October 17, 2016

October 17, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Only someone who knows about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) can be an effective verbal engineer. Those who don’t know about this distinction miss out on opportunities which are only available to those who do know.

The fact that people don’t know about the SVB/NVB distinction doesn’t mean SVB and NVB don’t exist. These response classes do exist, but those who don’t know about them unintentionally elicit NVB. Elicitation of NVB prevents evocation of SVB. To evoke SVB requires refinement.

Refinement of human interaction is only possible after NVB has been discriminated and put on an extinction schedule. Fighting must stop before we can have peace. Why haven’t we stopped our fighting? We have continued to fight as we didn’t realize that our NVB continued it.

Our talking creates and maintains our fighting. It could also create and maintain our peace, but for that to happen our way of talking needs to change. Why were we able to change other behaviors but not our way of talking? We keep thinking other behaviors are more important.

We get upset when someone points out how we talk. Other behaviors get all of our attention, but not our talking. As long as talking doesn’t get our attention we can’t distinguish between SVB and NVB. I know I am the only verbal engineer who focuses our attention on how we talk.