January 5, 2018

Dear Reader,

I want to elaborate on the process of learning about two patterns of vocal verbal behavior: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Each time someone is introduced to these two categories he or she immediately seems to be having a preference for SVB and an aversion against NVB. Once people understand, and, more importantly, experience the great difference between SVB and NVB, they are in favor of SVB, but repulsed by NVB.

When people are first beginning to take note of the SVB/NVB distinction, they are surprised to find out they all have the exact same preference for SVB and resistance to NVB. This is no coincidence as we are talking about innate or phylogenetic behavior. It is important we recognize that, unknowingly, we have biologically determined patterns of vocal verbal behavior, which may supersede any contingencies of reinforcement that are imposed by a trainer. Stated differently, the SVB/NVB distinction deals with the biological constrains on instrumental learning.

One of the biggest challenges posed by the SVB/NVB distinction is that people want to learn about SVB, but they don’t want to learn about NVB. However, it makes no sense to learn about SVB in the absence of learning about NVB. The only way in which we are going to be able to learn about SVB is if we can overcome our resistance to investigating NVB.

In “Hedonics and the Selective Associations, Biological Constraint on Learning” (2015), Weiss & Panlilio explain Breeland’s (1961) racoon, who wasn’t “acting in accordance with their programmed reinforcement contingency” as “consistent with generally applicable, if more complex, general learning principles”, but they also write: the "...influence ... of...the conditioned motivational state in which the instrumental conditioning was conducted and the motivational state that was conditioned by presentations of the reinforcer must be considered" (Domjan, 1983, p. 264).

If we go back to the problems involved in learning about NVB, we do well to consider NVB as a special case of “problem behavior”. The racoon (Breeland, 1961), who could only with great difficulty be taught to drop tokens into a slot for positive reinforcement, didn’t, of course, all of a sudden make Thorndike’s empirical Law of Effect (1911) obsolete. As Domjan (1983) argues “From this perspective, misbehavior and other apparent biological constraints on learning have strengthened general-process theory by encouraging it to deal functionally with the complete learning situation. Generalizations thus developed are concerned with more detailed features of a learning situation, rather than the simplistic interchangeability of cues, responses and reinforcers.”

Reading this paper makes clear why behaviorists have until now overlooked, and, we should say, due to bias for visual stimuli, over-listened, the two universally occurring response classes: interaction among members of different status in the dominance hierarchy (NVB) and interaction among members of equal status (SVB). Behaviorists haven’t been able to learn anything about NVB and SVB, as it requires attention for “the complete learning situation”, that is, the simultaneous consideration of respondent as well as operant conditioning processes. As Skinner emphasizes mostly operant conditioning, behaviorists are often not very inclined to study the selective association literature. As it turns out, this literature can further explain the SVB/NVB distinction.

January 6, 2018

Dear Reader,

No matter what your thoughts or feelings about this topic may be, you will eventually have to learn about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These different ways of talking are not going away. You may be able to continue to pretend they are not important, but you are wrong. SVB is more important than you think and NVB is giving you more trouble than you know.

This writing is not causing the trouble you already have. I am upfront and get to the issue right away. The situation is confusing and clarity is only possible for those who know about the distinction between SVB and NVB. As long as you haven’t learned about this distinction, your knowledge about relationship and interaction is wrong. You are probably upset with my words, as I possess the certainty and directness which you lack.

I write to let you know that I can teach you to have the skill I have. Once you will know the difference between SVB and NVB, you have acquired that skill. Right now, you think you are engaging in SVB, while in fact you are engaging in NVB. Also, you think you engage in NVB, while you engage in SVB. Although SVB and NVB are everyday occurrences, you have no clue what is what. You must ask yourself: why is my version of what I believe to be SVB, NVB? And, why is my version of what I believe to be NVB, SVB?

