October 6, 2016

October 6, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

As our voice changes, the content of our conversation changes; we will say different things when we change how we speak. What we say is function of how we say it. Our sound is the independent variable and a change in our sound causes a change in our conversation, which is the dependent variable. The distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) brings our awareness to the fact that a change in our voice precedes a change in our conversation.

As our tone of voice changes, our conversation changes, but it doesn’t work the other way around: a change in our words doesn’t bring about a change in our voice and a change of the conversation. Although people can fake it, once they know the SVB/NVB distinction, it is evident that faking it is always effortful and sets the stage for NVB, while genuine and effective conversation is effortless and sets the stage for SVB.

We can control our way of talking, increase our SVB and decrease our NVB, if we know what causes each. We must learn to discriminate SVB and NVB. Nobody has told us that a speaker can only have SVB as long as his or her voice is experienced by the listener as an appetitive stimulus. However, each time the speaker’s voice is again experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus, this speaker engages in NVB.

The listener determines whether the speaker is having SVB or NVB. Of course, the listener can only let the speaker know, if the speaker lets the listener speak. The speaker who engages in NVB uses Voice I, but the speaker who engages in SVB uses Voice II. Correct discrimination of Voice I and Voice II is predicted to cause an effortless shift that will decrease the rate of Voice I and increase the rate of Voice II. As NVB is put on an extinction schedule, this shift will occur less and less.

With ongoing SVB it will become clear that our superstitions and our pre-scientific explanations about why we talked the way we did, have always strengthened our NVB. With ongoing SVB we are at long last released from the prison of our superstitions and stimulated to be attentive to the real causes of why we talk and behave the way we do.

Another joyful finding of increased levels of SVB is that it is possible to continue to understand each other. Given the common high rates of NVB there is no chance to even envision such possibility. Moreover, our communication experiences are so negative that misunderstandings are more likely to happen. Due to our long history of unresolved problems we anticipate misunderstanding and we recreate and perpetuate it.

The only way in which we will be able to understand our own behavior is if we learn to talk about it in the way that will allow us to understand it. We may have become knowledgeable about the science of human behavior, but this doesn’t mean that we have learned the right way to talk about behavior. The dissemination of behavioral science continues to be impaired as long as this learning process is not given attention.

In spite of our high rates of NVB, we still experience a few instances of SVB. Although such moments of sanity are of course essential to our survival, they don’t occur with enough regularity and predictability to be experienced as a relief from the stress and anxiety involved in NVB.

As SVB so seldom occurs we think of it only in terms of the problems it seems to create. However, it is the absence of SVB and the presence of NVB which creates and maintains all our problems. Only when SVB can continue for an extended period of time will we be able to open up to the possibility of an interaction that is without aversive stimulation.

Positive spoken communication is not something to be dreamed about, but must be put into practice as soon as possible. There is no need for approval from some higher authority. You can and you must verify that each time when you listen to yourself while you speak, you will be able to experience SVB in which the speaker and the listener are one.

October 5, 2016

October 5, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) provides those who know about it with optimal control over spoken communication. Without the SVB/NVB distinction no such control is possible. Those who are familiar with this distinction acknowledge that NVB, or forceful control, signifies a lack of control.

People have high rates of NVB because they lack the skills to have SVB. Coercive speech is based on the old saying: if you only have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. SVB is a non-coercive way of talking. It is a refinement most people will never learn as nobody is able to teach it. As far as I know, I am the only one who can teach it.

SVB can only be taught by someone who knows about the SVB/NVB distinction. Such a person always takes a listener’s perspective and differentiates between when a speaker speaks with him or her or at him or her; the former is SVB, the latter is NVB. Most of us think the conditions of spoken communication cannot be controlled, but they are already controlled. Our social hierarchy mediates high rates of NVB.

Our low rates of SVB are explained by the fact that high rates of SVB would dissolve all our hierarchical differences. Those who continue to dominate others with NVB deny that increase of SVB this is possible, but those who acknowledged the disastrous consequences of NVB, rejoice every time when SVB is prolonged. It wasn’t until I became a teacher and a therapist that I was able to create the situation in which SVB was increased and the SVB/NVB distinction fully appreciated.

As a psychology teacher and therapist I explain to my students and clients the SVB/NVB distinction. They love it; SVB sets the stage for learning about psychology and therapy. It wouldn’t make any sense to teach classes or give therapy with NVB. Yet, students and clients tell me other teachers and therapists teach and give therapy with NVB.

Teachers and therapists, like parents, can only pass on to others what they themselves know. A lot of harm is done in the name of parenting, teaching and therapy and is covered up by NVB. It is only once we have SVB that we realize what we have been through. During SVB a person finds his or her voice and begins to create his or her own narrative.

Only in circumstances in which it is stimulated will SVB occur. Under such positive circumstances we develop optimal control over our own and each other’s behavior. We may not like to hear this,, but whether we know it or not our behavior is controlled. The unaddressed question is whether we are going to continue on the path of effortful, coercive behavioral control or of effortless, positive behavioral control?

In NVB we practice effortful, punitive behavioral control, but in SVB we engage in effortless, positive behavioral control. As everyone who knows about the SVB/NVB has recognized, SVB is more effective and more intelligent than NVB. Effective education and implementation of the science of human behavior goes together with a new way of talking.

