September 1, 2016

September 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifth response to “Verbal behavior in clinical context: behavior analysis methodological contributions” by Zamignani and Meyer (2007). The behavioral events I call SVB and NVB fit with Danna’s and Matos’s (1999) definition of “an event in a given category” as they must: “(1) be objective, clear and precise; (2) be expressed in a direct and affirmative manner; (3) include only elements that are pertinent to it; (4) be explicit and complete” (p. 134).”

All my students and therapy clients discriminate SVB and NVB. SVB describes that the speaker’s sound is experienced by the listener as an appetitive stimulus, but NVB describes the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus. The listener’s subjective experience determines if the speaker has SVB or NVB.

Only the listener can say if the speaker has SVB or NVB. Actually, it is only the listener who can become the speaker who is able to say to the speaker whether he or she has SVB or NVB. If the listener cannot really become the speaker, as is often the case in NVB, he or she cannot say to this speaker whether he or she experiences SVB or NVB.

The listener, who cannot become a speaker, who is not listened to as a speaker, who is not allowed to become a speaker, who is ignored as a speaker, will experience NVB private speech. Also, the speaker who cannot become the listener will be experiencing NVB private speech.

In the absence of turn-taking the speaker and the listener will both engage in NVB, but as turn-taking increases their SVB will increase. Although the subjective experience of the listener determines if the speaker is having SVB or NVB, the definition of SVB and NVB is neither “circular” nor “subjective.“ In other words, communicators experience each other’s voice subjectively in similar ways.

The “low agreement among judges” that is found in many studies was not due to the “imprecision of description,” but because these judges were prevented from judging based on their own subjective experience. SVB refers to the objectivity which will be found in our subjectivity.