March 17, 2014

March 17, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

There exists never a situation in which negative emotions prevent positive emotions or visa versa. Emotions are behaviors which are maintained by stimuli which make them possible. Therefore, different sets of stimuli are made available when our attention shifts from positive to negative and from negative to positive emotions. All of this occurs because of our verbal behavior.  

Given our lack of knowledge about behavioral science, it is hard for most people to believe that there is no inner cause which determines whether students will learn or not. Genes passed on by parents make up our genetic make up.  An organism’s phylogenic material always interacts with its environment. Their genetically determined structure, their body, gives rise to learning behavior, ontogenic development in the class room. Certainly, during our life time, we go through many sets of circumstances that make this verbal learning possible.  

Phylogenetic and ontogenetic variability and not some kind of autonomous, inner agent, personality, nervous system, mind, motivation, intelligence or memory, determine why some students are more likely to pay attention than others, regardless of whether the teacher has high levels of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). This distinction is crucial, because changing what goes on inside the student's skin is inferior to teaching that is based on contingencies of reinforcement which are existing outside of the student's skin, in the environment. 

Manipulation of the environment is in essence the only tool a teacher has. If he or she is not thinking or talking about and experimenting with changes in the environment, then he or she is not very likely to have any success in teaching. Moreover, the teaching must involve environmental control that is compatible with the behavioral history of each individual student. This is precisely what Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) does! During SVB very different biological mechanisms are activated than in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The fear, anxiety and stress which are involved in NVB, are not conducive to learning. The neurobiological nonverbal messages which are sent during NVB condition both the student and the teacher to get better at fleeing, fighting and freezing. Only information that falls within that category of NVB will be strengthened. 

Alignment between our verbal and nonverbal behavior can only occur in SVB. Teaching mediated by SVB makes more sense, because it activates biological mechanisms which make it possible to speak more coherently and to think more clearly. Learning then is a function of the biological impact of SVB. Academic failure, by contrast, is a function of the biological impact of NVB. What is learned in NVB is to fight, intimidate, dissociate, posture, defend, argue, distract and dis-regulate. And, behavioral control exerted by NVB is always coercive. It is related to our personal history. Our acceptance of NVB is a continuation of this history, but it can’t bring forth or recover stimuli that evoke something peaceful. 

Because it is incapable of producing the stimuli that induce the experience of security, peace and well-being, NVB can at best only pretend to produce these. Thus, NVB often masquerades itself as a necessary condition for learning. This is how it has conditioned us into believing that knowledge is power instead of responsibility. Furthermore, in NVB we are bound to become more emotional and irrational and less responsible. In SVB we become more rational, more responsible, but less emotional. This doesn’t mean we will not have any positive emotions. In SVB we will only have positive emotions. However, in SVB we are less emotional because of the absence of negative emotions. Decrease of negative emotions is caused by our speech which sets the stage for this to happen.

Due to NVB we overrate the importance of negative emotions and we miss out on the power of positive emotions. As long as our negative emotions are not well-represented in speech, they will continue to undermine our relationships and create disorder. We don’t realize that in NVB, our negative emotions and aversive physiological experiences are experienced as identity or individuality. 

In SVB, our public speech doesn’t reject our private speech. In SVB, there is no boundary between public speech and private speech.  That boundary is only there in NVB, but it becomes meaningless in SVB. There is only one reality and that is the reality of speech. In SVB, however, our positive emotions form the nonverbal basis from which our verbal behavior emerges. In SVB our speech creates order in our environment, but due to NVB our identity is based on negative emotions. We like to think otherwise, but when someone doesn’t confirm who we believe to be, when our identity is challenged, we immediately experience negative emotions. This is no coincidence. If our identity was based on our positive emotions this would not be the case. 

In the same way that SVB dissolves the issue of public speech versus private speech, so too the issue of identity, and the many conflicts it gave rise too, will dissolve, because our identity is shared and based on positive emotions, which are maintained by the way in which we communicate. In other words, being real is absolutely not an issue when, as in SVB, our speech is real. 

It is not surprising that our identity is our biggest communication issue. With the distinction between SVB and NVB we are able to overcome this problem. The problem of identity is a function of NVB and the solution to this problem is to have conversation about identity in a SVB manner. In SVB our positive emotions don’t give rise to the idea of separateness.  Separateness is a consequence of discomfort. Connectedness by contrast, is a consequence of our safety and relaxation. It doesn’t matter whether the communication is between teacher and student, employee and employer, parent and child or husband and wife. There is no hierarchy that separates us into being more important than others.

In SVB the speaker is simultaneously the listener and those who speak listen while they speak. Self-listening can be done by all speakers and when this happens, speakers and listeners are emotionally and intellectually attuned. Because there is no struggle in SVB, speaking and listening is easy. In SVB the listener is also the speaker and is reminded about this by the speaker. The speaker only makes sense in relation to the listener. When nobody is listening there is no communication. The unit of analysis in operant conditioning is the three term contingency consisting of stimuli that cause responses, which either increase or decrease dependent on their consequences. Learning in SVB is embedded into our biology, which compels us to move away from NVB. This learning is effortless because only positive stimuli are being communicated.