November 21, 2014

November 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is like sculpting: one chips away at the ineffective Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) sound frequencies, until one is left with the reinforcing conversation, which is so delightful and revealing that it keeps on going by itself. The raw material of sculpting is stone, but the basic ingredient for conversation is our sound. Tools we use to sculpt the rock, such as hammer and chisel, consist in our spoken communication of our vocal cords, larynx, lips and tongue. While a sculptor looks at his or her statue, the speaker listens to what he or she says. 

A beautiful statue that is admired by many people makes the sculptor want to make more those statues, but statues which are not appreciated by anyone are only going to be made more often if it pleases the sculptor. This essential aspect of creativity, so beautifully described in “Exploring Stone Sculpture: A Behavioral Analysis” (2012) by Betsy Constantine, is what led this author to discover SVB. The sculptor, because of his or her experience of working with these tools and materials, has a sense of what the statue can be like. He or she visualizes what he or she would like to produce and is capable of producing. He or she delights in creating an approximation of what he or she imagined.

 

In spoken communication speakers do the same. Based on their previous experiences they aim to achieve what they know is possible. The violent, insensitive, repetitive and energy-draining NVB products most people keep producing are inevitable results of their problematic behavioral histories. People  maintain NVB, because they don’t know anything else. If they knew something else, they would produce something better, which approximates SVB. Initially, they only sometimes succeed, but the better they know their art, the more they practice their skill and the more often they succeed.

The metaphor doesn’t break down because stone is material and sound is immaterial. To the contrary, our voice is as real as stone. The fact that we haven’t acknowledged this is the main reason we keep having NVB. Imagine the sculptor who carelessly knocks off the piece of rock where the nose of the statue should be? He or she can’t put it back on and the rock was permanently changed. A similar chance occurs due to the wrong tone of voice; SVB becomes impossible.  NVB is so common, that statues with a nose are no longer reinforced. What was art trying to tell us? It told us to stop and look and pay attention to the nonverbal. In SVB we pay attention to how we sound while we speak.