January 14, 2016

January 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

To analyze Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) as our response of concern we  must place it within the three-term contingency of reinforcement.  To answer questions why we are able to talk in a peaceful manner, we must identify the antecedent and postcedent events which are functionally related to SVB.  The event that preceded SVB tells us why on such an occasion SVB can and will occur. This antecedent event also informs us about the history of the speaker; if,  on past occasions, the speaker was able to engage in SVB, because he or she, by listening to him or herself while he or she spoke, produced a sound, which was strikingly different from the sound which he or she produced when he or she was not listening to how he or she sounded while he or she spoke, we can be confident that his or her SVB was under antecedent control of his or her own voice, which functions like a discriminative stimulus. 

We have discovered why SVB can and will occur on the aforementioned occasion. In addition to this behavioral analysis, we find, that we, as speakers, experience with our body, when we listen to ourselves while we speak, a different sound. This visceral, embodied experience of our own sound is essential to identifying the antecedent discriminative stimulus that functionally evokes our SVB. In other words, SVB is a function of how you sound, since you directly experience the instant energy transfer that occurs between your own voice and your own body which produces this voice. Thus, your own experience of your own body completely changes due to your sound.  This experience can only be obtained, explored and verified by means of self-experimentation.