Who you claim to be as a speaker isn’t true, since you don’t know who you are. However, if you know who you are, you can and will, like me, claim that what you say is true: You are NOT the NVB speaker, you are only the SVB speaker!!! Although you engaged in NVB many times, you were never the NVB speaker. Although you have believed to be the NVB speaker, you are relieved not to be the NVB speaker. Once you know about the SVB/NVB distinction, you realize that people only pretend to be NVB speakers as they don’t know they can be and are only SVB speakers.

Once you learn about the SVB/NVB distinction, you will feel validated in the belief which you have always had that the NVB speaker is not a speaker!!! Although the NVB speaker claims to be a speaker and makes him or herself heard everywhere, only SVB speakers know this belief is based on ignorance. The SVB speaker, who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, listens to others in the exact same way as he or she listens to him or herself, but the NVB speaker, who doesn’t listen to him or herself, forces others to listen to him or her. The NVB speaker isn’t a speaker as he or she neither listens to him or herself nor does he or she ever really listen to anybody else.

The SVB/NVB distinction teaches us what it is like to be an authentic speaker. SVB speakers speak_with the listener, who is then invited to also be a SVB speaker, but NVB speakers speak_at the listener, who is then only capable of engaging in NVB with such a speaker. NVB speech must not to be considered as speech as NVB speakers dominate, intimidate, humiliate, drain, exploit, oppress, force, disrespect, alienate, separate, distract, overwhelm and dis-regulate the listener. As only SVB speakers take turns with the listener and share control of the conversation with the other SVB speakers, they always mutually reinforce each other.

 Dear Reader,

The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction is system of thought which came about as the speaker began to listen to him or herself while he or she spoke. At the time that the speaker began to listen to him or herself while he or she spoke, he or she was alone. Thus, there was no distraction from other speakers when the speaker began to listen to the sound of his or her thoughts and feelings. The words spoken by this speaker gave him or her the opportunity to hear his or her sound.

Other speakers are asked to do the same thing. They are stimulated to be alone, talk out loud and listen to the sound of their own voice while they speak. It will not take long before the speaker is able to recognize that he or she vocally only has two responses: he or she produces a sound which he or she likes or he or she produces a sound which he or she dislikes. These two responses are single instances of a response class.

As the speaker explores the great difference in sound of his or her thoughts and feelings, he or she realizes his or her sounds are in fact responses to different, but common sources of influence in the environment. When speakers produce SVB, they respond happily as listeners to the sound of their own voice, which they experience as a reinforcing stimulus. However, each time when speakers produce NVB, they experience the sound of their own voice as an aversive stimulus.

In the study of behavior, the unit of analysis is the response class. These individually observed response classes are constituent parts of a whole phenomenon that serves as a basis for experimental study. Unless we acknowledge how we as speakers are affected by our own voice, something essential will be lacking in our analysis of how we as speakers affect the listener.

If we as speakers are aversively affected by the sound of our own voice, other listeners must be negatively affected as well. Other listeners will only be positively affected by the sound of the speaker’s voice if that speaker experiences the sound of his or her own voice as an appetitive stimulus. This reasoning is from the listener’s perspective, that is, it was made possible by the speaker who was listening to him or herself.

The speaker who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks spends time alone talking out loud so that he or she experiences how he or she is affected by his or her own sound. Such a speaker will only to take note of what the listener experiences if such a speaker takes turns with the listener, that is, if such a speaker can listen to the listener as a speaker. In NVB public speech there is no turn-taking between the speaker and listener. The same is true for NVB private speech.

In public speech there are distinct speakers and listeners, but in our private speech there is only our speaking and listening behavior. Since in NVB public speech the roles of speakers and listeners are fixed and are hierarchically separated, we experience this separation of the speaker and listener in our private speech as well. Naturally, there is no speaker inside of us and there is no listener. This means that in NVB public and private speech our speaking and listening behavior occur at different rates, but that only in SVB these two repertoires can be synchronized and joined.

