September 4, 2014

September 4, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday evening, this writer taught his psychology class for the second time. Students were asked to divide up in groups of five and introduce themselves to each other and talk about what they think about psychology. The exercise opened good conversation and when the groups reported back to class, it was surprising to hear how positive everyone’s experience was. Many students praised this writer for his way of introducing himself to his students and for how he runs this class. During the first class this writer had explained Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and he had used his gong to focus attention on how we sound while we speak.

The students approved that this writer would bring his gong to every class and would continue to keep everyone tuned in to his teaching. Although the class runs from 6:30pm till 9:20pm and many students were tired, because they had been working their day time jobs, they were relaxed and happy and there was laughter and a lot of positive energy in the room, which accumulated as the time went by.

A big portion of the lecture was about the science of psychology. This writer explained the functional relation which occurs between two variables, the independent and the dependent variable and he linked it to the how the sound of his voice affects his lecture. At one point, his explanation was becoming distracted by students in the back of the class, who were not paying attention and who were talking among themselves. As he was affected by this, he asked them to listen to what he was saying, because that would help create a better flow of the lecture. They agreed and paid attention and he elaborated on the fact that we constantly positively or negative affect each other.

He explained that once a person is familiar with SVB, he or she doesn’t want to have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) anymore. In SVB we regulate, but in NVB we dis-regulate each other. Whether or not we regulate or dis-regulate each other is the dependent variable and how we sound, how we speak non-verbally, is the independent variable, which has an effect on the dependent variable. Said differently, the nonverbal affects the verbal in such a way that the lecture improves, gets better, is easier understood and is more enjoyable for both the lecturer and the students, when there is no nonverbal dis-regulation. Another way of saying this is that the verbal part of communication is functionally related to the nonverbal part of communication.

It is important to know that independent variables resemble elements of the environment (i.e. the talking students), which stimulate the dependent variable, the behavior in question (i.e. distraction of the teacher). Although the environment consists of what happens within and outside of a person's skin, behaviorists and behaviorologists focus on observable stimuli, outside our skin, which are functionally related to what happens inside of our skin. The strengthening or weakening of the dependent variable, in this case the behavior of the teacher, is called conditioning and often works both ways: the teacher gets more often distracted when the students are not paying attention to the lecture and start talking with each other, but also, students start talking more often as the teacher becomes more often distracted. This bi-directional conditioning process is due to the fact that we are each other's environment.