August 31, 2014

August 31, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Today this writer will conduct his monthly seminar. Because he made a contact with another human being, the market manager, he was able to stand at the Farmer’s Market with a table, yesterday and Saturday a week ago. Talking with the people at the market was a great joy to this writer. He met many wonderful individuals, who were interested and who understood what he meant when he explained that the seminar was about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Hopefully they will show up today. Also, he met someone who is involved with KZFR, the local radio station, who told him that his seminar had been announced on the community calendar. Given all the publicity, this writer expects that many participants will come to today’s event. 

In recent times this author has received lots of reinforcement for his work. This has led to changes in his behavior. He is no longer trying so hard to reach people. Also, when he notices that people are not open to him, it doesn’t bother him that much anymore as it used to. It used to bother him a great deal and he would try to convince other people. Although he always had recognized it when people were not open, it wouldn’t stop him from trying. Now he avoids attracting attention of individuals, who only want to argue. 

Every human being has his or her own behavior history due to which he or she, is open or closed for SVB. Also, a person may be open at one moment, but next he or she may be closed again. All of this depends on the way in which he or she was conditioned. Although existing behaviors play a large role in how a person responds, the stimuli presented to this person in the moment are crucially important too. For instance, at the market, this writer was keenly aware of whether he initiated the meeting or whether the person showed some interest.

Each time this writer initiated the contact, he attracted someone who was not really interested. It was clear and it made him wait until someone initiated the conversation. This then resulted in a different interaction. Also, this writer used different language than he used before. By introducing himself as a Psychology teacher from Butte College, people were more inclined to listen to him. Furthermore, he started using behavioral terminology in his announcements. In the flyer he wrote: SVB teaches us that we don’t cause our own behavior. This may attract some, but it will also deter others. He wants to attract as well as deter.

This writer had to leave many people behind, who were incapable of talking with him in the way he would like to. He admits that he was unable to change them, but due to this understanding he slowly began to change. His claim has never been that SVB was going to change others. To the contrary, SVB can only change the person who practices it. Certain changes can be made by others, who teach us, others can only be made, because we instruct ourselves with our private speech.

However, the basis for this conscious way of acting always remains the behavior-controlling environment, but only that part to which an individual him or herself has access, the environment that is within his or her own skin. There is nothing mysterious about this process. 

While we speak, our attention is regularly drawn out to others in such a way that we become oblivious about the environment that exists within our own skin. The reason that we so often engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is because our attention goes to the words that we speak and not to the nonverbal experience of sound of our voice. 

To produce the voice which initiates SVB, our private speech or our self-talk must stimulate us to listen to ourselves while we speak. Such self-talk couldn’t occur if it wasn’t taught to us. Also this writer has learned it from someone. He learned it from someone's SVB public speech, which then became his private speech. 

To have SVB private speech, we must first have SVB public speech. People have NVB private speech, because they experienced excessive NVB public speech. NVB private speech can’t be changed directly and any attempt to do so is bound to fail. NVB private speech can only be decreased by SVB public speech. Only SVB public speech can create SVB private speech. Giving attention to NVB private speech will reinforce it and will only lead to more NVB public speech. To have SVB public speech, we must know exactly what stimulates it. 

Outward orientation, due to which spoken communication is more about what we say than about how we say it,is always motivated by our effort to control our environment, that is, others. In a safe and supportive environment this tendency will not occur. However, we remain on guard as long as we continue to feel threatened. 

NVB occurs because stimuli, such as the tone of our own or someone else's voice, aversively affect us. If someone, maybe our child, would make us recognize this, we would change the way we sound. However, a scary child isn’t capable of teaching a dominating parent to speak with a softer tone of voice. It is the private speech of the parent, which must instruct him or her to talk with his or her child in a non-threatening manner. As long as the parent relies on the child to regulate his or her anxiety, the child may adapt, but it will not feel safe and it will manifest this in his or her behavior.

The private speech of the parent cannot be altered by a child’s nonverbal cries. It can only be modified by the public speech with a mature member of the verbal community, by a language with which the child isn’t yet familiar. However, if the public speech is NVB, as it unfortunately so often is, the child will be reinforced for expressive behaviors, which are based on negative emotions. We can teach our children SVB only if we know SVB. The reason that SVB is happening at such a low rate is because we don’t really know it.