January 10, 2015

January 10, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

Last night, this writer dreamed about the things he had read before he went to sleep. It seemed as if during this dream the material was reiterated, and, because of the repetition, consolidated. When he got up, he felt eager to reread what he had read the night before and was ready to write about it. 

The paper he dreamed about was titled “B.F. Skinner: The Writer and His Definition of Verbal Behavior” (2012) by Maria de Lourdes R. da F. Passos. This writer had, on previous occasions, read two other papers by this author, which stimulated him so much that he contacted her. He was so lucky to have a long and heartfelt conversation with her. The paper which will shortly be discussed had been saved to be read later on, but somehow this writer never got to read it. When he began reading it yesterday night, he felt the same jolt he had felt when he had first read the abstract. 

How we define things is a matter this writer never paid close attention to. Due to his behavioral history, this writer was more inclined to evaluate what was said in terms of how it was felt by him. Although this limiting approach has given him many problems, it was also reinforcing, because it selected and enhanced the development of new verbal behavior, which he describes as Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). His definition of SVB came about, because at some point in his life, his spoken communication reached such a low point, that he, out of sheer frustration with the same negative outcomes, decided not to talk with others anymore and began to talk with himself instead.

More importantly, because he began to talk with himself, he began to listen to himself and he was able to identify the sound of his voice, which he wanted to use, while speaking with others. As he honed in on this sound, which he only seldom had been able to use in conversations and became familiar with it, he felt like a musician practicing on his instrument. The sound of SVB instantly changed his predominantly negative private speech. Once he had identified SVB, his positive self-talk led to new public conversations, which came about because he successfully instructed others to do as he did. They too began to listen to themselves while they speak and began to produce a different sound, which then set the stage for a new way of talking, SVB. 

SVB derives from how we sound when we speak with a sound which is pleasing, relaxing, energizing, calming and thus reinforcing. Stated differently, in SVB the verbalizer and the mediator are the same person. Moreover, SVB is the mediator’s perspective of the verbalizer. The saying “It is not what you say, it is how you say it!” captures how our verbal behavior is functionally related to our nonverbal behavior. Verbal behavior emerges from nonverbal behavior phylogenetically, over the course of evolution, and, ontogenetically, over the course of our life time. The Bible claims “In the beginning was the word”, but there were no words to begin with. There was first only a sound and verbal learning is based on nonverbal learning. Human beings have existed for a long time without language. And, even with language we are not yet fully verbal. We are born nonverbal and we learn our language from our verbal community. SVB aligns our verbal and our nonverbal expression. In SVB, we can become fully verbal because speaking and listening are joined.

The aforementioned explanation, evoked by Passos’ work, is evidence of how this writer is affected by what he has read. The title of the work:  “B.F. Skinner: The Writer And His Definition of Verbal Behavior” evoked another response in this writer. The expression “Don’t put words into my mouth!” refers to the interpretation by the mediator, who, as a speaker, is expected and forced to speak in a way which is determined by the previous speaker.  The mediator wants the words to mean what they mean to the mediator and not what the verbalizer wants them to mean. As a speaker, the mediator might say: “I didn’t say that. Stop putting words into my mouth,” because he or she doesn’t want to be mediated or interpreted in the way the speaker wants him or her to mediate or interpret him or her.

The mediator’s ability to mediate the verbalizer in the way that the verbalizer wants to be mediated depends on the mediator's behavioral history with his or her verbal community. If the mediator’s history is such that he or she was never allowed to have his or her own interpretation of the verbalizer, then this mediator is more likely to mediate the verbalizer how the verbalizer wants to or demands to be mediated. If, on the other hand, the mediator’s history is such that his or her own interpretation is allowed to effect and even change the verbalizer’s meaning, so that the verbalizer can connect with and stay connected with the mediator, this interpretation of the verbalizer is more likely to lead to a more attuned form of communication, which is SVB. 

The saying “Don’t put words into my mouth”, indicates the mediator gave his or her spoken feedback to the verbalizer, which, most likely, the verbalizer didn’t like. That is, there occurred an actual instance of turn-taking, because the mediator became the verbalizer and the verbalizer became the mediator. 

