May 30, 2015

May 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

I am reading a paper by Douglas Greer called “The Ontogenetic Selection of Verbal Capabilities: Contributions of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior Theory to a More Comprehensive Understanding of Language” (2008). He considers “the joining of the speaker and the listener within the skin” – which happens after the “initial independence of speaker and the listener” – as essential for the foundation for an “empirically based theory of verbal development.” 

This is exciting as my theory of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is based on this “joining of the speaker and the listener within the skin.” Moreover, this affects the sound of the speaker’s voice, which is then perceived by the listener as an appetitive stimulus. The crux of SVB is that the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by contrast,  in which the speaker’s voice is perceived by the listener as an aversive stimulus, the speaker is not listening to him or herself. Interestingly, we say that in NVB the speaker gets under the listener’s skin, that is, he or she coerces and forces the listener to listen to him or to her. 

Greer’s paper focuses on how language may have evolved.  Since by verbal behavior “we mean all the producing and mediating functions of language responses (speaking, signing, gesturing, Morse Code, smoke signals, drumbeats)”, we need to recognize that although “the term verbal is not synonymous with vocal or oral language”, it does include it. 

The sound of the voice of the speaker is either perceived by the listener as an appetitive or an aversive stimulus. If the speaker’s voice positively affects the listener, he or she will tact SVB, but if the speaker’s voice negatively effects the listener, the listener will tact NVB. We must learn to distinguish between SVB and NVB as this will help us to increase SVB and decrease or stop NVB. 

Since NVB negatively effects the listener, we should try to prevent it and replace it with SVB. By focusing the listener’s attention on the quality of the sound of the voice of the speaker, communicators increase their understanding of how the environment selects their verbal behavior. Although the sound of the voice which pertains to SVB or NVB is made by the individual speaker, it is definitely not caused by him or by her.

Greer writes “Scientific analyses of verbal behavior focus on investigations of the functions of verbal behavior including the control of the environment: an environment that includes the control exerted by the audience on the speaker and, more recently, the function of verbal behavior for the listener.” Since we are considering operant and respondent conditioning, we need to explore and trace back as much as possible, while we speak, the environmental variables on both sides of the skin, which set the stage for SVB or NVB, which are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. “Verbal behavior assumes that certain evolved physiological capabilities made it possible for the adventitious selection of language functions in cultures through social learning – social learning made possible by our capacities to benefit from respondent and operant conditioning experiences reflected in the basic principles of behavior”.

SVB is identified as “a higher order operant”, which provides “explanations of complex verbal functions and their ontogeny.” The social contingencies which select SVB are different than those which select NVB. SVB is characterized by equality between speaker and listener, but NVB is hierarchical; the speaker aversively controls the behavior of the listener. An new way of analyzing the function of language becomes possible because of the SVB/NVB distinction. From the verbal reports of those who have explored this distinction it is clear that SVB and NVB are two subclasses of vocal verbal behavior, which must have a different neurophysiological pathways. 

Greer identifies whether children “are missing certain verbal capabilities or verbal behavioral developmental cusps.” By trying to “develop interventions which are designed to supply these missing capabilities” he then traces the “environmental experiences that led to the verbal capabilities.” I extend his idea of “developmental cusps”, but offer SVB not to children, but to adults. I claim that as long as we remain entrenched by NVB, we will be without “certain verbal capabilities.” Moreover, if we don’t experience enough SVB, certain repertoires can never even be learned. Our lack of repertoire perpetuates NVB and without SVB, individual verbal behavior stops developing. People, that is, speakers are the environmental variables which lead to these developments. 

Lack of development of verbal behavior repertoire must have consequences for the workings of our brains. I hypothesize that onset of Alzheimer’s can be delayed by increased levels of SVB and am confident that those who have Alzheimer’s have higher rates of NVB than those who don’t have it. SVB is an adult behavioral cusp which most people completely miss out on. 

Rosales-Ruiz & Baer (1996) defined the behavioral developmental cusp as “a change that (1) is often difficult, tedious, or otherwise problematic to accomplish, yet (2) if not made, means little or no further development is possible in its realm (and perhaps several realms); but (3) once it is made, a significant set of subsequent developments becomes easy or otherwise highly probable, which (4) brings the developing organism into contact with other cusps crucial to further, more complex, or more refined development on a thereby steadily expanding, steadily more interactive realm.” (underlining added). SVB fits perfectly with this description. 

