May 31, 2014

May 31, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Speaking and listening as well as writing and reading are not learned simultaneously, but separately. As a consequence of the separate development of our repertoires of speaking and listening and writing and reading, many variations of verbal behavior exist. These variations are determined by the extent to which our speaking and listening and writing and reading are joined. 

This author found that when repertoires of speaking and listening and writing and reading are not properly integrated, this causes a different kind of verbal behavior than when they are synchronized. When either one is more developed than the other, a clear mismatch can be seen and heard in how we speak or write. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is characterized by the extent to which speaking and listening and writing and reading have developed not only separately, but also unevenly. It is must be called NVB, because this mismatch can be understood as the root of all our problems of relationship. 

Only to the extent that speaking and listening and writing and reading are connected can speakers and listeners and writers and readers experience and maintain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, those who have developed similar repertoires aren’t necessarily capable of having SVB. What this fusion of speaking and listening and writing and reading really refers to is that we are talking about the same things. We have SVB if we do, but NVB if this is not the case. In the former, we use the same names to identify what we are talking about, but in the latter, we may use the same name, but we give it a different meaning. Since speakers often behave simultaneously as listeners and visa versa, and since writers also often behave simultaneously as readers and visa versa, it is important to have an account which emphasizes how these behaviors interlock. In Verbal Behavior (1957) Skinner refers to SVB when he talked about this process as the speaker-as-own-listener.