When a verbalizer says “Don’t put words into my mouth”, he or she basically says “Don’t talk back at me, only obediently mediate the meaning, which I can enforce on you, because I am more powerful than you.” By the way, the expression “Don’t talk back at me” is a version of the verbalizer instruction to the mediator not “to get any ideas” or become “mouthy” as a verbalizer. It is clear that these expressions are all meant to establish the verbalizer’s dominance over the mediator, which is a characteristic of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The servant is not supposed to talk back at the master and the child is not supposed to talk back the parent or teacher. The dominated are not supposed to give any feedback to those who dominate them. 

 

A related expression is “Don’t even think about it”, in which the verbalizer doesn’t want the mediator to think about something because, supposedly, the thought alone is bad. As this example illustrates, as long as the mediator is not talking about it, he or she is believed not to be thinking about it and thinking about it is supposedly prevented by not speaking about it. Of course, this is total nonsense, but given the absence of an accurate analysis of the way in which the mediator mediates the verbalizer, this power-differential is never properly discussed. Moreover, the expression “Don’t even think about it” also refers to the superstition that something might happen merely because one thinks about it. Presumably, by not thinking about it, one can prevent it from happening. The dominance of the verbalizer over the mediator is called NVB. It is called NVB because, if asked, the mediator will tell the verbalizer that he or she perceives the voice of the verbalizer as sounding terrible. The fact that the NVB speaker never asks the mediator how he or she perceives the verbalizer and is not open to feedback even if it is given, results in a way of talking in what is said is distracted from by how it is said. Thus, NVB fosters faulty mediation. In SVB, by contrast, the mediator effectively mediates the verbalizer, because the verbalizer sounds good to the mediator.

January 9, 2015

January 9, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

This author ran into two people who had recently participated in his seminar. They produced Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) right away and it was wonderful to hear them speak about it with clarity and interest. One of them asked why we don’t usually have SVB and have what this author calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB)? This author answered that although many things can be said about how we communicate, it makes sense to focus on just these two ways. During SVB we are in touch with each other and ourselves, but during NVB we are neither in touch with each other nor with ourselves. The person acknowledged this and rephrased his question and asked why he was able to understand SVB while others aren’t? This author answered that he and other people have different behavioral histories. He emphasized that although he is the one who teaches SVB, others have responded to him by reinforcing him. 


Their response to what he teaches is based on their past. Certainly not everyone responds to this writer like these two men. However, it is important to recognize that also this writer, although he is the originator of SVB, has learned all he knows from other people whom he has met in his life. And, allthough nobody has ever taught him about SVB as such, others have taught him the behavioral components which make up SVB. Interestingly, the person asked a question about his Catholic religion. The experience of SVB, to him, expresses what he considers to be his belief in God. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that this author was also raised in the Roman Catholic tradition. The person then stated that Catholicism is just another language and this author agreed that Catholicism, like any other religion, is determined by how we behave verbally. What this author refers to as SVB often evokes all sorts of spiritual connotations, but the point of this writing is to clarify that we are talking about positive emotional experiences, which are important to us, because they are reinforcing. SVB is essential because it allows us to decouple our actual experience from the mystical explanations which we usually give to it. By having an explanation of SVB, by recognizing what we considered to be our belief as a way of behaving verbally, we are better capable of cherishing and sharing the experience by how we talk. 

This goes for any system of thought, any political, ideological, philosophical or cultural view. When we talk about our individual experiences, we are behaving verbally, but we are often not recognizing the extent to which we fail to express verbally what we experience in our body, non-verbally. We often think that we are verbal while in fact we are nonverbal. What this writer calls verbal fixation makes us lose touch with our non-verbal/body/experience/reality. NVB is our disembodied communication. Attention for our sound while we speak brings us to SVB in which we acknowledge the commonalities of our non-verbal experiences, which previously had been given false explanations and couldn’t bring us to the fact that our different beliefs have been ways in which our words were separating us from our nonverbal environment. 