We can only figure out this conundrum inductively as we as speakers will give ourselves permission to talk out loud with ourselves. What has been described as our inner dialogue of course relates to the different rates of our speaking and listening behavior of our private speech, which derived from our involvement in NVB. By talking out loud alone, we hear that we produce a different sound when our speaking and our listening behavior occur at the same rates (in SVB) or at different rates (in NVB) and we get clear this effect was always related to the sound of safety or of threat.

By talking out loud alone, we can finally discriminate the two response classes SVB and NVB. By bringing out our private speech into our public speech and by listening the sound of our voice, we realize that what appeared to be a speaker (or various speakers) inside of us was in fact of course only always our speaking or listening behavior which occurred at different rates.

It may initially appear as if we can now let the listener speak and as if the speaker can now let go and let the listener do some of the talking. It may seem as if the speaker finally listens and as if the listener at long last feels safe enough to begin to speak, but what we are really doing, when we are talking out loud, is that we synchronize our speaking and our listening behavior. Thus, we discover SVB is possible and that NVB can be stopped and we explore and become familiar with the environment in which this can and will occur.

January 7, 2018

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading, studying, thinking and talking about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It must have occurred to you that the thoughts and feelings you have articulated and listened to are no longer the same as the thoughts and feelings which remained unexpressed. In SVB, you will not only express your private speech, but you also listen to the sound of it.

In NVB our private speech is not even allowed to be expressed in public speech. We inevitably get stuck with NVB private speech as NVB speakers endlessly force and accuse each other that we are causing our own behavior. This fallacy has been around for a long time. However, we are neither causing our SVB nor our NVB and so, we are also neither causing our SVB private speech nor our NVB private speech. It is impossible to be stuck with SVB private speech. To the extent we have been involved in SVB, it will have a regulating affect even if we are with NVB speakers.

Speaking and listening should be considered together in the same as breathing out and breathing in. If we talk, we do so on an outgoing breath and if we listen, we become focused on ingoing breath to the point that we become still and that our breathing is deep and calm. It makes no sense to think of speaking and listening behaviors as separate. It is only due to our repeated involvement in NVB that we keep thinking of them as separate. Although we may think of them as separate, they are not separate and thinking of them as separate maintains many of our problems.

Speaking only makes sense to the extent that we are listening and listening only makes sense to the extent that we are speaking. However, in NVB the speaker prevents the listener from speaking or forces him or her to speak in a manner that is determined by him or by her. Thus, in NVB the speaker and the listener are separated by their specific place in the dominance hierarchy. NVB is speech which occurs between those who view themselves and others as superior or inferior.

Unlike NVB speakers, who try to dominate and outdo each other and struggle to get each other’s attention, SVB speakers take turns with their listeners, who will also then speak as SVB speakers. In other words, NVB speakers continuously elicit NVB speech, while SVB speakers only evoke SVB speech. Stated differently, NVB always speakers trigger respondent or reflexive behavior in the listener, who will then speak as a NVB speaker, but only SVB speakers can emancipate their listeners into becoming SVB speakers like themselves.

The SVB speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, that is, he or she tracks how he or she is affected by his or her own sound and this allows him or her to monitor how he or she affects the listener. The SVB speaker accurately discriminates when he or she or others produce NVB or SVB and is capable of tracing how the occurrence of one or the other is a function of variables in the environment. Rather than making SVB happen, the SVB speaker knows about the environment in which SVB can and will happen, but he or she also recognizes without any drama the environment in which only NVB can and will happen.

I know how to arrange environments in which SVB can and will happen. What I know can also be known by you. To learn it, you must verify what I write. I urge you to spend time by yourself talking out loud and listening to the sound of your thoughts and your feelings. By creating the environment in which you can safely and calmly express your own private speech in public speech (what you say to yourself can potentially be heard by others), you will become familiar with your ability to have SVB. As you read this text and you use these words to listen to your own sound, you will find it very easy, effortless and enjoyable.

