May 23, 2014
Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist
Dear Reader,
While reading his writing this writer noticed that his
writing gets better when he writes about himself the way he does right now: in
third person. It is the appropriate thing to do because he is constantly
experimenting and reporting on his findings. Not a day goes by in which this
writer doesn’t learn something new about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). His
ongoing exploration is especially apparent in his writing, which in turn has its effect
on how he communicates. Thus, he instructs himself with his writings and then
he is testing his own instructions. This procedure is how SVB came about.
There was a time when this writer insisted on writing
and speaking from a first-person perspective. While he was reminded of that,
this writer realized that his eagerness to express his first-person perspective
was based on a lack of acknowledgment. Since his exploration of SVB has led to
more reinforcement, his need for approval has subsided and his ability to be
objective has increased and improved.
It makes sense that writing enhances a person’s ability
to be objective more than speaking. Writing is definitely a more advanced, more
complex and also a more refined aspect of our verbal behavior than speaking.
Even though this writer has often emphasized that in spoken communication
things can be said which cannot be said in writing, he now thinks about how
his writing can enhance and improve his spoken communication. However, he still
believes that a valid argument can and must be made in favor of the former
position. Without an accurate first-person perspective an adequate third-person
perspective is impossible. Since one leads to the other, they are both
needed.
Just as each theory has its own limitations and determines
what we will be paying attention to and what we will overlook, so too there is
validity as well as limitation to our first-person and our third-person
perspective. In spoken communication there seems to be more of a necessity for
us to be able to move back and forth between the two, whereas in our written
accounts there occurs more of an opportunity to favor either one over the other.
It is interesting to note that there are many more written first-person accounts than
third-person accounts.
The ratio of scientific versus unscientific writings, whether
5 to95 or10 to90 , is only a concern of scientific-minded writers. Since this
is not likely to change any time soon, but needs to change, it is, according to
this analysis, more effective for scientists to bridge the knowledge-gap by
means of spoken communication. However, such teaching must be characterized by
the scientist’s ability to flexibly move back and forth between first-person
and third-person perspectives.
Teachers must learn SVB to be able to facilitate a
teaching which bridges first-person and third-person perspectives. The inability to distinguish between these two
is perpetuated by the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) of those who presumably
teach. Their way of interacting with students cannot set the stage for learning
as long as they continue to favor one over the other. Their over-emphasis on
third-person knowledge led to a disregard for individual experiences, while
their over-emphasis on first-person perspectives led to a lack of education. SVB
heralds many innovations in education due to which many students will be
learning because the validation of personal experiences reliably sets the stage for
the exploration of third-person perspectives.
