June 26, 2015

June 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). When I reread what I wrote yesterday I was surprised how pleased I was. I had thought yesterday’s writing was too chaotic, but when I reread it  it made perfectly sense and I am glad I wrote it the way I did. In recent times, I have also had more moments in which I was glad I said things the way I did and did things in the way I did. 

While reading a paper it is a matter of taking from it only what I can use. “The emergence of Naming from intensive tact instruction appears to be a function of the implicit rotation of speaker and listener opportunities found in the intensive tact instruction, but further analysis is needed.” It sure it is! I think these researchers are on the right track. They address the need for explicit rotation and think that “the process of learning tacts involves the children echoing the tacts initially, because they must learn to say or echo the word in the process of learning the tact, until the child emits the tact without echoic instruction” (underlining added). However, if instruction is given in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the child will echo the words in a NVB manner, but if the instruction was given in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the child will echo the words in a SVB way. 

The words which are echoed in NVB are often elicited, while the words which are echoed in SVB are mostly emitted. Our different ways of talking didn’t come about magically, but were learned due to threatening or safe environmental events. Moreover, the author’s emphasis on echoing, on saying words out loud, paves the way for the joining of the listening and speaking repertoires.


The authors write precisely how this can come about: “As the children received stimulus-stimulus pairings they began to echo, suggesting that the procedure facilitated echoics that in turn resulted in automatic reinforcement.” Thus, on both sides of the talking spectrum, people with more SVB as well as those with more NVB are automatically reinforced for their SVB or NVB. However, only in SVB speaking and listening repertoires are going to be joined, but in NVB speaking and listening become more and more separate. This concurs with “Stemmer’s proposal that Naming emerged from a history of second-order classical conditioning (Stemmer, 1973, 1990, 1994, 1996). 

Teachers of children with language delay probably already do this, because they support language development, but it must be SVB instruction, not NVB instruction. “If children are missing the echoic as a conditioned reinforcer, then stimulus-stimulus pairing experiences may provide the necessary prerequisite.” NVB instructions are going to be ineffective and harmful. It is quite likely that our high rates of NVB cause language deficits. 

What now follows is my paraphrasing of a presentation “Introduction to Verbal Behavior” by Tracy Vail, which can be googled on internet. By looking closely at behavior of autistic children, behavior analysts identified the cycle that perpetuates aberrant behavior: absence of alternative behaviors leads to an increase of stereotypy, which impairs learning and in turn results in fewer acquired new skills. Normal people can learn from the treatment of autistic children. How do these children learn to talk? This is accomplished by increasing motivating operations (MO). This is not done by making them fearful, by punishing or by coercing them, but by reinforcing them. 


If they are still nonverbal, we have to start with the nonverbal and then move slowly to the verbal. It is important to take note of how the child responds to the environment, to the analyst and to prevent aversive stimulation. By being playful with the child the MO for verbal behavior is established. If the child begins to anticipate what is going to happen next, doing something unexpected can bring more enjoyment. As the play progresses routines can be created, which also can be gradually changed over time. The analyst must maintain his or her connection with the child and must be sensitive. Moreover, he or she must pair his or her talking with the reinforcement. His or her way of talking must be reinforcing to the child. This is exactly how SVB works! 

In SVB the speaker is the reinforcer. The speaker in SVB does exactly what the behavior analyst does to the autistic child: he or she teaches errorless, fades demands, teaches to fluency, prompts quickly, fades the prompts, makes sure all questions are answered, finds numerous reinforcers, corrects errors and has fun. The behavior analyst wouldn’t gain any ground with the autistic child if he or she would follow negative behavior with reinforcement; remove the child from a reinforcing activity to begin teaching; give directions to do things which he or she couldn’t prompt; give directions without getting compliance; and, kill reinforcers by placing too many demands. This exactly describes NVB! In NVB the speaker is the punisher.

In NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with and aversive contingency. It works the same for autistic children as for normal people. Teaching language skills to autistic children informs us about our adult way of communicating, which is mostly aversive and which is therefore problematic. Moreover, the key to successful language teaching is to pair sounds and to make talking fun. Specifically therapists must be pairing their sounds with fun. In SVB we listen to ourselves while we speak and we find out that we are having fun while we are talking and that talking is both interesting and reinforcing. All the positive experiences of the speaker-as-own-listener reinforce our SVB. 

