September 2, 2016

September 2, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “Verbal behavior in clinical context: behavior analysis methodological contributions” by Zamignani and Meyer (2007). The authors state “The categories Information and Feedback do not name a behavior or a relationship between listener and speaker, but, in its substantive form, they give a broad denomination of a purely linguistic product, without context” (p. 76). It is unlikely these disembodied “products of behavior” are overcome by “a greater specification of the criteria for the definition of the categories of a system.” I agree.

Staying true to what actually happens during the therapist-client interaction requires from the therapists who describe such events to their clients not to go overboard on too much terminology. “An excess of specification would make the identification of interaction standards more difficult, because of the excessive dispersion of results.”

The SVB/NVB distinction is such a powerful therapeutic tool as it is so easy to grasp. To “maintain the coherence and the internal validity of the categories’ system: (1) the categories constructed must be exhaustive and mutually exclusive; (2) all the behavior that has been observed and registered must be classified, regardless of the number of events that are categorized in each class; (3) there must be coherence among the categories in the criteria chosen for the classification and in the degree of specificity adopted for the class of events.”

1) SVB and NVB are mutually exclusive; 2) SVB and NVB capture the whole range of human emotion; 3) SVB and NVB are physiological phenomena, which, once discriminated create understanding, clarity and coherence. We need to be able to quantify “when it begins and when it finishes.” When SVB begins, NVB ends and when NVB begins, SVB ends. Bardin (1977) called such a unit “a register unit.” By listening to ourselves while we speak we learn to increase SVB and decrease NVB.