In SVB our words will deepen our connection with our environment, our body. The other person also made a profound comment. He articulated his need to be in an environment in which he could practice SVB. This may seem like a simple statement, but it has many implications. The most easily overlooked implication is that SVB can only occur if the contingency to make it happen is available. Without the necessary ingredients to make it happen, SVB cannot happen. These ingredients, however, are environmental stimuli, which occur inside the skin and outside of the skin of all the communicators involved. 

The environmental variables that stimulate and maintain SVB are produced by the combined stimulation from internal and external stimuli. Such stimuli are also known as endo-stimuli and ecto-stimuli, respectively. What is more, the function of endo-stimili can be altered by ecto-stimuli and also the function of ecto-stimuli can also be altered by endo-stimuli. In other words, SVB is made possible by the ongoing interaction between a verbally-behaving organism’s endo – and ecto – environment. Although there is private, endo-speech, with which an individual covertly talks with him or herself about the non-verbal ecto-environment, this sub-vocal self-talk is only as good as the overt ecto-speech the person has experienced. Given the fact that SVB at best has only occurred in an occasional, irregular manner, most endo-speech reflects NVB, that is, it is insensitive to the ecto-stimuli, which are occurring in our current environment. Freud used to call these defense mechanisms. 

The only way to reverse this pathological process is for the verbalizer to become his or her own mediator. Speakers must listen to themselves while they speak. To be in an environment in which one can practice SVB is a tricky thing because one cannot practice it and one doesn’t need to practice SVB. To the contrary, once one knows what the environment must be like in order to have SVB, one finds, one is having SVB. If, however, the necessary endo – and ecto – stimuli for SVB are absent, SVB cannot and will not occur, and, unless one leaves this contingency, one will not engage in SVB. 

The person who expressed the wish to be in the environment in which he could practice SVB, instantly created this environment, because he met this writer, who on previous occasions had taught him how to create and maintain this environment. Thus, the person was demonstrating to this writer how capable he had become. He instantly recognized their meeting reinforced his SVB and expressed his wish to continue with it forever. This evoked a burst of laughter and they both embraced each other. The person thanked this writer for teaching him and this writer thanked him for allowing him to teach. 

As this writer is writing about this event, he notices how his body responds. A subtle energy rises up from the bottom of his spine to his skull and he experiences a sense of thankfulness. It is SVB that stimulates this writer to write these words. He thinks of the many people with whom he has shared his ideas and feels so fortunate to have found this new way of talking. This one person, who asked him to teach, makes this writer incredibly happy. It makes all the rejection by those who don’t want to have anything to do with him irrelevant. Today is a day of joy, celebration, relief and attainment.

January 8, 2015

January 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

In the paper “Verbal Behavior in the Measuring Process” (1996) written by L.E. Fraley, things are stated which explain what this author means by Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Just like Fraley’s description of “measuring”, SVB can also be described as generating “new stimuli that intra-verbally evoke new and potentially more effective responding to the situation under investigation.” The “situation” that is “under investigation” is our spoken communication or vocal verbal behavior.

Measuring the independent environmental variables, inside and outside of the skin, that cause and maintain the dependent variable, the way in which we communicate, is not likely to happen any time soon as long as our way of interacting gets us what we want. Interestingly, Fraley starts of his paper by writing “If we can already respond effectively and sufficiently to a situation, it tends not to stimulate measuring.” Given the fact, which is not acknowledged by many, that 95% of our spoken communication consists of NVB, the kind of spoken communication in which, presumably, we get what we want no matter the costs, there is nothing stimulating us to pay attention to what is going on. The only person who is interested in measuring why we keep having so many communication problems, according to Fraley’s line of thought, would be someone who is unhappy enough about the negative consequences of his or her own way of interacting. Indeed, a person, like this author, who recognizes the difference between SVB and NVB, is chronically unhappy with the ubiquity of NVB. Unhappiness is the Establishing Operation for SVB.