If NVB is produced by a parent, the child will imitate this sound and unconsciously identify it for what it is. Regardless of what sound is produced by the speaker, all sounds are analyzed. Soon the child-listener, who becomes a speaker, will be able to recognize SVB and NVB. SVB is learned as it is reinforcing, but NVB will give rise to stereotypy in autistic children. Stereotypy are a form of counter-control. These stereotypy must be replaced by SVB. Even if a mistake is made something new is learned. Making mistakes is needed to recognize NVB as NVB as SVB as SVB, and the better a person gets at recognizing NVB as NVB, the better he or she gets at recognizing SVB as SVB. 

One becomes the stepping stone for the other. Unless we recognize NVB as NVB we cannot move to SVB. Similarly, the autistic child at some point recognizes that there is reinforcement available in the verbal realm, which wasn’t available in the nonverbal realm. NVB keeps us trapped in nonverbal behavior, in negative feelings of being threatened, intimidated, coerced, attacked, mistrusted, isolated, abandoned and dismissed. 

Even if we produce NVB, the vocal attempt must be reinforced, because it is better than no attempt at all. Every step of the way needs to be shaped. Once errors have been corrected then more reinforcement will follow. As this is done with positive feelings, it reminds us and will be linked to all favorite activities which we find reinforcing. Learning starts with NVB, which is more nonverbal, but during SVB we become fully verbal. Teaching a new behavior can only built on behavior that is already there.  

 

Old NVB, which happened under threatening circumstances, is likely to be repeated even under circumstances in which there is environmental support. Under new positive SVB circumstances  old NVB will be highlighted and recognized. The prompts that enable the speaker to switch from NVB to SVB are gradually faded once the speaker is able to continue with SVB. As in teaching language skills to autistic children, new learning is built on old learning and SVB is built on NVB. When each instance of NVB is corrected there will be errorless learning. 

If the speaker produces NVB it needs to be simply stated that this is an incorrect response. The teacher must of course be able to produce SVB as a discriminative stimulus for the student. He or she demonstrates SVB and models what the student would sound like if he or she would have SVB. The student hears in the teacher what  he or she would sound like if he or she produced the correct response. The student echoes what the teacher just said. 

Repetition of the discriminative stimulus, called Voice II, the voice which produces SVB, gives the student the opportunity to echo back the sound which was produced by the teacher. If done correctly, the teacher acknowledges this and when the student experiences the reinforcing effects of his or her own SVB, he or she realizes that by manding or asking, people will do things for him or her; by tacting or naming, he or she can label things in the environment under a variety of conditions; by listening, he or she can follow directions and do what others tell him or her to do; by imitation and by echoics, he or she can do or say what others do or say; by having intraverbals, he or she will know that what he or she says is dependent on what others say or have said, but is not the same. 

Teaching SVB deals with the fact that in NVB even verbally skilled people remain stuck with nonverbal discomfort. The voice that produces NVB is called Voice I as it must be discriminated before we can switch to Voice II, the voice of SVB. Since we can’t produce these two voices simultaneously, we can only produce one or the other successively. Although the switching between Voice I and II can happen rapidly, this will decrease once the speaker experiences Voice II as reinforcing and Voice I as punishing. 

In dysfunctional environments in which SVB was punished and NVB was reinforced, the child has repeatedly echoed NVB and is automatically reinforced by his or her NVB private speech. SVB leads to intraverbal revelations; the adult speaker recognizes that his or her negative self- talk or NVB private speech, was produced by NVB public speech. By learning about SVB, he or she knows that positive self-talk or SVB private speech can only come from SVB public speech. SVB will transform a person’s sense of self, in which he or she sees him or herself as a product of how others are and have been talking with or at him or her. As listening to ourselves and others becomes important, our sense of self becomes more fluid and flexible as it always reflects our environment.

June 25, 2015

June 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

This is the fifth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is learned in a similar way than children learn “Naming.” SVB cannot be learned without the “rotation across listener and speaker responses.” 

