February 1, 2015

February 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Although this writer is accused by Stephen Ledoux, whose great book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) he is reading, that he is mis-representing behaviorology, he is not too worried about that, because he is also invited by him to write and submit an article to the peer-reviewed behaviorology journal. Even though this writer could of course do that, he still wants to make his point while talking. 

In an email to Ledoux he had explicitly written: “It is my goal to get in front of an examination committee so that I can verbally present my Sound Verbal Behavior thesis and discuss, explore, verify and experience with the committee members how we go back and forth between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) during our conversation. He still believes he deserves a Ph.D. for this. SVB and NVB are universal response classes.” In his response to him, Ledoux didn’t say a word about his request.  

The assumption that SVB could be validated by those who read about it goes against everything SVB stands for. If this writer is going to write about SVB, something he never thought he would, but which, due to his knowledge of behaviorology, he is now more inspired to, he is going to write that SVB is valid without any written approval. As he made clear in his email to Ledoux, he wants to talk about SVB with the examination committee, because that is the only situation in which SVB is going to make any sense. Ledoux, who in a recent phone-conversation even admitted that verbal theses presentations sometimes happen, ignored in his email this writer’s request, but he ought to know that this writer has legitimate reasons why he insists on being given the chance to bring in the context and point out the situation in which SVB can and will occur.

This writer was reminded of events that got him started many years ago as a facilitator of communication seminars. In The Hague, the town where he used to live in The Netherlands, a contest for new business owners was organized by the Chamber of Commerce. Three prices were awarded to the most promising business plan. This writer wrote a business plan. He didn’t know anything about behaviorism or behaviorology, but he knew that people sound good when they have real conversation with each other. 

In front of the jury, he gave a synopsis of why he believed the Sounds Good Method would work and would help everyone acquire a new and improved communication. Since he didn’t have any idea about the business side of being self-employed and giving seminars, he fabricated the costs for his office, travel, coffee, clothes, publications, employees, food and mailings and presented his fictitious investments and revenues to a puzzled crowd of business owners and listeners. 

It was immediately clear that everyone loved the idea he presented. The committee, which consisted of a director of the local newspaper, a catering company, a bank, an insurance company and an investment company, decided to create an extra price for him, because although it was apparent that his business plan was bogus, they were intrigued by how better communication could be achieved by sounding good. The extra price was that they would participate in a seminar which this writer would organize especially for them. They would try out if there was any merit in this writer's plan, which was more than just a business plan and in fact aimed at changing the entire world. They asked him to name his price, to pick a date and then they would show up. This writer knew someone who owned a big mansion. He rented her beautiful house for one afternoon and bought delicious foods, wine, cigars and whiskey. The business people arrived and were very impressed. This dressed-up writer talked with them and they mellowed out and became unusually relaxed. 

When the three hours were over, it seemed as if time had flown by and the seminar was suddenly finished. It was a shock as they had just began to enjoy themselves. They complained they didn’t yet understand  what this writer had been doing and how it all worked. He had, as he is still doing today, only asked them to listen to themselves while they speak. This allowed them to hear themselves and produce a sound which was not as stressed as their usual sound. Because of the novel, positive experiences that occurred, a sense of bonding had happened between these ambitious individuals, who otherwise would never spend that long time sitting, talking and having a great time. They were amazed, confused and delighted that communication could be so simple, effective and enjoyable. 

They unanimously agreed that it was valuable, but felt they didn’t grasp it and so they asked this writer to organize another seminar. Another seminar took place and this writer was able to take them into deeper relaxation and more exploration. They had many tangible experiences of what he now calls Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). They were stunned. By the way, they were not drunk or anything, they just enjoyed a glass of wine or whiskey. The end of the second seminar came again so quickly that they asked for another one. In this fashion, they participated in a total of five seminars with this writer. They just loved it and they kept in contact with each other and with this writer.  They went golfing together, they went to a spa together and they went to have breakfast together. During each of these fun events what had been learned was further elaborated. 

Meanwhile, the investor had lost a lot of money when the stock-market had crashed, but she was supported by the group; the newspaper director, had a stroke and was visited by the group and realized that he needed to make some serious changes to live a healthier life; the catering director decided to sell his company and he started a diving school in Aruba. This was something he had always wanted to do; and the other two, the bank director and the insurance director, they were doing well. 

These five people who were in this writer’s first seminars, gave him an enormous boost and gave him contacts with other clients. It is important to realize that even while this writer didn’t know about behaviorism or behaviorology, he was already creating an environment in which verbal behavior could be addressed and changed. His longing for such an environment and the sheer joy of seeing that SVB worked with so many different people led him to create such environments again and again. 

Soon after he had started his company, which was called “Open Communication”, he was already working within the Dutch Department of Social Affairs and the Department of Agriculture and Traffic. He sometimes gave seminars to groups as big as 100 people which would last for a whole afternoon. Government employees were discussing and planning the implementation of policies while they were having SVB. 

