March 4, 2015

March 4, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the functional role of mediating reinforcement upon the vocal verbal behavior by the verbalizer is very apparent, but in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) it is not clear at all. In the latter, in which the verbalizer aversively controls the behavior of the listener, the verbalizer sees him or herself as an agent of free will, who decides how he or she will interact with the listener. However, in NVB, the verbalizer is able to believe that he or she is in charge as a function of the mediator who believes him or herself to be someone who is on the receiving end of someone who is apparently is doing something to him or her. In this follie-a-deux, called NVB, both verbalizer and mediator are involved in a process of make-belief. Only in SVB it is clear that neither the verbalizer nor the mediator is deciding to verbalize or to mediate. 

In SVB the verbalizer and the mediator are tuned in to each other’s vocal verbal behavior. In NVB, by contrast, the verbalizer and the mediator mainly attend to nonvocal verbal behavior.  NVB couldn’t enhance our understanding about the functional role of reinforcement by the mediator and thus couldn’t deliver us from the fiction that we are the doers of our own actions, because it mainly emphasizes nonvocal verbal behavior, but it de-emphasizes and often totally ignores the importance of our vocal verbal behavior.  

SVB restores the ancient significance of our vocal verbal behavior. It is true that without an audience, that is, without a mediator, no overt verbal response will occur, but it is equally true that different audiences will mediate different forms of verbal behavior for different verbalizers. If a NVB-inclined verbalizer would be mediated repeatedly by a SVB-inclined audience, he or she would be conditioned to become a SVB-inclined verbalizer.