December 19, 2014

December 19, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) happens at a low rate of responding because it is not often reinforced. One has to know about it to be able to reinforce it. Most of us don’t know about it and therefore are unable to reinforce it, even if it is happening. We all know SVB from moments in which we had authentic human interaction. We felt safe, open, respected, listened to, understood, validated and positively affected by such conversations.  However, no matter how plentiful and rich our experiences of SVB have been, unless we take conscious note of it, it can’t increase.  Consequently, we see an increase of our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but a decrease of our SVB. 

Unless SVB becomes our target behavior, it can’t be reinforced. To make SVB our target behavior, we must focus on NVB, our problem behavior. Our SVB is going to replace our NVB, which happens everywhere, twenty-four-seven, because it is reinforced all the time and under many different circumstances.  Circumstances in which SVB can be reinforced require conscious and deliberate attention for the way in which we speak, that is, since SVB only happens, when we listen to our voice while we speak. The opportunity to reinforce it is limited to those rare occasions in which this happens. Unless we create these situations more often SVB cannot and will not increase. Increase of frequency of SVB will only happen if we learn to discriminate the great difference between SVB and NVB. We need initial hints from caring others, who tell us when SVB is happening. We can’t tell ourselves SVB is happening unless others have kindly prompted us first that it is happening. Unless others repeatedly told us “yes, good, you are having SVB, continue!”, we cannot reinforce ourselves. It is very awkward that the sound of our own voice, which notably represents our sense of well-being, is so strange to us.  

At best, only aspect of SVB were prompted during our childhood by our parents, who told us to be calm, polite, kind, emphatic, truthful and respectful.  This author, who has taught hundreds of seminars with participants from all over the world and every walk of life, is still amazed by the fact that nobody seems to know about SVB as much as he does. 

In recent times, because he became a psychology teacher, he has been able to experiment longer with the same group. Students are in his class for the duration of a whole semester. This has provided more opportunity to prompt, reinforce and fade the prompts. Since most students have only few of the components for SVB in their repertoire, many had to start from scratch and were reinforced for their successive approximations of SVB in both their spoken and their written language.  

Many of the components of NVB and SVB had to be explained, demonstrated and verified multiple times, before they could be linked together. Once some students, who already had the behavioral history to be able do this, began to chain these components, they played a powerful role in shaping the behavior of the rest of the class. In a period of weeks an entire class was capable of understanding, explaining and enjoying the novel behaviors that were emerging from SVB.   

Most interestingly, many papers contained detailed and accurate descriptions of SVB and NVB. Not all students consequated the distinction between SVB and NVB by speaking about it and many learned by writing about it.  Even though they may not have said a lot during class, they were all in support of it and their elegant, elaborate and deeply personal writings were the evidence of how much they appreciated to learn about SVB. Many of these writers expressed the wish to learn more about it in the future. Their writings created a new verbal foundation for how they view their relationships with others. To witness the workings of SVB in his student’s writings is especially pleasing to this writer, whose own writing is also steadily becoming more reinforcing to him.