December 25, 2014

December 25, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This author is currently reading the book “Communication-based Intervention For Problem Behavior” (1997, p.17) by Carr et al. In chapter 3“The Purposeful Nature of Problem Behavior: Conceptual and Empirical Background” three empirically validated reasons are mentioned of why people with developmental disabilities  –  who in the view of this author and Carr are in this sense no different from ‘normal’ people  –  seem to have problem behaviors. Many research studies “document the roles of attention, escape and tangible items in motivating problem behavior.” Perhaps it is no coincidence that this author also came up with three reasons for why we keep having Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which, to be overcome, should be treated as a problem behavior. In other words, most of our common communication problems can be summarized by the research that has been done on people with developmental disabilities. 

Although we don’t like to admit it, NVB, in which we dominate, manipulate, distract, irritate, frighten, upset, annoy, stress, ignore, reject, neglect, abandon, betray, placate, dis-regulate, harass, threaten, coerce, imprison, punish, humiliate, harm or even kill each other, is the norm. Since we have accepted as normal something which is abnormal, we don’t make a big deal about the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and NVB. Across the board, people are having their way or, in one way or another, are trying to have their way, with NVB.  They will do all of the above and more, to be able to get the attention, to escape from unpleasant situations/stimuli/people or to simply get whatever the hell it is they want.

The distinction between SVB and NVB, between bi-directional, reciprocal, dialogic interaction and uni-directional, my-way-or-the-highway, monologic, pretension of interaction, sheds light on why we communicate the way we do. It is informative to look at the problem behaviors of developmentally disabled individuals and to recognize that they are actually quite purposeful. Certainly, they are not seen as problem behaviors by those who are able to get what they want. Many people, like those with developmental disabilities, display dramatic behaviors in their way of communicating, to attract someone else's attention. Demanding the attention from others is a basic criterion for NVB. This childish and impulsive behavior is the total opposite of thoughtful, deliberate and mature SVB.

A healthy, happy, mature adult doesn’t demand and coerce constant approval from others. Such a developed person doesn’t have to be right at all cost, doesn't have to have the last word or win every argument. However, when being dramatic about it, is the only way in which people are going to pay attention, people will continue to have problems, just to get the attention. If proper social behavior, that is, SVB, doesn’t get us the social attention, but if our improper social behavior, that is, NVB, gets us the attention, we are more likely to have NVB. This struggle for attention, which is visible and audible everywhere, is why we keep having NVB. During SVB, on the other hand, our struggle for attention is completely gone. We can hear that in the way a person sounds. 

If a person wants to be perceived in a certain way, but views him or herself in another way, if this person wants to talk about something, but another person wants to talk about something else, if a person experiences conflict between what he or she feels and thinks, this struggle creates a horrible sounding voice. 

During SVB, because there is no struggle to get the attention from others, it is easy to say things, because it is easy to listen to what people say, but during NVB, in which we struggle to get the attention from others, it is very difficult to say things and it is difficult to listen to what people are saying, because our sounds have aversive effects, which cannot be directly addressed in NVB. 

When people are told directly that they don’t sound good, they feel immediately attacked. It is only when we are honest enough, when we talk in a SVB-way about the problems we are struggling with that we are no longer trying to attract each other’s attention with our problems. As long as people keep attracting each other’s attention with their problems and keep producing NVB, they will never generate the kind of attention which is needed to solve their problems.

The right kind of attention, that is, attention for the individual organism, is a need, which can only be fulfilled by SVB. During NVB people demand and hold the attention of others, but, in spite of their ability to do so, their need for attention is never satisfied. As a matter of fact, the more people succeed in getting the attention from others, the more they will be inclined to demand even more attention.  Unless we figure out what this problem behavior, this NVB, is a function of, we cannot begin to respond to what someone is actually trying to say with the tendency to dominate, control and manipulate the attention of others. It is not merely attention that people want, they want a specific kind of attention.