January 8, 2018

Dear Reader,

I went through an arduous process before I became capable of writing and speaking about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in its current form. When I first discovered it, I didn’t know anything about radical behaviorism. I believed, like everyone else, that I was causing my own behavior. I thought I was responsible for producing SVB. Although I longed to engage in it, I kept getting involved in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as I had no idea that it was my environment which caused me to engage either in SVB or in NVB.

For a long time, I felt burdened knowing that SVB was possible and beneficial, but my knowledge about it was totally inaccurate. It wasn’t until I learned about operant conditioning, which is explained by the three-term contingency: Stimulus, Response and Consequence, that I became aware of environmental antecendent stimuli, which either set the stage for SVB or NVB, the response, which is then followed by postcedents or consequences, which will then make SVB or NVB more or less likely to occur in the future.

We must acquire basic scientific understanding about how our behavior is determined, not by us, as some behavior-causing agent, but by consequences which follow our behavior. Behaviors which occur at a high response rate are behaviors that are reinforced. If we often engage in NVB, we must be in environments in which this behavior is reinforced, but, if SVB occurs at a low response rate, we must be in environments in which this behavior is not very often reinforced.

This contingency-based way of thinking makes it easy for us to learn to have more SVB and less NVB. We engage in SVB or in NVB as we find ourselves in the environments in which one or the other is reinforced. This means there is no need at all to try to have SVB. If we are having SVB together, this simply means that we are somehow reinforcing it, but if we keep having NVB, it means that we are together reinforcing NVB. We will reliably acquire novel or more effective behavior and decrease any ineffective or unwanted behavior, as our behavior is being reinforced or not.

I don’t think we need to learn how to reinforce SVB or how to not reinforce NVB. We need to take note of when we are engaging in SVB or in NVB as this is when we are reinforcing one or the other. We will be effortlessly able to have more SVB, once we reinforce it. Currently we don’t reinforce it. As we realize how different it is to reinforce NVB or SVB, we will change our environment. As we witness the great difference between SVB and NVB, we will reinforce only SVB.
 
Dear Reader,

You can only come to know about the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) by learning about it from me or from someone who has learned it from me. I know it sounds preposterous to say that I know something which nobody knows, but once you talk with me I guarantee that you will agree it is true. You can only learn about SVB by fully acknowledging, admitting and accepting that you don’t know anything about it.

Learning about SVB always starts with not knowing. You will not be able to understand it immediately, but you can experience it without understanding it. I know that you insist on understanding it and that if you can’t understand it, you will not consider it, but I urge you to experience without understanding it. You will understand it only after you have experienced it. This is how SVB, genuine human interaction, works. I am not saying that understanding is not important, but this understanding comes out of your experience.

If there had really been someone who you could totally trust, who knew exactly how to stimulate you so that you would reliably experience SVB, who was capable of pointing out to you that knowing about SVB is secondary to experiencing it, you would be having SVB already. Fact is, however, such a person was never there. It is very hard for us to acknowledge that this is actually the case: nobody knew about SVB!

We have learned some bits and pieces of SVB and we may occasionally have experienced fleeting moments of it, but we never had it continuously, deliberately and skillfully. Those who have taught us about how to communicate didn’t know anything about SVB. So, we have never for any extended period of time been exposed to someone who could teach us about SVB. Such reinforcing exposure is absolutely necessary.

SVB is not a course in miracles. Those who believe in causation of behavior by a divine entity are equally unfit to learn about SVB as those who adhere to the myth of a behavior-causation inner self. The laws of human behavior don’t depend on your superstitions. SVB is simply a skill which will only be acquired if it is reinforced by someone who knows how to do that. Right now you are mainly reinforced for having NVB. Consequently, your NVB happens at a high response rate. SVB happens at such a low response rate as it is seldom reinforced. Once we know this we can take the drama out of many of our problems and conflicts.