"The characteristics of the learn unit were suggested in Skinner’s (1968) programmed instruction frame.” Moreover, “learn units require that a) the participant is attending to the stimulus”, which means the participant speaks and listens to his or her own voice; b) “there is an opportunity to respond” which means, the listener becomes the speaker, but can disagree or agree with the speaker and does not feel any pressure to choose one over the other; c) “correct responses are reinforced with consequences that have been shown to reinforce learning”, which means, when SVB is produced the speaker feels reinforced and wants to say more in a SVB manner. Consequences that reinforce learning are evident by increased opportunity to be in environments in which or to be with individuals with whom SVB can occur; d) “the participant must emit an accurate response following incorrect responses.” This is the ability to differentiate between SVB and NVB and to change one’s speaking behavior. Also, there is no guilt or shame involved in making an incorrect response. As there is no punitive correction the change from NVB to SVB is effortless and smooth. Moreover, the listener is helping the speaker, by letting the speaker know when the joining of speaking and listening occurs and the speaker adjusts to the listener. It is the listener who becomes the speaker who lets the  speaker know that joining occurs. Unless a speaker immediately produces SVB there is now way for him or her to know whether he or she is having SVB than by getting feedback from the listener, who then becomes the new speaker; e)” the corrected responses are not reinforced” by the listener as they are automatically reinforcing to the speaker. To learn SVB one is like a musician, who diligently practices his instrument; he or she practices because he or she loves the music and enjoys his or her own voice.

 

June 24, 2015

June 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fourth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). 


I went to the ear, nose and throat doctor because some weeks ago my right ear was clogged up. It had already gone away and everything was fine with my hearing, except for a little high frequency loss which comes with aging. 


The lady who tested my ears told me something remarkable. She had worked in phonological testing for more than thirty years, so she knew what she is talking about. Often when elderly people come in for hearing aids, they are brought in by their family members, who notice that they are having hearing problems.  The nurse mentioned that when people get older they have less and less contacts and therefore they talk less and less. She stated that without interaction our hearing simply atrophies.

What she didn’t talk about, however, was that people also don’t hear themselves when they talk so little with others. Readers of my writings know we don’t hear ourselves very much anyway, even if we have people to talk with all day. Most conversation is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker doesn’t hear him or herself while he or she speaks. This is because in NVB the speaker wants to make the listener listen to him or to her.

Stated bluntly, in NVB the speaker forces the listener to listen. In NVB speakers don't listen to themselves process. This process is further enhanced by the aging process when the chances to do so become slimmer and slimmer. Thus, old age is for most of us a period of decreasing opportunity for auditory stimulation. 

The nurse also told me that when elderly folks are brought in to have their hearing checked or to get a hearing aid, they often have great trouble adjusting to the hearing aid, that is, to the overwhelming amount of sounds they are now able to perceive. Not surprisingly, this leads old people to become stressed out and to not put in their hearing aid. A lot of coaching and gradually getting used to the hearing aid is needed. Another interesting observation of the talkative nurse was that once people are using their hearing aid, their hearing improves upon later testing. By having the hearing aid, they are using their user-dependent ears again, which then improve. I asked if this was always the case and she answered with an unequivocal yes. This means that older people can actually regain at least some of their hearing. 

One can only begin to imagine what would be the positive outcome if elderly folks were more often exposed to opportunities to talk and stimulated into increased social engagement. Most likely, the incidence of hearing loss would drop dramatically. 

I was reminded of an old couple I once worked with. The hard-of-hearing, moody and suspicious husband was driving his wife  nuts. Their daughter heard them bickering all the time. The wife, who was tired of having to repeat herself a million times, didn’t sound very nice to her husband. In fact, she sounded quite harsh and negative. I asked her to listen to herself while she spoke with him. Then a miracle happened. He immediately let her know that he could hear and understand her very well as she was speaking with a kinder, calmer and less controlling voice. As I coached her to not aversively influence her husband, she felt that now she had become the problem. And so we only had one session.

Another occasion came to mind which I will never forget. I was having dinner at the house of a friend. We were seated around a big table. There were at least fourteen people, including my friend’s old hard-of-hearing mother. There was a lot of talking going on. When I spoke, the old lady suddenly blurted out to me “Young man, this is unusual, I can’t understand anything of what these people are saying, but how is it possible I can hear you perfectly well?” This incident happened twenty five years ago.

While seated in the ENT office I read an article about the neuroscientist, Rebecca Saxe, who studied why people disagree. She looked at the ‘hard’ evidence, that is, at how the brain responds under circumstances of agreeing and disagreeing and she figured out that agreement would only occur when the party who has the power was willing to take the perspective of the party who doesn’t have the power. Perspective taking by the party who doesn’t have any power doesn’t make any sense.   