A second function of the problem behaviors that people with developmental disabilities have in common with those who engage in NVB, is the need to escape from aversive situations. Whenever the mediator is exposed to verbal expressions of a verbalizer with which they cannot connect, by which they feel threatened and due to which a fight, flight or freeze response is activated, they inadvertently turn to their nonverbal environment, in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort, which is felt within their body. People self-soothe in multiple different ways, getting distracted is only one of them. Since they are not non-verbally soothed, but turned off by the verbalizer, they turn away so successfully from what the verbalizer is saying that the verbalizer gives up and lets them off the hook. If the verbalizer doesn’t verify whether the mediator mediates what he or she is saying, he or she eventually will stop trying to communicate with the mediator. 

What happens during NVB is that the mediator’s escape behavior elicits the nonverbal attention of the verbalizer. When a verbalizer doesn’t recognize this, he or she is incapable of using the nonverbal to facilitate the verbal. This is what happens in SVB, in which our nonverbal sense of well-being makes what we say more palatable, tasty, or rather, sounding better. The description of the task, which mediators would like to escape from when the verbalizer’s explanation has an aversive effect on them, is best viewed as an escape from the verbal fixation of the verbalizer. When people talk at each other instead of with each other, because they place too much emphasis on what they say, they disembody their way of communicating and become talking heads. In NVB then the verbalizer’s verbal expressions make it impossible for the mediator to embody what he or she is saying, because the verbal output is disconnected from the nonverbal output. 


The aforementioned is apparent when we listen to how the NVB verbalizer sounds. A verbalizer’s voice has an aversive effect when it grabs, pushes, stabs, pulls, chokes and drains the mediator. Rather than blaming the mediator for escaping  aversive situation by manifesting problem behaviors, the verbalizer is better served to realize that he or she is causing this effect and can change it by adjusting his or her own behavior. Especially with people who have developmental disabilities, the challenge is to figure out what can help them to not avoid the task at hand. With 'normal' people we may wonder what makes them escape authentic communication? The communication-based intervention, or SVB, which this author proposes, is equally effective for those who escape in NVB, our problem behavior.

There is a body of literature suggesting that aggression is not as likely to occur in children with developmental disabilities, when the difficult task they were exposed to is withheld. Unfortunately, many of such children have learned that teachers will stop making demands when they express aggression. However, if no one teaches them how to properly communicate, they will have to revert to these problem behaviors, because they will try to get their needs met in any way possible. Moreover, their aggression influences the behavior of the teacher, who then presents less challenging tasks in order to prevent the problem behavior. When it is noticed that such disabled students act out because of the difficulty of the task, the task needs to be adjusted in such a way that they can handle it. As Skinner has repeatedly stated, “The subject is always right.”

The above-described escape-function of the problem behavior, aggression, in children with developmental disabilities, is equally present in our every-day spoken communication. We get impatient, angry, edgy, curd, distant, frustrated, because it relieves us from having to deal with what is aversively impacting us. It is the disconnect between the verbal and the nonverbal expression of the NVB verbalizers, the successive rather than the joined occurrence of speaking and listening behavior, which makes it seem as if the verbal, that which is written, is more important than the nonverbal, that which is spoken. Our over-emphasis on what we say makes us sound differently than when we embody what say. In NVB, our verbal fixation results into our aversive tone of voice.

   

The third problem behavior by means of which “the individual gains access to tangible items”, has nothing specifically to do with the individual who has a developmental disability and can be observed in any conversation anywhere. If NVB gets us what we want, we will continue with it. Since it got us what we wanted, we continued with it. Unless NVB is no longer getting us what we want, we are not going to stop it and we are not motivated to look at how we are communicating.


Not surprisingly, we are only inclined to change our way of communicating, when problems begin to pile up. Usually this involves: failure to succeed, divorce, death, social rejection, loneliness, mental health problems, addiction and loss of employment. However, as long as we can get away with NVB, that is, as long as NVB continues to be reinforced, we will keep adding more problems to our lives.