January 9, 2018

Dear Reader,

I am reading a second time from the “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense if we construe antecedents as “discriminative stimuli or signs which alert the organism to the presence or availability of a particular contingency (behavior-consequence relation).” A SVB speaker’s voice sounds totally different from a NVB speaker’s voice. The sound of the speaker’s voice informs the listener if the contingency for SVB or NVB is going to be available.

Antecedent stimuli are also addressed as “establishing conditions”, “an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus”, as “a state of deprivation, which give to subsequent events their reinforcing (incentive) or disinforcing (disincentive) properties as the case may be.” At any given moment people are hungry to hear the voice of a leader, who sounds strong, simple, superior, rigid, dominant and in control or of someone, who sounds sensitive, flexible, complex, open and sophisticated.

Whenever “the organism’s behavioral propensities are shaped or honed by past experience of the immediate consequences of behaving in that way in one’s own case” behaviorists talk about “contingency-shaped behavior.” Thus, SVB is “contingency-shaped”, as in SVB speakers are immediately positively reinforced. NVB, by contrast, is “rule-governed behavior” as it is “controlled by a verbal specification of the relevant antecedent-behavior-consequence relation.” The nonverbal sound, facial expression or gestures of the NVB speaker, but also their verbal behavior, specifies the “antecedent-behavior-consequence relation”. In other words, NVB is elicited or respondent behavior, but SVB is emitted or operant behavior. Only SVB is mediated behavior as NVB is controlled nonverbally.

Dear Reader,

I am reading from “Context and Communication Behavior” (1997) edited by J. L. Owen. Chapter 18 is titled “Contingency Analysis Applied to the Pragmatics and Semantics of Naturally Occurring Verbal Interactions” and was written by U.T. Place. “Contingency analysis is a technique for analyzing the relation between a living organism and its environment based on a generalized version of Skinner’s (1969) concept of the “three-term contingency.” This work can clarify the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as discriminating between SVB and NVB also involves a “contingency analysis”. 

Whenever two or more individuals interact, they will either create and maintain an environment in which they reinforce their equal or their unequal status. In the case of the former, they engage in SVB, but in the case of the latter, they engage in NVB. Place describes the relation between the three “terms” as follows: “(A) A set of Antecedent conditions which call for (B) some Behavior to be emitted or omitted by an organism (the ‘owner’ of the contingency) and (C) the actual or anticipated Consequences of so behaving.”

What is to be emitted or omitted is, of course, NOT determined by the speaker, but by the “owner of the contingency,” which is BOTH the speaker as well as the listener. Place, however, who considers the speaker as the “owner of the contingency” refers to NVB, in which the speaker dominates the listener. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker and the listener take turns, which means: the speaker becomes the listener and the listener becomes the speaker. In effect, they own the contingency together and share control over the conversation. Stated differently, in SVB speakers and listeners mutually reinforce each other, but in NVB only the speakers are reinforced by the listeners.
In SVB neither the speaker nor the listener is having any concern about what is emitted or omitted, but in NVB the speaker and the listener are continuously preoccupied with what is to be emitted or omitted. In other words, in SVB there is no restriction at all on what is to be emitted, but in NVB what is emitted or omitted is always determined NVB by the speaker.

Dear Reader,

As long as I have known about the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), I have been trying to talk about it. A selection process has occurred which made it more and more clear why most professional people don’t want to talk with me or with those who have learned about these universal response classes.

My insistence on talking about SVB is related to the growing certainty that I and those who explore it with me have come to know something, which others are ashamed to admit they don’t know anything about. It is embarrassing to fully comprehend our continuous involvement in NVB. Our biggest chagrin is not what we have done to each other, but what we have done to ourselves. We dread becoming self-conscious.

The fact is, however, that only in NVB our private speech is at odds with our public speech. Rather than feeling mortified about and resistant to the possibility of expressing our private speech in our public speech, in SVB we experience an ongoing sense of relief and wonder and sheer joy as we have finally stopped our struggle. Once we engage in SVB, we know for sure that we were merely pretending to be NVB speakers.