NVB is ineffective as it is doesn’t stimulate or allow novel experiences. In NVB we mechanically repeat the same behavior. Psycho-pathology is a person’s inability to learn new behavior, but if a person is differently stimulated, with SVB instead of NVB, he or she will be able to learn.

With SVB we will have happy relationships and new experiences. Things are possible with SVB which are impossible with NVB. SVB guides us into an enchanting way of life. We will be hopeful about our future. Our societies will change as we learn to address and overcome our problems.  

October 4, 2016

October 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The scientific distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is validated by my work with groups, in the psychology classes I teach as an instructor, as well as by my work in treating those individuals who suffer from mental health problems.

  

In teaching and in therapy one can see the results of the increased rates of SVB and the decreased rates of NVB. Students let me know that they like my teaching and clients tell me that they are benefitted by my therapy. I haven’t always felt so appreciated and honored and I am deeply grateful to each of my students and clients for trusting me.

I am proud of my students and clients as they are changed by my instructions and practice what I have taught. They achieve the results I have predicted. In turn, I am changed by their results. As I write these words I feel a sense of satisfaction with my work and with my life.

Apparently, I have figured out something which nobody else has figured out. Although nobody has been as interested in the topic of spoken communication as I am, I don’t think that anything I say or do can’t be learned and done by someone else. 

During the course of the semester there is a point at which students no longer respond with more NVB than SVB and begin to produce more SVB and less NVB. In my classes this is a group phenomenon. A similar phenomenon takes place at the individual level with my clients. After they have been with with me for some time, their NVB becomes less and SVB begins to stabilize and increase. We notice this together.

Due to the unique behavioral histories of each of my clients the point at which this change occurs is different from person to person. In spite of this variability, the change sets in at approximately the same time as I spend with students, that is, between week 12 and week 15.

What is also interesting is that the evening class, which is three hours long, catches on earlier than my two day-time classes, which also occur on different days and which are only one hour and fifteen minutes long. Although I see day-time students twice a week, my impact is different from my long evening class where we have more time to go into things.  

The problems I face as a teacher and therapist are complex at firsts, but things get simpler as we go. I view complexity in terms of less time spend and simplicity in terms of more time spend. My marriage with Bonnie is uncomplicated as we have been married for thirty two years. We had a lot of problems when we started and I am so happy that we stayed together.

October 3, 2016

October 3, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

It is no coincidence that radical behaviorism, which explains and supports the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in terms of stimulus, response and consequence, known as the three-term contingency, is also rejected in favor of all our commonly held nonsensical pre-scientific beliefs.

As the SVB/NVB distinction exposes and decisively cuts through all our explanatory fictions it is rejected even more vehemently than radical behaviorism. However, once this distinction has been accepted, radical behaviorism is likely to be more widely recognized as well.

While resistance to radical behaviorism is lamented in peer-reviewed journals, resistance to the SVB/NVB distinction is simply a matter of avoiding the face to face interaction all together. I mention this difference, as writing and reading is a way of avoiding the conversation.

The limitations of radical behaviorism have led to more writings which conceal the fact that unscientific people decline to talk with scientific people and vice versa. When the NVB speaker talks at the listener, he or she misses out on talking with the listener and have scientific SVB.

It is not whether something is wrong with the science of human behavior or with the SVB/NVB distinction, what doesn’t work is our spoken communication. It is coercive NVB which limits our ability to predict and control behavior and not the lawfulness of human behavior. We are not helped by hypothetical constructs about what presumably happens within each one of us. We can only demonstrate, explore, experience and verify the lawfulness of SVB and NVB while we speak.

Our knowledge is limited by the extent to which we engage in SVB or NVB. Moreover, as NVB can’t generate new practices it makes what we know meaningless. SVB turns this around and makes what was meaningless meaningful. Naturally, there is only so much a person can know, but with SVB all our different knowledges and experiences will be validated.

Our unique individual findings will make us listen to and adhere to the general law about spoken communication: aversive-sounding speakers always separate the listeners from the speakers, while appetitive-sounding speakers always unite the speakers with the listeners.

Apparently, as I was affected by this process more than anybody else, I was able to put my finger on it. My personal annoyance about and frustration with how people talked at me and my excitement and gratefulness about people who talked with me, paved the way for the scientific analysis which posits that this is the same for everyone.

The science of SVB and NVB doesn’t concern itself with the average individual as it directly focuses on our individual experiences. The SVB/NVB distinction has in common with radical behaviorism that it transcends group-think and that it stimulates us to think as individuals.

SVB makes and keeps us conscious, but NVB makes us mechanical and keeps us unconscious. This is validated by everyone who was introduced to the SVB/NVB distinction. Another experience evoked by anyone who is introduced to the SVB/NVB distinction is a profound sense of joy and peace involved in recognizing its simplicity, beauty and parsimony.

Objections against the SVB/NVB distinction or radical behaviorism are always based on outdated arguments that the so-called complexity of behavior is impervious to science. These complaints are always a product of NVB and will disappear with SVB like snow melting in the sun.

The proof is in the pudding. There is no reason to doubt that great things can be achieved by conversation about the SVB/NVB distinction and about radical behaviorism. We find that SVB is the kind of conversation that results in happy and productive lives, but NVB keeps preventing this.