This applies to the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In SVB we are at our most sensitive as we listen to ourselves and each other. In SVB, we listen because we can listen as our talking is not preventing it. Many of us think that listening to each other is difficult, but it is not. The absence of doing anything makes us listen, but we are that way only if we feel safe. Listening happens without any effort and SVB speaking is also effortless.  

In the Scientific American, I read an article about “sonification of data: converting data that were otherwise displayed visually or numerically into sound.” It appears that our “ears are such terrific pattern-finders that scientists are now using audio data to detect cancer cells from particles from space.” This is possible because our ears “can detect changes in a sound that occur after just a few milliseconds.” Seeing happens at a much slower pace, because “the eyes limit for detecting a flickering light is about 50 to 60 times per second.” This is fascinating as “sonification” has been used to “listen to data” of “solar and cancer activity” and “examine the eruptions of vulcanoes and to discern pattens of changes in particles linked to cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang.” Of course, the Geiger counter has already been around since 1908 and “emits clicks in the presence of energetic particles.” All this evidence tells me there is hope that eventually we will all be listening while we speak.

The “sound-file has been a revelation” because “ a year’s worth of field measurements which would take months to analyze by eye [bar graphs & pie charts], thus become two hours of sound” (words between brackets added). Bechara Saab , a Swiss neuroscientist addressed the brain mechanisms involved. He says “the ear can pick out subtle patterns” because “a mammal’s auditory system is faster at transmitting neural signals than most other parts of the brain. This system holds the largest known connection between neurons, a giant synapse called calyx of Held. This flower-shaped junction transforms sound waves into spikes in neuron activity; to do so the calyx can release neurotransmitters – the brain’s messengers – 800 times a second.” Our eyes are much slower than our ears. 


Saab emphasizes “in the end these differences in mechanics mean that stimuli that would be “invisible’ to the eye could be easily picked up by the ear.” Not surprisingly, “although sonification offers advantages over visual display” these neuro-sound specialists “face a major hurdle: simply getting researchers to try this new way of exploring data.” This goes right along with our fixation on the verbal in NVB. 


Words, images and diagrams, prevent us from listening. Listening, on the other hand, doesn’t prevent us from seeing. Many people have told me they see things more clearly since they have discovered SVB. Furthermore, they agree that seeing is impaired by NVB. I am reminded of the saying that someone couldn't see the forest for the trees. “From elementary school onward we’re surrounded by visual representations.” We have been and we continue to be conditioned by visual stimuli, which overrule the importance of auditory stimuli. Reality shrank to images on I-Phones, which presumably represent the world.

Scientists, who read and write more than talk and listen, are biased towards the verbal and to bar graphs and pie charts. “By the time someone becomes a scientist, they have a syntax, they have an understanding of how these plots function and a sort of internal logic, whereas if you push ‘play’ and listen to the data for the first time, you don’t have a vocabulary, so you don’t really have a basis for comparison.” The big challenge remains: how do we talk about our scientific findings and will someone be able to listen? Wouldn’t it be much simpler if researchers realized that the reason people don’t listen is because of the vocal verbal behavioral pattern called NVB? SVB arranges a totally different pattern of auditory data and we use different words as well. We would be able to make enormous progress if we would aim to create stable SVB environments in which we controlled for NVB. 

Now I will respond to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). The authors explain the “Multipel-Examplar Instruction” (MEI), in which “multiple responses are learned for single stimuli and variants. That is, an observational instance results in stimulus control for both listener and speaker responding. Initially the response may be one (e.g. a tact) that produces the stimulus for the other response (e.g. a listener response), but eventually the original stimulus evokes both responses.” 

This made me think about how I learned about SVB. I have always been drawn to people who have a lot of SVB and was always repulsed by people who have a lot of NVB. Over the course of my life I have become more selective and I choose mainly for people who have already a lot of SVB. When I began to explore SVB, it was on my own by talking aloud with myself. I gave attention to whatever asked my attention and I would talk about anything that I could think of. Therefore, my attention would jump from something I thought, felt, remembered, saw, said, heard, moved, smelled or touched. I didn't seek to analyze what I said, but would describe whatever was in my attention and I felt that this made it easy for me to listen to myself. By not editing what I was saying I found my own sound, which expressed my relaxation, well-being and meditation. Although of course I produced lots of NVB, I was able to get back to SVB quicker and quicker, to the point where just thinking about it was enough for me to have it. At this point, I am not even trying to have it anymore. I have it so often that it has become part of my life. 