A couple of years ago, still before this writer knew anything about behaviorism or behaviorology, he was doing some volunteer work at a local free health clinic. Many people were homeless and were having mental health problems, but SVB made total sense to them. One day, he spoke with a gentleman, who was only there to pick up his wife, who was also volunteering. When he overheard this writer speak about SVB, he was so intrigued that he wanted to know more about it. After a couple of conversations and becoming more acquainted, he turned out to be a millionaire, who proposed to this writer that he would finance him if he would write a book about SVB. He was willing to pay for a ghost-writer. It became clear, however, that this millionaire and his ghost-writer were not  interested in learning about SVB. To the contrary, they wanted to change this writer's words and so, he had to let them go, because their pursuit was in favor of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although this writer has given many successful and well-paid seminars, he is no longer interested in these one-time events. Due to his accumulated knowledge of behaviorism he now insists on repeated trials so that lasting effects can be achieved.

The behavior-environment relation is important to understanding what this writer means by the tact SVB. Both SVB and NVB are forms of verbal responses, which are constantly reinforced in the presence of specific events: Voice I is reinforced as it elicits NVB and Voice II is reinforced as it evokes SVB. Someone with Voice II is not going to be reinforced for his or her SVB by those who don’t even know the difference between Voice I and Voice II, who, consequently, can only reinforce Voice I. It may be difficult to accept and people may not like to hear this, but someone with Voice I is continuously reinforced for his or her NVB by those who know the difference between Voice I and Voice II, because they know they can’t prevent Voice I. A good metaphor for NVB is when someone holds a gun in front of our face and demands our money. The best thing to do under such circumstances is to give one’s money. One can also think the All-American-Way and defend oneself by buying a gun or pepper-spray, but counter-control like that is all part of the NVB arms race. 

During SVB communicators are defenseless against anyone who with their  NVB disrupts it or makes it impossible. The only thing one can and will do is realize that the environment is changed by those who elicit NVB.  Once one knows this, one will avoid those environments in which NVB happens and seek out or create those environments in which SVB can occur. The situation in which one is threatened is different from the situation in which there is no aversive stimulation at all. SVB requires the absence of aversive stimulation. Since the property, the sound, of the communication event controls the response, SVB and NVB are considered abstract tacts.  

In his book Verbal Behavior (1957, p. 85) Skinner states “behavior in the form of a tact works for the benefit of the listener by extending his contact with the environment, and such behavior is set up in the verbal community for this reason.” The tacts SVB and NVB are new and have not been previously described. Moreover, the verbal community for SVB has yet to be created. Just as the radical behaviorist verbal community didn’t  exist before B.F. Skinner, the SVB community didn't exist before M.J. Peperkamp. Skinner created the radical behaviorist verbal community and this writer is in the process of creating the SVB community. 

The tacts SVB and NVB not only describe the relationship between events and their properties, Voice II and Voice I , they also relate to co-occuring intra-verbal tacts, which are controlled by our overt SVB and NVB. Once people have experienced the enormous difference between SVB and NVB, they realize that their covert negative private speech was a consequence of their involvement in and exposure to overt NVB public speech. After this discovery, they have a new way of interpreting their thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings which were previously troubling, transform into good thoughts and good feelings once they are properly understood.

SVB is a proposition depicting the relationship between how the sound of the verbalizer is affecting the body of the mediator. Thus, SVB tacts the link between stimuli, responses, consequences and stimulus control. In SVB, the verbalizer always has a regulating effect on the mediator, but in NVB the verbalizer always has a dis-regulating effect on the mediator. The fact that these effects can only be discussed during SVB, but not during NVB, doesn’t mean that these dis-regulating effects of NVB do not occur. The dis-regulating effects of NVB always occur, but they are not  discussed. NVB is not conducive to accurately discussing feelings. What goes on in the name of feelings during NVB is another way of dominating, exploiting, intimidating, rejecting, manipulating, distracting and posturing. 

Readers can recognize and verify whether it is true that SVB and NVB are consistent patterns of verbal reasoning behavior, which both have a high probability of being reinforced under the right kind of circumstances. It can’t be repeated often enough that the different kind of logic of SVB or NVB only applies to the circumstances in which they occur. Although the rules may not be explicitly stated, because we have such familiarity with and exposure to NVB, NVB has a high probability of being reinforced. We are not familiar with SVB as we are not very often exposed to ongoing SVB, and, consequently, there is a low probability of it being reinforced. 

 

SVB and NVB are arrived at inductively. It is not surprising that our relative familiarity with the formal rules for deductive reasoning goes hand in hand with NVB, while inductive reasoning for which, except the principles of behavior as articulated by B.F. Skinner, there are no formal rules, has mainly been known in written form and thus could not generalize to a wider audience. This writer has extended Skinner’s Verbal Behavior with the necessary SVB/NVB distinction, which makes this generalization not only possible, but inevitable. Stated differently, during SVB rules for inductive reasoning can and will be discriminated, because only during SVB are communicators in the situation that stimulates them to understand the functional relations that are involved in a reinforcing environment. 

NVB is based on deductive and SVB is based on inductive reasoning.  The biggest stand in the way to the development of effective behavior is the sound of the speaker's voice. Moreover, the sound of the verbalizer’s voice determines whether inductive reasoning is possible and accepted, that is, whether there will be embodied communication. If we continue to talk in our usual NVB, disembodied, deductive, unconscious manner, we will remain oblivious of conscious SVB, inductive, functional, bi-directionally reinforcing relationships. It is because we are not talking inductively, that we don’t know SVB and have remained unaware about the patterns of our verbal behavioral responses and their environmental independent variables.