November 2, 2015

November 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Students,

Since I am doing most of my talking with students, I decided to narrow down today’s writing to my students. The other day I read some of my writings and I imagined how my students would like it. I suddenly didn’t like my own writing as it seemed boring from their point of view. I will try to change that. I realize that I have never written to students as my audience and I want to try that this month. This will be my second big audience shift in recent times. Before I was imagining I was writing to behaviorists. Because of the advice of a friend, I changed that focus to people who are listening to me and talking with me. My students are the people who are really listening and talking with me. Although they are mostly listening, they are slowly beginning to talk more and more.  

And, the more they talk, the more Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) they produce. It is exciting to notice the consequences of my teaching, which is an extension B.F. Skinner’s theory of Verbal Behavior. My categories cannot be found in the literature, but they are implicitly mentioned by Skinner and other behaviorists. I am not dealing with what has already been dealt with; I deal with what hasn’t been dealt with: how we are affecting each other while we talk. This functional relationship should be obvious, but as it requires us explore things while we speak, most people cannot approach it. The parsimonious classification system of SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) sheds new light on patterns of vocal verbal behavior, which cannot be brought into focus by writing.  

From a functional account it is absolutely ridiculous to conceive of the speaker without the listener. One only makes sense in relationship to the other; the two should always be mentioned together. A stimulus only makes sense in connection to a response and its consequence. The functional relationship between environmental independent variables, stimuli, and verbal as well as nonverbal behavioral responses, remains incomplete if we don’t include how these responses either increase or decrease due to the social reinforcement or punishment. While we are talking about speaking and listening, this fact is seldom acknowledged. 

Stated differently, only when we acknowledge that our verbal behavior is mediated by others can we have SVB. However, we mostly engage in NVB as we deny the scientific fact that we don’t cause our own speech. The common, but false belief that we cause our own speech prevented us from understanding that human interaction is always a bi-directional phenomenon. It is only to the extent that speech can be bi-directional that it should be stated that our speech is socially mediated; when our speech is uni-directional, it is always anti-social and its consequences are always deeply problematic. 

Punishment often unfortunately equals the end of our conversation. To keep the conversation going reinforcement is needed. Without it there will be uni-directional, that is, a hierarchical ‘relationship’ between the speaker and the listener. In this hierarchical ‘relationship’ the speaker and the listener cannot exist as equals. Moreover, such speaker never simultaneously experiences him or herself as also the listener. Stated differently, in NVB the speaker doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks, while the speaker in SVB experiences him or herself to be simultaneously the listener. As a consequence of the speaker-as-his-or-her-own-listener, the listener listens attentively to such a speaker.

The listener listens differently to a speaker who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks as such a speaker’s nonverbal behavior, his or her voice (but also his or her gestures and facial expression) induce positive emotions in him or her. In SVB, the voice of the speaker has an immediate regulating effect on the listener, who effortlessly listens to and understands what he or she verbally is saying. As the verbal and the nonverbal expressions of the SVB speaker are aligned, there is no distraction for the listener. In NVB, on the other hand, the speaker’s voice functions like an aversive stimulus to the listener. The NVB speaker is unaware of his or her nonverbal impact on the listener and, consequently, NVB is a mechanical, unconscious way of talking. NVB is more difficult to listen to as there is no nonverbal attunement in NVB. Stated differently, the nonverbal expressions of the NVB speaker cause negative nonverbal responses in the listener, which distract from what this NVB speaker is saying. 

Surely, the NVB speaker has a dysregulating effect on the listener. The only way in which the listener is allowed to respond to the NVB speaker, is by disconnecting from this dysregulating effect. This dissociative effect is not lifted, but emphasized once such a listener becomes him or herself a speaker. Once the listener, as a nonverbal child, responds, first nonverbally then verbally, to such a NVB speaker as a parent, he or she will predictably assert counter-control. When parents practice coercive behavioral control, children of such parents are conditioned to disconnect from nonverbal experiences. This not only causes many communication problems with others, but, also communication problems with themselves, that is, psychopathology. High rates of NVB public speech by parents causes high rates of NVB private speech in children, who will feel covertly stimulated to have overt NVB. In language development external stimuli become internal.