August 31, 2016

August 31, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fourth response to “Verbal behavior in clinical context: behavior analysis methodological contributions” by Zamignani and Meyer (2007). It is as simple as this: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is made possible by a non-punitive audience, but Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is a function of a punitive audience. Remarkably, nobody has ever pointed this out.

“Among the many agreement scores existent, the majority of the Brazilian studies of therapeutic interaction have used the percentage of agreement (division between the number of agreements and the sum of the total of agreements + disagreements x 100).” When we agree that we have SVB, but when we disagree, we have NVB and don't agree that we have NVB.  

When we agree, do we really agree or do we as we say agree to disagree? Presumably, agreeing to disagree is SVB, but it is not true. It never is. Word-games such as these obfuscate the fact that we either agree or disagree. In therapy, it becomes emphatically clear if we agree or not.

This brings us to the issue of validity. “Validity is understood as evidence accumulation that the instrument measures what it is supposed to represent, in a precise and appropriate way (Ary & Suen, 1989; Kazdin, 2002; Richardson, 1999).” If the therapist is really listening to the client, that therapist must also be listening to him or herself.

The therapist who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks produces SVB and elicits SVB in the client, who then also listens to him or herself. As long as the client has problems, he or she will produce NVB.

Although the therapist acknowledges this, he or she wastes no time engaging in NVB with the client. By teaching the client to discriminate between SVB and NVB, NVB is used as a stepping stone for SVB.

NVB is to be considered the problem behavior, which must be replaced by SVB. Improvement of the client is determined by an increase of SVB. “It is important to consider that the bigger the number of validity evidences and of the observation instrument, it is bigger the probability that it be accepted as a representative measure of the phenomenon being studied.”