SVB seems difficult because not enough environments are available to make it happen. However, these environments are not difficult to arrange, but they will only be organized, stabilized and available, if we acknowledge our need for such environments. If it is too cold, we turn on the heather; if it is too warm, we turn on the air-conditioner. We can turn up the rate of SVB if we know what it is and what is needed to make it happen. I disagree with this definition which says that change is often difficult. We only say that because we lack an environmental perspective. Once we adopt the view that behavior is not caused by inner agents, but by our environment, SVB, or other behavioral cusps, are easy to accomplish. It is true, however, that NVB prevents the change involved in the cusp called SVB. 

Many other things would become possible, if we would arrange environments in which SVB could happen, which, by the way, are environments in which NVB couldn’t happen. These other developments come into view only when SVB is continued, but remain out of sight as long as NVB takes over again. The numbing and stunting effects of NVB are such that there is hardly any appreciation for the subtle complexities of SVB. Lastly, in NVB the speaker is talking at the listener and not with the listener. In other words, in NVB the speaker doesn’t interact or take turns with the listener. Actually, in NVB the speaker doesn’t really speak and the listener doesn’t really listen.

May 29, 2015

May 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

It is evening and I sit in my garden near the fire. I am happy and quiet and I enjoy this peaceful moment. Tonight I am alone and I like it. There is no need to fulfill, everything seems to have been done and I am not doing anything. 

I hear a pigeon and a car while the silence is descending. Tomorrow things will be very different, but I will not forget this time in which I digest who I have been and think of who I am going to be, taking my instructions from the flames. 

Two birds flew in the evening sky and nearby animated neighbors are talking with family members. Each has their domain. I feel complete. The birds flew by and the neighbors went inside to watch TV. 

Air-conditioners are humming and one bird sings one last song before the darkness sets in. As the wood is consumed the logs rearrange themselves and the smoke goes straight up because there is no wind. 

A mosquito tried to land on my skin, but its sound near my ear gave it away and made my hand move. A dog barks at the arrival of a car and from my back yard I can hear what is happening in my street. 

Oh fire, I love and admire you for being so lively and beautiful. The light is just right for these words to make sense. My shadowy friends have left without saying good bye while I was staring at the glow.

May 28, 2015

May 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to Aigen’s paper “The Voice of The Forest: A Conception of Music for Music Therapy” (1991). For a long time “participation in sacred rites” was used as the “way the individual’s natural, psychological resistance to change was overcome as the instinctual energy was put in the service of the inner impetus of development.” When we translate this sentence to the Sound Verbal Behavior(SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, we find that an “individual’s natural resistance to change” is in fact always an individual’s unexpressed resistance to NVB. Moreover, “the inner impetus of development” is also suppressed by NVB.

  

The promotion of music therapy might as well be used to promote SVB. After all SVB is based on the inclusion and expression of a person’s private speech in public speech. “In music therapy we are given the opportunity to create external forms, that is, musical structures, whose purpose is to manifest and provide a field for interaction with the “unseen realm” comprising our affective and spiritual selves.” We have a need to express our private speech during our public speech, because this is from where our private speech originated. In NVB, however, we have no chance to do this because in NVB we are led to believe that our private speech is equivalent to an inner behavior-causing self. Consequently, struggle is the basic characteristic of NVB. The struggle in NVB is between the inner and the outer, our private speech and our public speech, but also between the speaker and the listener. 

In SVB, we “create external forms”, that is, we, as listeners become speakers, who express a vocal verbal behavior, which sounds good, according to us. As speakers, we evaluate our own sound in terms of whether we like it or not. If we don’t like it, it is NVB, but if we like it, it is SVB.

Whatever these so-called “hidden forces and entities” may be, which are brought out by “the shaman in ritual” or the “therapist in therapy”, we can deal more pragmatically with such expressions by treating them as verbal behavior. After all, the shaman or the therapist, they mediate and reinforce the speaker, who listens to him or herself, while he or she speaks.

Although “the shamanic perspective attributes causality to external, supernatural agents” while the “psychological perspective explains human actions based on internal entities based on natural influences” this only led to the illusion of “enhanced rationality”, which is still with us today and prevents understanding and implementation of a thoroughgoing behaviorist account.

The behaviorist account has not and could not spread because the SVB/NVB distinction is not widely known. Once it is known it will be much easier to talk about behaviorism. Right now, most behaviorists, like the non-behaviorists, produce mainly NVB while they speak, that is, they don’t listen to themselves while they speak, but they only want others to listen to them. 