As our NVB pays off, we continue to struggle, we compete, we pretend not to see, not to hear, not to feel or not to think about anything, yes, we dissociate or we presumably play the game. We may have accumulated a lot of things and we have may have achieved a lot and we may still want continue, but we are not really happy with any of the stuff we have acquired. With the obviously limited behavioral repertoires of individuals with developmental disabilities, it is more apparent that instances of problem behavior occur when they can’t get “their favorite toy, preferred activities or favorite food.”However, when we, who mostly engage in NVB, begin to take into account the grave consequences of our NVB repertoire, we find that it is very limiting. Certainly, we always want what we want and we want it now and our childish need for instant gratification is nowhere more visible and, above all, audible, than in our forceful and insensitive way of communicating. When asked to give up a desired object or activity, a person with a developmental disability may start to manifest self-injurious behavior, but those who got what they want withtheir NVB, will get even more vicious when faced with the situation in which they are not getting what they want.

Our often unfulfilled needs to get what we really want, in terms of closeness, safety, validation, continuity, being listened to, being allowed to speak and thinking out loud, supportive reinforcing friends and family, calmness, fun,  bi-directional attunement, play and exploration, cannot be fulfilled with NVB.


As long as our voices sound aggressive or passive aggressive, they cannot facilitate SVB, which is needed to get our emotional needs met. Furthermore, NVB doesn’t facilitate, but discourages any intellectual inquiry. If we would have more SVB, it would become apparent that scientific knowledge is undermined by the way in which we talk. Since all scientists refer to the natural world, their different levels of analysis should solve our communication problems rather than create them. In addition, SVB can help solve many scientific questions. 

The anxiety and stress of an organism's disturbed homeostasis coincides with what this author calls outward orientation. Hyper-vigilance, paranoia and guardedness in someone with PTSD is a case in point. Likewise, in NVB we want others to listen to us, but we don’t listen to ourselves. In NVB, we are all over the map, but we are not centered or at ease. Moreover, due to NVB, people listen to the voices of others, but not to their own. This author has worked with individuals with any kind of mental health problem and has seen that their symptoms decreased due to SVB. When a manic person hears him or herself speak, he or she calms down; when a depressed person hears him or herself speak, he or she comes out of his or her depression; when a paranoid schizophrenic person hears him or herself speak, he or she no longer hears voices, because he or she listens to his or her own calm, relaxing, natural and effortless sound. Thus, SVB has therapeutic value.

To summarize, there are three reasons why individuals with developmental disabilities tend to act out: 1) they want to get the attention, 2) escape from something aversive or 3) they simply want to have food, do whatever they want or have a particular item. Similarly, in the spoken communication of those who do not have developmental disabilities, there are three reasons we keep having NVB. 


This author has a gong he uses to demonstrate SVB to people. When he hits the gong, people like to hear that resonating sound. He has three pins, which can be placed on the gong, which make its resonant sound completely disappear. With the pins on it, the gong sounds muffled and unpleasant: pock! The three pins resemble three communication habits, which change the sound of our voice while we speak: 1) our struggle for attention, 2) our fixation on the verbal and 3) our outward orientation. The reader can verify if this is true or not. This author has verified this already with thousands of people from all walks of life. 

The parent of the child who hits or bites him or herself when some tangible item is taken away, will quickly learn not to take away this item, if this prevents the child’s self-harming behavior. Likewise, in NVB, we adjust to those who emotionally coerce us with their negative feelings. We definitely don’t want to piss off those on who we depend most and, consequently, we don’t say what we think or feel and we think that this is the only way to relate. 


The conversation in which we only say what other people want to hear is NVB. In SVB, we say what we want to say, but we don’t hurt each other, nor do we trigger any self-harm behaviors. To the contrary, SVB fosters our ability to express our private speech into public speech. Also, NVB represents the ways in which we are negative towards ourselves. The three pins change the sound of the gong and the three habits of spoken communication changes our sound into something we don’t even recognize anymore. Many people have stated that they have never listened to themselves before they had heard about the SVB/NVB distinction!

 

As Carr (1997) states "the same individual may use aggression to get attention from others in one setting, to escape from an unpleasant event in another setting, and to gain access to tangible items in still another setting.”This author wholeheartedly agrees with Carr and Goldiamond (1974) that “in real-life settings, a given individual is likely to use the same problem behavior to achieve many different goals.”Likewise, NVB can be a function of each of each of these goals. The contingency for SVB, however, is created by taking the three pins of the gong, by listening to ourselves while we speak and by sounding good.