Only SVB-deprivation establishes Voice II, the voice that is needed to have SVB, as an effective reinforcer. Only the evocative effect of Voice II increases the behavior that has been reinforced by SVB. Attempts to create and maintain SVB, which necessarily involve measuring, that is, verbally describing what is going on, are caused by what is known as an Establishing Operation. Our common high rates of responding with Voice I, the voice which produces NVB and low rates of responding with Voice II, are only noticed by someone, who, like this author, recognizes that NVB cannot evoke measuring practices. “New intra-verbally evoked stimuli” describe “effective” and “sufficient” very differently from when high rates of Voice I-responding tuned out the possibility of SVB and the difference between SVB and NVB was not noticeable. 

 

If our NVB proves to be ineffective, there are only two options: either our NVB rate of responding will increase or it will decrease. If it increases, this is because higher rates of NVB are reinforced by our environment, if it decreases, then higher rates of SVB are reinforced by our environment. Interestingly, SVB never proves to be ineffective, only NVB proves to be ineffective. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of NVB is always a consequence of SVB and without SVB, the ineffectiveness of NVB cannot be analyzed. Stated differently, the analysis of the ineffectiveness of NVB brings about SVB.

The “new stimuli” which “can bring new behavior to bear on a situation” don’t and can’t occur in NVB and only occur in SVB. Voice I elicits the same old reflexive NVB, but Voice II evokes novel, lively, intelligent SVB. “New stimuli” that “share in evoking the previously conditioned behaviors that could not otherwise be evoked in the current situation” are neural behaviors which are produced covertly. Although it is our behaving body which changes the situation, if we practice disembodied communication, as we continuously do when we engage in NVB, we don’t and can't let this changed situation speak. Talking about our NVB implies being vulnerable and expressing our feelings of tension, pain, stress, anxiety and fear. However, in NVB negative experiences are never accurately expressed. This can only happen during SVB. 

During SVB we are able to talk about things which we are unable to talk about during NVB. During SVB we can talk about NVB, but we cannot talk about SVB during NVB. The fact that this is not known creates enormous problems. SVB and NVB are mutually exclusive response classes. We cannot accurately talk about our negative emotions as long as we are negative. Only to the extent that we have positive emotions can we talk about our negative emotions. If we are constantly experiencing negative emotions, we cannot talk about them, we don’t want to talk about them. We only want them to stop. Numbing our emotions can be accomplished in various ways. Medicating our negative emotions doesn’t allow us to talk about them. It is a complete lie that the combination of pharmacological therapy with psychotherapy works. It doesn’t and it can’t. The medications which numb the nervous system prevent mental health clients from experiencing emotions. What is urgently needed is a better way of communicating. First, NVB must to be stopped. SVB only occurs when NVB has been stopped. This writer knows how do that.

To anyone who has investigated with this writer – during conversation – the response classes SVB and NVB, it is evident that only SVB produces a “new set of responses” that are “more effective than responses to the stimuli otherwise already available.” Stated bluntly, NVB only makes things worse, it  rapidly deteriorates human relationship and destroys any sense of community. “Measurement-enabled improvement” of how we interact with one another requires us to become more objective about what we experience subjectively, while we communicate. This hasn’t happened yet. It couldn’t happen in NVB.

 

“The measurement practice” that “like probing and prompting, is a kind of intervention that enhances the evocative capacity of antecedent stimuli” has happened in many fields of science, but not in our spoken communication. SVB is that measurement practice. SVB is interaction in which “functionally, a measurement yields a kind of supplement to the antecedents that share in controlling subsequent behavior.” Surprisingly, Fraley gets frail when he ends the paragraph by stating that such measurements are “hopefully yielding more effective forms of behavior.” For behaviorologists there is no such a thing as hope. If behavior happens, it can happen, if it doesn’t happen, it couldn’t happen. SVB can and will happen if we measure what actually takes place while we are communicating. In other words, we must engage in ongoing conversation with one another to be able to measure what is going on. 