Aigen reports having some spiritual revelation while he is in the Arizona high desert. While being there, he realizes that “Music – as the sound of sacred, once-living substances – is the voice of wisdom in nature.” Moreover, “It is the vehicle by which we contact that force of nature that maintains a dynamic balance in both our inner and outer worlds. To truly understand music is then to understand the secret and maintenance of life itself.” Aigen was apparently alone and didn’t state that he was talking with anyone, but he definitely talks, that is, he writes about it, in his paper. What is lost in this picture is the fact that Aigen, who himself is not a “once-living substance”, but someone who is alive, is behaving verbally and that the reader reads his story about the presumed importance of music. If we are to stay with the fact that his verbal behavior is about “the sound of the sacred”, it is not a big leap to imagine that Aigen wants to express SVB. Since he doesn’t know SVB, he writes “music…is the voice of nature.” Furthermore, SVB, which expresses accurately what happens within our own skin, because we listen to ourselves while we speak, “maintains a dynamic balance in both inner and outer worlds.” Not by making music, but by becoming truly verbal, and by producing SVB as a speaker, we will be less enthralled with understanding the presumed “secret of life”. The “secret of life” is overrated and doesn’t need “maintenance”, but our relationships do. 

Aigen’s familiarity with NVB is evident from the statement “relating in a manner that facilitates the life and functioning of the whole” is “not comprised of purely harmonious and tension-free – and ultimately lifeless – music, at times promoted for use in healing contexts.” According to him, music must always “reflect the intense, vital, alternatively joyful and suffering wail characteristic of the life struggle.” Presumably, “it is in music that we can fully integrate our dissonances, as well as our consonances.” However, SVB stops the moment that there is NVB. From a SVB-perspective the music stops when it depicts “the life struggle.” The basic characteristic of NVB is “struggle” and “suffering”, but the basic principle of SVB is “joy” and “vitality”. In other words, in SVB there are no “dissonances” at all. Aigen's wrong notion that “harmonious”, “tension-free” music (read:conversation), is “ultimately lifeless” is of course based on a behavioral history that involved a lot of “struggle” and “suffering”.

 

On the one hand Aigen states that our “psychic problems are both reflected in, and exacerbated by, our pathological physical environment”, but on the other hand, he insists that “individuals have lost contact with the sacred within themselves.” Such a statement reflects the struggle between the inner and outer, which is characteristic for NVB. Supposedly “the pollution of our external world is an external manifestation of the alienation of the life spirit that is at the root of contemporary psychological disturbances.” All of this mumbo jumbo is obfuscating NVB. Aigen only pays lip-service to the importance of “creative activity for emotional wellbeing.” What good will it do to us to “explore the connections between creation (of life) and creativity” as long as we keep our NVB going? These questions Aigen dissociates from, because he prefers to live in the almost autistic world of music therapy. 

When Aigen, at the end of his paper, calls behaviorism a “de-sacralized approach to science”, I realize that he is not really a behaviorist. His yearning for something sacred signifies his loneliness and isolation, which is based on a lack of SVB and his involvement in meaningless NVB. We do not need to get back in touch with the life spirit, but with each other. It is amazing that an educated person talks about the maintenance of life, without once in the paper elaborating on the importance of how we sound while we speak. Are we going to bring music into our conversation or are we moving away from conversation with esoteric dreams about how music will solve our problems? Since we have done that already and subsequently have perpetuated NVB, we might as well figure out how SVB works. It is NVB, which is lifeless, but in SVB we are full of life. During SVB we will speak with our authentic, resonant, musical voice. 

May 27, 2015

May 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Today on the radio I heard that students who were taking hand-written notes during a lecture scored significantly higher on a memory test than those who typed their notes on their laptop. I could have predicted such a result because I have experimented with different types of writing: pen, pencil, brush and keyboard. In the same way that a different voice would make me say different things, different fonts and different writing tools affect a different writing. 

I liked Aigen’s metaphor of the landscape which determines how the river flows, in the paper “The Voice of The Forest: A Conception of Music for Music Therapy” (1991). Just as we say different things under different circumstances, we also sound different under different circumstances. This is why under certain conditions the speaker speaks with an aversive voice and although the listener is negatively affected by this, he or she will still reinforce that speaker. Under more positive circumstances, the speaker speaks with a sound which functions as an appetitive stimulus and he or she affects the listener in a nicer way. In the former the speaker produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but in the latter, the speaker produces Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Although under both circumstances the listener reinforces the speaker, in one condition the listener reinforces coercive, uni-directional speech or NVB, while in the other condition he or she reinforces sensitive, bi-directional speech or SVB. 