What made the biggest difference for me, however, was when I stopped having contact with my family. Their negative feedback had been so problematic, but since I have kept them out of my life I have doing better than ever before. I am happier without my family. My ability to express and listen to what I think and feel, made me realize I found a treasure, which needs protection.

June 23, 2015

June 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). I just woke up from a restful long sleep. I had a dream about my estranged brother. He was wearing his police uniform, but I hugged him. Yesterday, while writing a cover letter for my job application for counselor of veterans, I had been thinking of him. The letter had come out nicely and I will complete this job application today. I was laughing with my brother and saying how odd it was that yesterday he still hated me, rejected me and didn’t want to see me or talk with me, but now we were amazingly brothers again.

Our next-door neighbor was also there and approved of our reunion as if she herself had arranged it. May be she did? We need to talk with her as we are going to have our house painted this week. The painters need to have access to her property because our house is adjacent to hers. She is not happy as we are having the house painted in a yellow color she didn’t approve. It is called Chinese Lantern. We had coffee with her the other day and when we brought up the painting of our house, she urged us to paint it in the grey colors that she likes. Of course, we are going to paint our house the way we like it and we look forward to seeing the combination of colors which we have chosen. 

 

“It appears that learning a word-object relation in both the listener and speaker function constitutes what is referred to in lexicons as “becoming acquainted…with the essentials of an unfamiliar object or topic.” The learning process of “Naming” Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) requires us to experience it. With Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) we always over-emphasize the importance of information and we underestimate the importance of what we experience while we speak. During NVB we are on automatic pilot. The ability to catch ourselves with NVB and to stop it develops gradually after sufficient experiences have happened in which we could take note of the difference between SVB and NVB. 

Every time we go back to SVB, we experience something different from what we have had before. It is mostly in retrospect that we realize that we were having NVB again. During SVB everyone’s experiences are of equal importance, but during NVB, one person’s experiences are supposedly more important than others.   

NVB is determined by hierarchical relationship in which one person tells the other person how it is. This means one person can curb, distract and oppress the language capabilities of another person. A person may have learned to name and discriminate SVB, but he or she may still be stopped from having SVB by one person with NVB. Even if an entire group has acquired the ability to “name” SVB and NVB and is able to discriminate these two universal subsets of vocal verbal behavior, it only takes  one person with NVB to make the production of SVB impossible. 

It is should be clear to the reader how subtle SVB is and how blunt, destructive and ubiquitous NVB is. If one musician in an orchestra plays a wrong note the conductor and other musicians hear this. Due to experience they are capable of that. One wrong note can destroy the music. The community of musicians, like the community of speakers, concurs “a speaker [who] sees an object and says a word [the musician reads the music score and plays the right note]” (words between brackets added). Furthermore, the community of musicians has, due to their musical training, a greater sensitivity to sound than any other verbal community.  Verbal communities with a cultural history of classical music are more likely to engender more subtle verbal behavior. I grew up in Holland and I studied classical singing for many years. This set the stage for my discovery of SVB. Due to singing I became intrigued by the sound with which I speak.

The importance of “naming”, what Skinner referred to as “tacting”, is not only about a child’s “ability to learn language”, but also about an adult’s possibility to have SVB, that is, great conversation. “Tacts involve saying or signing the word (a tact) in the presences of nonverbal, visual, auditory olfactory or gustatory stimuli under control of general social reinforcers.” Likewise, SVB is under joint control of multiple variables, which can only be discriminated while we are engaging in it. 

“Skinner describes the listener and the speaker as two initially independent repertoires and there is evidence that these two repertoires initially develop independently during language development.” Given the fact of the independent development of listening and speaking repertoires, it is, as with any other independently learned behavior, important that at some point these behaviors become integrated with other behaviors. I concur with the authors who state that the “two independently evolved functions” are “joined by cultural contingencies”, but I believe that in some cultures more joining goes on between listening and speaking than in others. It is apparent to me that in Dutch conversation there is a greater connection between listening and speaking behavior, a more developed congruence between verbal and nonverbal behavior than in American conversation. 