January 10, 2018

Dear Reader,

The problem is NOT that you can’t change from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but that you don’t know about SVB and NVB, and, therefore, you don’t really know about how your behavior actually works. Even the most supposedly intelligent individuals keep selecting NVB, but they can’t engage in SVB as long as they haven’t studied the difference between SVB and NVB.

The conditions which are necessary to discriminate SVB and NVB and the environments in which they occur cannot be created or maintained as long as you keep being trapped by NVB. Stated differently, the necessary interchange between the organism and the environment is gravely impaired due to how you speak. Neither your fanatic belief in some higher power nor your desperate belief in yourself, neither your grandiose confidence, your so-called identity, your over-rated values and morals, your boring politics, your criminal intelligence, your outdated knowledge, your reactionary gut-feelings, your greedy psychic powers or your commercial talent or your utterly disempowering genetic pre-deposition, could stop your NVB, but SVB can and is already doing it. 

The fact that you are not part of this new movement is not your fault. It is part of a long respondent or Pavlovian history for which nobody is to be blamed. Your tendency to engage again and again in NVB is because your speaking and your listening behavior is under control of environmental stimuli which make operant learning of SVB impossible! Your NVB speech is reactionary as it is elicited by aversive stimuli!!!

Dear Reader,

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is eventually going to be selected as its consequences are far better than your Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although you don’t know this, your knowledge about SVB is bound to outcompete your ignorance of NVB. Moreover, your unwillingness to learn from others about NVB is already repeatedly being exposed, challenged and dissolved by their SVB. Your stubborn refusal to talk is a failed attempt to conceal your bias and ignorance.

The shaping and maintenance of SVB is an essential aspect of becoming a more sophisticated, modern human being. Whether you know about SVB or not depends on whether you participate in it or not. It is your loss if you don’t want to learn about SVB, as those who know about it will refuse to talk with you. They will not reinforce your NVB anymore as they experience the great relief of not talking with you. 

Your NVB explanations can’t explain SVB. Those who know about natural selection realize why you can’t help it that you want to hang on to your fabrications. They are not trying to convince you. They will move on without you. They don’t need you. They have an adaptive advantage you miss out on. Their way of life remains unknown to you as you can’t relate to them. It only seems you have the power to refuse to talk with them, but the fact is: they refuse to engage in NVB with you, as you can’t engage in SVB with them.

January 11, 2018

Dear Reader,

Once you know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), you realize how dumb Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is. To have more SVB, it is necessary that you recognize and withdraw from NVB. Initially, it still may seem as if you are missing out on something, but, as your ability to engage in SVB increases, you understand that NVB is a hoax, a hype, a deception. The word hoax comes from hocus pocus, disguising what is actually happening; NVB is meaningless talk.

NVB is an act intended to deceive and trick you into obedience. While you are engaged in it, you are never allowed to talk about how it works. No matter how hard you keep trying, as long as you remain engaged in it you can’t talk about it. Only this realization will take away from NVB. The moment you realize this, you will engage in SVB, naturally and effortlessly. The moment you shift from NVB to SVB, you have broken the spell. There is no way back. You must learn SVB. 

The NVB speaker’s perceived superiority as well the NVB speaker’s perceived inferiority have historically always been (and continuous to be) established by fraudulent means. Throughout history human beings have always struggled with each other as they have endlessly tried to dominate and exploit each other. Those in authority, in one way or another, have always fabricated and trumped up their ascendancy. There has never been any agreement among those who presumably were first, second or third class.

The inferior as well as the superior NVB speakers are all liars, schemers, pretenders and swindlers. NVB speakers will always betray each other while giving the impression of trustworthiness. Inferior NVB speakers aren’t any better as superior NVB speakers. They may seem to be humble, modest and willing to sacrifice, but they literally step over dead bodies, they will use their so-called spirituality, their mindfulness, their simplicity and kindness to be holier than others.