The statement “to understand the music therapy process is to understand the original purpose of creating music” makes me think that to understand the problems involved in talking is to understand the original purpose of talking. It is easy to think of purposes for which music can be used, which don’t capture the essence of music. Music played in an elevator or between news reports serves a purpose, but there is much more to music. Likewise, talking is used for many purposes often leaving out the most important purpose. We may be talking about who won a match, the weather, a movie, but there is more to talking than these mundane topics. Like music, talking or vocal verbal behavior “is oriented toward establishing, maintaining and improving one’s health and general functioning” that is, it is or can be a “life-enhancing activity.” 

Aigen argues in favor of “the construction of a worldview for music therapy”, but I doubt if he got any further with that construction than by writing that paper. The creation of such a world view is not going to have much of a reach as long as it doesn’t generalize to how we talk. Although I find myself aligned with music therapists, I think it is more pragmatic to work towards constructing a worldview of how we talk. If we would accomplish SVB understanding – which is based on the validation of the listener’s experience of the sound of the voice of the speaker – we would simultaneously become more interested in music and in its many magnificent effects. Although Aigen is aware of the importance of “how” questions regarding the formulation of an adequate music therapy theory, he is more interested in “why” music is so life enhancing.

The problems involved in asking “how” or “why” questions have not been and are not going to be solved by asking more “how” or “why” questions. They are both important, of course, but NVB doesn't allow us to answer them correctly.  SVB, on the other hand, is based on our common sense understanding that ‘it is not what you say, but how you say it.’ Moreover, in SVB what a person says is understood to be a function of how he or she says it; what a person says is either enhanced and understood or is diminished and misunderstood because of how he or she says it. Thus, in SVB we are giving different answers to “how” and “what” questions than in NVB.  

What a person is saying informs us about why he or she is saying it. The content of SVB and NVB is different because in NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency, while in SVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an appetitive contingency. “Why” questions gain new significance because of the SVB/NVB distinction. When we, the listeners, ask ourselves why we experience SVB or NVB, it becomes apparent to us that in SVB we experience positive, but in NVB we experience negative emotions. The “why”-question is answered by the listener with: the speaker affects me in a negative or in a positive manner. If we, the listeners, ask why this is happening, we agree the speaker’s voice creates this effect. The question “why” a speaker speaks with a voice which sounds negative can be accurately answered by the listener with: because he or she is stressed out or frustrated or because he or she thinks that he or she is better than us. 

In NVB the speaker doesn’t receive any feedback which would change his or her unequal relationship with the listener. Therefore, in NVB the listener usually doesn’t even become a speaker and if he or she does, he or she is careful to tell the first speaker only what he or she wants to hear. In other words, in NVB, we, the listeners, adhere to, that is, reinforce, a hierarchical way of talking in which the speaker is allowed to get away with his or her negativity. In SVB, by contrast, no such negativity occurs. 

Aigen writes that “we can approach the phenomenon of music on its own terms and thereby facilitate the emergence of indigenous and progressive research and treatment.” I would like us, that is, the listeners, to approach speaking on its own terms, because we are the mediators of the speaker. The only way our approach is going to work is if we become SVB speakers. Only SVB speakers can change the behavior of NVB speakers. Ideally, SVB will extinguish NVB.

Toward the end of each semester the NVB of my students has significantly decreased. Their papers are evidence of the changes that have began to occur due to the increase of SVB and the decrease of NVB. Aigen, like any other academic, assumes that he is the speaker as the writer, but he is only affecting readers, not listeners. The same energy that went into writing and publishing should be going into speaking, that is, into SVB, in which the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. When SVB catches on, as it predictably does in every class I teach, the listener, by becoming a speaker, is validated as the expert on what he or she is actually experiencing. SVB allows us to skip steps which were put in place by our NVB. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and SVB will revolutionize all our scientific endeavors. 

I like to read Aigen’s paper, because it helps me to articulate certain matters about SVB, which are otherwise easily overlooked. For instance, he mentions “one important function of ritual activity” is that “it allows the participants to enter into relation with the unseen forces that control events in both the inner (psychological) and outer (social, physical) world.” This beautifully describes SVB in which our private speech is expressed and included into our public speech. In NVB, however, our private speech is excluded from our public speech.