on the other hand, someone is genuinely interested in what we are saying, we notice this and we are able to express ourselves better. Besides other nonverbal behaviors, such as the way in which we move, the discriminating stimulus for how we talk is how we sound. 

Given a particular sound, we will communicate in a particular kind of way. That is, during SVB, the sound of our voice is the discriminative stimulus, which predicts certain consequences, such as good relationship, friendship, safety and trust. During NVB, by contrast, the sound of our voice signals the exact opposite: we are separate, we have to fend for ourselves, we have to be on guard and we can’t trust each other. 

The strengthening or the weakening of these two sets of behaviors, are consequences, which are associated with how we sound while we speak. The behaviors which are reinforced during SVB are not reinforced during NVB and the behaviors which are reinforced during NVB are not reinforced during SVB. Discriminating these two categories is important because they are mutually exclusive.  

Even though what is written here, is about listening to the human voice, reading about the sound of our voice is, of course, not the same as actually listening to it. Like a speed-sign, one sound, Voice I, signals the availability of reinforcement for “X”, a set of behaviors, such as doubting, defending, fighting, fleeing and freezing behaviors, while another sound, Voice II, indicates the availability of reinforcement for “Y”, a set of behaviors, such as conversing, connecting, relaxing, sharing, playing, supporting and loving.  Thus, in the presence of Voice I, “X” is more likely be reinforced, but not “Y”. Likewise, in the presence of Voice II, “Y” is more likely reinforced than  “X”. That is, in the presence of Voice I, there is high probability that reinforcement for set “X” is available and in the presence of Voice II, there is high probability that reinforcement for set “Y” is available. Although we may, in due course, discriminate the difference between Voice I and Voice II, the fact that we do doesn’t explain SVB or NVB. 

What matters in this reading is that the reader becomes informed about functional relations. SVB and NVB are explained by antecedent events, discriminative stimuli, such as Voice II or Voice I, respectively, which set the stage for certain responses, such as set “Y” and set “X”, which are correlated with certain kind of consequences. 

In the speed-zone, the sign to slow down to 25 miles an hour, is a discriminative stimulus indicating the punishment and extinction of driving behavior above 25 miles an hour. Likewise, Voice I is a discriminative stimulus predicting punishment and extinction of set “Y” behaviors and Voice II predicts the punishment and extinction of set “X” behaviors. These functional relations, between how we sound (antecedent discriminative stimuli), how we communicate (responses) and how behaviors in similar occasions, in the future are likely increased or decreased (due to reinforcement, punishment or extinction) explain why we talk the way we do. 

 

Most of our interaction is NVB, because it takes place in aversive environments, which causes us to produce Voice I, the antecedent stimulus, which elicits set “X” behavioral responses, which are followed by reinforcing consequences, which strengthen Voice I as well as the behaviors to which it generalizes. Consequently, we live in a world in which most of us experience relationship problems, because we  little SVB. If we have SVB, it is in an accidental, momentary way, in what we usually describe as a ‘spontaneous’ moment. Under such unstable circumstances, behavior is only temporarily under stimulus control of a different contingency than the one we are used to, familiar with, conditioned by and expect, the contingency for NVB. This rare occurrence is not sufficient to maintain SVB and because we don’t know the three-term contingency, which explains to us when SVB can occur, we  adhere to superstitious behaviors, that is, the behavior we happened to be involved in on these rare occasions. Rather than calling it addiction, we are referring to changes of our nervous system, which was conditioned to behave in a certain way under certain circumstances. Another situation is the cure for our addiction. Different antecedent environmental stimuli, a different contingency, can evoke novel operant repertoire.