August 2, 2015

August 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my second response to the paper “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). Another result obtained by these researchers “showed that learning a talker’s voice from sentences did not generalize well to identification of novel isolated words.” 

We are not used to hearing only isolated words, but we are used to hearing sentences. Words by themselves don’t give us the opportunity to learn the talker’s voice. Thus, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the talker demands with as few words as possible what he or she wants, there is, due to this coercive influence, no opportunity to learn the talker’s voice, even if whole sentences are spoken. Actually, in NVB the listeners are distracted from the talker’s voice, because what he or she is saying is supposedly more important than how he or she is saying it. 

NVB speakers coerce the listener. They make the listener listen to him or to her, but they are not listening to themselves and are not stimulated to do so. Depending on what kind of voice the talker has there will be aversive or appetitive effects for the listener. Although this research investigated the listener’s ability to learn the talker’s voice, it still focused mainly on content and not on how the speaker sounded. 

Fixation on the verbal is typical for NVB in which we basically ignore the nonverbal forms of conditioning. The researchers focus on novel isolated words is antithetical to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which the speaker hears his or her own voice and thus is and remains his or her own listener. 

The overemphasized importance of being able to recognize these novel isolated words indicates that there is an aversive environment in which this urgent need arises. However, such a need doesn’t arise in an appetitive environment which is created and maintained by the SVB speaker. Thus,  learning the SVB speaker’s voice from sentences generalizes better to novel isolated words than learning the NVB speaker’s voice from sentences.

August 1, 2015

August 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is my first response to the paper “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). My writing is to collect evidence from researchers for the existence of what I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

One of their findings was that “listeners who were given words that were produced by familiar talkers at test showed better identification performance than did listeners who were given words that were produced by unfamiliar talkers.” This indicates that familiarity with the talker enhances learning. Since the speaker is aversively affecting the listener in NVB, but is appetitively affecting the listener in SVB, it can be concluded that familiarity with the talkers is more likely to occur in the latter, which is more conducive to learning. 

Although the listener can, of course, also be conditioned by and familiar with a NVB speaker, that familiarity is qualitatively different. Familiarity with the NVB speaker is essential to developing the listener’s understanding about his or her place in the hierarchical relationships existing in his or her verbal community, while familiarity with the SVB speaker involves a process of learning which completely free from aversive stimulation. 

I hypothesize that SVB evokes the type of learning which is for the love of knowledge, while NVB elicits learning out of the fear of punishment and the necessity to survive. SVB and NVB are two diametrically opposing ways of talking we all familiar with. However, only some of us are more familiar with SVB than with NVB, while most of us are more familiar with NVB. The common opinion of what it means to learn is more determined by NVB than by SVB. Most of us believe we will have more of a competitive edge if we learn. However, this type of learning prevents those who have mainly been exposed to NVB speakers from becoming familiar with SVB speakers and from learning that takes us beyond our survival behaviors. SVB is the kind of talking in which we completely stop fighting.

July 31, 2015

July 31, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This nightly writing helps me to catch up. I was reading and writing about one paper and it took me a long time. It took me many days and because of that I fell behind and wasn’t able to produce an entry for every day. The mosquito, which apparently flew away, woke us up and allowed me to write these words, which create order in my thoughts.

There are a couple of things I must do today. I need to tell my client that I can’t work for him on Friday and would like to work on Thursday if that is okay with him. Also, I must make sure I am home on Friday to receive the phone call interview. Then, this afternoon I need to pick up my new glasses. And, I will try to get a few hours of sleep this afternoon.

Tonight I will go to open-mike. I still need to decide which songs I am going to sing. It is not a big deal as I have many songs that I can chose from. These songs are to me as my poems once were; they are like blue-prints of what I am all about. I love to express myself in a song. I have found that the simpler the better. I enjoy simple and short songs.  

Sometimes I hear a beautiful melody and I get excited as if I have found a great treasure. The more I love a melody, the better it fits with me and the easier it is for me to write lyrics to it. It amazes me how effortlessly I come up with something autobiographical to write. I let the music speak to me and singing makes me feel that I am interacting with the composer.

The silence of the early morning speaks to me too. It is still dark and this darkness is more powerful than my little lamp. It puts in perspective the small light which allows me to write and read. These thoughts, although they are written in this light, are drawn to toward the night. I am aware of these thoughts as I am awake, but it feels as if I am dreaming.

July 30, 2015

July 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

 

My wife woke up because there was a mosquito in the room. I turned the light on and looked all over the place, but couldn’t find it. The door to our bedroom is open and it could have flow to the living room, the kitchen or the office where I am sitting right now. After searching for the mosquito, I was aroused and couldn’t sleep and so I decided to get up and write.

It is a wonderful cool night and it is only 4:00am. I am a little tired, but can’t fall back asleep anymore. Bonnie is sound asleep. The cat just came in and took her place in front of the open window. She likes to sit on that spot because it has a pillow. When I greeted her, she greeted me too. She too enjoys the coolness of the night and she seems very happy.

During this summer period, I have written many songs and have sang at open-mike evenings. Because many people like my songs, I kept making more. Yesterday evening, after I talking with my friend, I sang for him too. He complimented me for a melancholic song about walking through my old hometown. I wrote it to music by Eric Satie, which he really loves.

This week, I plan to go to three open-mike evenings. Once Fall Semester at Butte College starts I probably don’t have that much time anymore for these events. That I have started to sing again is a wonderful addition to my behavioral repertoire, which brings me many reinforcements. I love music and to me Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is music while we speak.

Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is noise while we speak; in NVB the voice of a speaker is perceived as an aversive stimulus.  Such a voice is difficult to listen to and we are naturally inclined to move away from it in any way we can. So, even if we cannot move away physically, we move away from it with our private speech, which comments on the NVB public speech.

July 29, 2015

July 29, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

I had a wonderful conversation with my friend of mine. He uses my Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) samples and instructed one of his students to let a baby listen to them. From a first impression, it looked as if the baby showed a positive response to SVB and a negative response to NVB. This is a good first result, although we may need to control confounding variables.   

We want to collect data on about 40 babies. If many respond similarly to SVB and NVB, we can conclude that humans have an innate response to how we sound. The samples my friend's student is using recordings of my voice. On the SVB samples, I speak calmly and soothingly, but on the NVB samples, I speak forcefully and loudly. The 3 months old baby doesn’t have language and I speak Dutch on the samples and the baby grows up in a Spanish verbal community, so it only responds to my sound. 

Our hypothesis is that most babies will have an orienting response to the SVB sample, because the sound of my voice is an appetitive stimulus; and most babies will show a startle response, a fear response, when they hear the NVB sample on which my voice functions as an noxious stimulus. 

At such an early age these are still unconditioned responses, but as the exposure to these sounds continues, they become conditioned responses, as these sounds will be paired with other stimuli, which might be within the skin or outside the skin and which occur at the same time. 

Certain physiological experiences occurring within the skin are predicted to lead to immediate escape and avoidance behaviors when they are perceived as aversive, while others would lead to approach behaviors. Similarly, other stimuli, which are occurring outside the skin in the environment, such as visual stimuli, will also become paired with the auditory stimuli and will also trigger escape, avoidance or approach behaviors. This conditioning process is believed to set the stage for more SVB or NVB.