February 29, 2016

February 29, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

A while ago I read a paper about autism as a contingency-based disorder of verbal behavior. If there is a treatment for autism, and there is a treatment (applied behavioral analysis), this treatment is effective because we decrease the environmental variables that maintain the autism behavior and we increase those variables which stimulate and reinforce a person’s verbal behavior. This means: the behavior of the parents or caretakers of autistics has to change. 

Only if this environmental change occurs will the behavior of autistic be able to change. It is not a matter of putting blame on anybody, but a matter of effectively changing the contingency that maintains the autistic’s behavior. Naturally, such changes can only be made with professional help from someone who is informed about applied behavioral analysis. Likewise, it can be argued that so-called mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depressive disorder,  etc. are also maintained by environmental variables. If treatment is effective and there is effective treatment, this means that symptoms have nothing to do with a person’s inner disposition. To treat these disorders, the environment, that is, the behavior of the persons who are most influential in the patient’s life, will need to be changed. 

Great progress can be made when parents or caretakers of those who suffer from mental health problems are taught how to decrease Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and increase Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). It is my contention that high rates of NVB always exacerbate any kind of mental health problems. When higher rates of SVB are produced this will predictably result into a decrease of symptoms.

How is this possible? With SVB the speaker doesn’t have an aversive effect on the listener, but with NVB, the speaker affects the listener with a negative contingency. We must focus on how the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener. The listener who hears the speaker is either turned off and wants to escape or avoid him or her or he or she feels safe and wants to engage in SVB with the speaker.