November 4, 2014

November 4, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Today’s writing is a continuation of yesterday’s conversation between the verbalizer and the mediator within one person. It is important to understand this process has nothing to do with “talking with one self”, “being one self” or “coming closer to one self.” Most people who, when instructed to do so,  “listen to themselves”, while “they read this text out loud”, will be inclined to describe this process as “self-listening.” However, as behaviorists, we know that there is no self, there is no agent, who, based upon this text, decides to read out loud and who then, supposedly, is “listening to him or herself.” 

Although part of our environment, the environment within our own skin, is not accessible to others, speaking and listening are operant behaviors, which take place within one environment. The covert private speech, which goes on in each of us, is, of course, a function of our overt public speech. In the early stages of development there is no covert speech. A much better way to talk about the speech which occurs within and without our body, is by using the biological terms proposed by Ferreira (2013):  endo-environment, to refer to what happens within the organism and ecto-environment, to refer to what happens outside of the organism. To become scientific about speech we must view it as a biological process. Whether covert or overt, vocal speech is the process by which the organism interacts with and adapts to its environment. Ecto-speech pertains to the environment outside the organism’s body and endo-speech pertains to the environment inside of the organism's body. 

Emergence of endo-speech in childhood is made possible due to the consequation of peaceful and supportive ecto-speech. Without this, endo-speech problems will begin to occur, which turn the organism’s world upside down. When an organism’s endo-speech results from a hostile, neglectful, negative ecto-speech, what this author calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), its ability to adapt to its environment will be gravely impaired. Stated differently, instead of pro-social behavior, anti-social behavior will become more prominent. The organism’s NVB is coercive in nature, in that it primarily consists of attempts to force other organism into submission. This then creates and perpetuates the abusive survival interaction from which mankind has yet to be liberated. 

When the reader reads this text out loud and listens to the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) energy that is produced by him or her self, because he or she receives SVB-ecto-speech from this author, who urges him or her to listen to the sound of his or her SVB-endo-speech, the reader begins to produce as much SVB-ecto-speech as is needed to be able to maintain his or her SVB-endo-speech.

The reader is urged by this writer to create his or her own endo-contingency for his or her own endo-SVB, because the ecto-contingency for SVB doesn’t yet exist. This complicated single-subject multiple baseline experimental design is also known as meditation. The peace we seek outside of ourselves supposedly is only found inside of ourselves. Yet, we can’t help our biological need for relief from aversive environments. Our covert and overt verbal behavior is always a function of environmental variables. That is how our behavior works. We can’t have SVB in a NVB environment and we can’t be happy or at ease in an aversive environment. To proclaim that this is possible is total nonsense. We can close ourselves off from our environment and this is legitimized by our religions, but this doesn’t properly address the covert mediation (known as self-talk) of the overt verbalizer. This process can only as be as good as the overt mediation of the overt verbalizer (you talking with me or me talking with you). In other words, our NVB public speech results in our NVB private speech and only our SVB public speech can result into our SVB private speech.

No matter how much we meditate, non-meditative speech messes up our meditation. Unless we are going speak meditatively, meditation won’t affect our environment or, more precisely, the people in our environment. Only if we are going talk about our relationships, about our communication, can NVB ectovironments be changed into SVB ectovironments. Although meditative people, who habitually dissociate from ectovironment, may tell you otherwise, as SVB-ecto-environments, except for where this author occasionally is able to create them, don’t exist, the reader’s only option is to recognize the interaction between the verbalizer and the mediator within one single organism. 

This author, who has given hundreds of seminars about SBV, knows from his own experiments, that the only way in which an individual is going to be able to learn SVB, is when this person is going to listen more often to him or herself while he or she speaks. Two things are necessary for this to happen: the person must speak and the person must listen. Reliance on others, on environmental support, is going to enhance the exact opposite effect and will only entrench the person more deeply into NVB than before. Since other people are more likely to distract us from SVB than we ourselves will, it is perfectly okay for us to familiarize ourselves with SVB without the aid of others. We need to do this to be able to observe the independent variables in operation, that is, we need to be alone to observe the effect of how we sound on what we say to ourselves and to others. When we speak and listen simultaneously we achieve the behavioral cusp which is called SVB. Only when speaking and listening happen at the same rate and intensity level can and will they become and stay joined. 

During this multiple baseline experiment, the phase in which we become our own mediator is inevitably going to be alternated by the phase in which we will be once more a non-mediated verbalizer. Alone, however, we will begin to notice that the periods of time during which we are able to mediate the verbalizer, become longer and longer. Moreover, we will say very different things, because we express without hesitation or effort our covert speech into our overt speech. This design creates an opportunity for us to be alone, so that we can find out that by listing while we speak, we can create SVB, which is mostly impossible when we are together and keep eliciting NVB.

Once we achieve SVB, we know we have achieved it, because it is strikingly different from the NVB, which preceded it. If nothing happens, the reader should acknowledge that NVB is happening. Once SVB happens, the reader notices a shift from what he or she is saying, to how he or she is saying it or from how he or she is saying it, to what he or she is saying. In each case, there is an adjustment: the verbalizer may be adjusting to the mediator and the mediator is becoming capable of understanding the verbalizer. What matters mostly is that this adjustment can begin to stabilize. The experimenter, that is, the reader, is working on becoming a better listener as well as a better speaker. Overt speech must not recede to a covert level, because adjustments can only be explored and made overtly. The aim of this experiment is to change first our NVB-ecto-speech into SVB-ecto-speech, so that NVB-endo-speech can be changed into SVB-endo-speech. As is always the case in a multiple-baseline design, each subject serves as his or her own experimental control across all phases. 

As this reading continues and as the reader begins to join his or her speaking and listening behavior, he or she will notice, while reading out loud, that repeatedly mediating and verbalizing these words,  brings attention to the vocalization of SVB. Listening to someone else usually doesn’t  result into self-listening. To the contrary, listening to someone else usually means the exclusion of self-listening. Reason for this is that most other-listening is based on NVB. This means that in NVB the mediator is forced to listen to the verbalizer. The NVB verbalizer is mediated by a coerced, aversively-stimulated and eventually a NVB-conditioned mediator, but a SVB verbalizer is mediated by an appetitively-stimulated and eventually SVB-conditioned mediator. Thus, there are two verbalizers and two mediators in each of us. This makes it a bit tricky to whom we are paying attention, but the NVB verbalizer can’t be mediated by the SVB mediator. Likewise, the SVB verbalizer can’t be mediated by the NVB mediator. This experiment teases apart the two verbalizers and the two mediators. Each time the independent variable, our voice, changes, verbalizers engage in SVB or NVB.