Improvements don’t depend on hope, but are reliably achieved by listening to how we sound while we speak. However, SVB is not about trying to change the way we sound. It is simply about listening to how we sound and not about trying to change how we sound. We have not listened to ourselves while we speak. The “more effective forms” of verbal behavior reveal themselves as SVB and can be replicated, while NVB should be understood as a feedback-impairment. This author thinks about SVB and NVB, when Fraley states “A person’s behavior always produces some kind of effect on the environment that might, in turn, control that person’s subsequent behavior.” The instance in which the verbalizer’s effect on the mediator controls the verbalizer’s verbal and nonverbal expressions in such a way that he or she becomes him or herself a mediator of him or herself – while he or she talks about this – is one in which the contingency is changed so that SVB can begin to occur. Our private speech can become public speech in SVB.

“Data collected during the process of measuring” thus only refers to what happens during SVB. When “feedback” occurring “from probes of the environment” is “not evoking effective responding” this simply means that our “measurement-produced stimuli” are inaccurate or insufficient. Whether we talk about private or public speech makes no difference. NVB public speech sets the stage for NVB private speech and SVB public speech sets the stage for SVB private speech. Indeed “some enhancement of to the antecedent controls on our behavior is needed if that more appropriate kind of responding is to be evoked.” Only our SVB public speech can dissolve our NVB private speech and conditions neural behavior, which “is preserved as some kind of record.” However, when it comes to measurement of verbal behavior, “a record” is the same “as the event to which it pertains”. It is important to recognize that our body is the instrument without which there is no sound. In SVB “stimulus supplementation from measuring” equals the increasingly more accurate verbalization in public speech of what happens within our own skin.

January 7, 2015

January 7, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

The most important thing to be understood about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is that it can’t be understood unless one experiences it. As long as one tries to understand it, one is incapable of experiencing it. This is not some game of words, this is really how SVB works. Only if one stops trying to understand it, one will be able to understand it. Understanding comes as a consequence of one’s experience of one’s body while one speaks. Without such an experience, one will produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is never found out right away, but only later on, in retrospect. 

It is our body which experiences the consequences of human interaction, not our so-called mind. It is our body which is evoked into action or inaction, due to the way in which we communicate. If our body is punished, as it most certainly is while we are aversively stimulated by NVB, the consequence of this aversive stimulation is always a decrease of behavior. We don’t see this, because we are more inclined to pay attention to the behavior that is occurring and not to the behavior that is not occurring or that cannot occur. If, on the other hand, our body is positively reinforced, as it would be when it is stimulated by the contingency which makes SVB possible, there is always an increase of behavior. This increase is visible, audible and measurable. The lack of behavior or the limited occurrence of behavior is always related to disembodied communication, or NVB, because NVB decreases behavior. If we want to increase behavior we must have SVB. 

Only when we look at why behavior occurs, of what behavior is a function, do we have a chance of finding out what causes it. Much of our behavior is caused by how we communicate. Lack of control, excess of speech and distractibility, are based on the low rates of focused talking and listening, which defines NVB. Total or partial absence of speech, as seen in autism, is also believed to be a consequence of NVB. Also, the onset of dementia happens earlier due to the relatively low amounts of SVB. Lying, criminality, as well as chaotic and psychotic behavior, is caused by how we talk. We don’t want to look at how our way of communicating causes many problems, because we would have to admit that, with our current beliefs, we can’t change it. When we say that individuals are responsible for their own actions, we refuse to look at our NVB manner of talking. This writing is not to make us individually responsible either. 

NVB conditions enduring changes in our neural structures. SVB is a different kind of conditioning, leading to different response mediation. We use the same words, but how we say them makes all the difference. The function-altering consequences of evocative verbal stimuli are different in SVB and NVB. It is impossible for SVB stimuli to become “more effective in inducing the neural mediation of a response” (Ledoux, 2014, p. 289), if there is no repeated exposure to such stimuli. However, “competition among antecedent stimuli” determines a selection process, in which even those rare occasions that we can have SVB “strengthens all the antecedent functional relations.”