There is more SVB in Holland than in America. I am reading this paper about language development in children, but my writing is about language development of adults.  “Before the listener and speaker are joined, mastery of the listener and speaker responses in the presence of the same stimulus requires separate and direct instruction.” To be able to tact SVB and NVB the same process is necessary for adults. “The environmental sources of Naming” SVB and NVB has to be a capable teacher, who reminds NVB communicators to listen to themselves while they speak, who reinforces SVB and who extinguishes NVB. 

“When children cannot acquire both listener and speaker responses by observation of others tacting the stimulus, they lack Naming as a behavioral developmental cusp.” Let’s be upfront about the fact that we don’t know how to get along as we don't really know how to talk with one another. Everyone is having communication problems everywhere and things are only getting worse. The adult-behavioral cusp to listen to ourselves while we speak, which is what makes SVB possible, was never taught or reinforced. Certainly, we have learned to say shoe when someone showed us a shoe and we know many words, but we have never been instructed to pay attention to the sound of our voice while we speak. Thus, listening for most of us equals listening to someone else. Many new reinforcing communication experiences are possible when we speak and listen to ourselves, but these reinforcing, more intelligent conversations become possible only if our environment supports SVB and extinguishes NVB. 

As we have learned to speak and listen separately, we go on our entire life missing out on the exquisite possibility of speaking and listening simultaneously. The worst part of our stunted development is that we are occasionally in environments in which SVB is possible. Whenever we are at ease and relaxed, as we would be with our friends, family or people who are friendly and supportive to us, we will have SVB, our natural way of speaking. Oddly, these moments haunt us because we don’t know how to create while we talk the situation in which we can continue to be completely at ease with one another. If we knew that, we would have SVB, but we don’t know and that’s why we have NVB. 

If “Naming” is characterized as “a higher order verbal operant that is one of several verbal behavioral developmental stages that have been identified experimentally in several studies” then the “Naming” of SVB and NVB must occur with utmost urgency.  Everyone who has acknowledged the SVB/NVB distinction has agreed that they acquired a valuable “behavioral cusp”, that is, a dramatic change and improvement in repertoire, which allowed them to “come in contact with parts of the environment they could not contact prior to the acquisition of the cusp.” In its magnitude it is comparable to learning how to walk or speak.  

 “Once [an adult] can learn from observing others receive instruction [on SVB and NVB], he or she not only observes the responses and consequences received by others but learns what those he or she has observed learn” (word in brackets added). Familiarity with the SVB/NVB distinction gives people the “ability to learn from different forms of contact with the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment.”  

Once the SVB/NVB distinction has been made clear, NVB, which before learning about this distinction was accepted as normal, is  experienced as punishing, while SVB will bring many new forms of reinforcement to us which were previously unavailable. Moreover, once the SVB/NVB distinction has been acquired, many experiences are interpreted in a different, more positive manner and will be recognized as “prerequisite behaviors” which were never before properly put into context. While learning SVB, people often discover that what they struggled the most with was the fact that they already knew about it. It was due to their high rates of NVB that they were unable to properly articulate it. 

When children “could not progress verbally, in listener or speaker repertoires, the investigations sought procedures to overcome the developmental obstacle that thwarted learning.” It was found that “the obstacles" which "appeared to be missing" were "developmental cusps,” especially the cusp called “Naming.” By engineering the procedures that helped children to overcome these obstacles to learning, the authors came close to SVB without knowing it. 

Only in SVB will the speaker and listener repertoires become and remain perfectly joined. Of course, this merging of speaking and listening behavior extends throughout our lives. We diagnose autistic children, but how about all those people, who have learned to how to listen, speak, read and write, but who still can’t talk with each other? Doesn’t mankind have a great communication problem? The answer is yes! Denying this is just more NVB. Pretending that we generally have great conversation is NVB. 

We don’t even know what it is like to talk positively with one another. We may know how to occasionally, accidentally have it, but for the most part, we don’t know how to continue with it. Only SVB creates the environmental support that is needed to continue our positive interactions, because after learning the behavioral cusp called SVB, we can learn from the environment, that is, from each other in ways that we could not before. For both NVB and autism we can say “no further learning was possible in this realm.” In NVB “we lack the necessary ability to contact the experience or the capability to learn from the experience.”