November 1, 2014

November 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

When one engages in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), one knows one is learning something new. With every word uttered one realizes one is no longer the same, one is changing. Moreover, one says things one was incapable of saying.  SVB proves that it is possible to say things in new ways, which weren’t possible before. In SVB, one is capable of saying what one wasn’t capable of saying before. 

To learn about SVB, we must first know about the behavior that was already there: Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Since NVB is opposed to SVB, it is as important to know about NVB as it is to know about SVB. The more one knows about NVB, the more one will find out about SVB. To learn about SVB, one must start with NVB. In other words, one must begin with what is already there, with what already could be there. NVB is the stepping stone to SVB. 

The NVB we first pay attention to is an innate behavior, which we have in common with other animals. However, NVB makes SVB possible. By understanding our ancient NVB, we get a sense of what our behavior is like without verbal learning. This involves an exploration of what life is like when language had not yet evolved. To learn about, evolutionary-speaking, new verbal behavior, we must go back to our nonverbal origins, to learning without words. We can talk about this!

Behavior of other nonverbal organisms becomes more tangible when we communicate once more as nonverbal creatures, with our attention focused on our nonverbal instead on verbal behavior. SVB is defined by this nonverbal focus. During SVB, we experience the emergence of the verbal from the nonverbal, because we listen to our words as sounds. In other words, in SVB we witness alignment of nonverbal and verbal behavior. During NVB, our attention is fixated on our verbal behavior and our nonverbal behavior doesn’t seem to exist. Denial of our nonverbal behavior is characteristic for NVB.

Once we differentiate between SVB and NVB, it becomes clear that we habitually engage in NVB and we only incidentally engage in SVB.  This recognition, that we engage most of the time in NVB and only occasionally in SVB, revives our ability to focus more often on our nonverbal behavior, on what we experience in our body while we speak. That being said, during SVB, nonverbal learning facilitates verbal learning. However, in NVB, in which what we say takes our attention away from how we say it, this nonverbal learning is made impossible. This is causing huge problems.  

Unless we know about the distinction as well as the connection between SVB and NVB, we are not yet truly verbal. In NVB our verbal behavior distances itself from our nonverbal behavior, whereas during SVB there is alignment of our verbal and our nonverbal behavior. Reading about SVB cannot bring about this alignment in our spoken communication and to fully understand that one has to talk about it. Only by talking can one begin to great differentiate between our understanding and our experiencing of SVB. As long as one tries to understand SVB, one actually prevents oneself from experiencing it. To experience it, one doesn’t first need to understand it, but rather, to understand it, one must first experience it. In SVB the nonverbal is more important than the verbal, but this doesn’t mean that we are not verbal in SVB.  To the contrary, in SVB we can be more verbal, because the connection between the nonverbal and the verbal is strengthened by how we speak. There’s nothing mysterious about SVB’s emphasis on the nonverbal. We make more sense while we speak if we built upon what existed before words were there. Another way of stating this is that our language comes out of wordlessness...out of silence....out of nothingness....out of meditation. 

SVB is the best way to talk about how learning actually works, because the interoceptive changes involved in this process are continuously expressed by how we speak. Due to NVB, the way of speaking with which we are all too familiar, we believe that it is impossible to precisely express what is felt inside our body while we speak. Once we engage in SVB, however, we always find our own words, our own rhythm, our own pace and our unique way of expressing what is going within our own skin, while we talk. Thus, during SVB, our verbal description of our nonverbal experience is tremendously improved, enhanced and perfected. In NVB, however, our verbal description of our nonverbal experience is fabricated and inaccurate because it is not even experienced. This doesn’t mean, however, that in NVB our nonverbal experience is no longer there. It is always there and if we don't pay attention to it, it is negatively effecting how we speak. Communicators who neglect, reject and misrepresent their own nonverbal experiences engage in NVB, which is abusive interaction. 

SVB teaches us under what conditions we are benefitted by our language. During SVB it is apparent what we do while we learn, since interaction increases  understanding. In SVB we feel appreciation, acceptance and respect for each other’s unique learning history. This then results into novel ways of expressing ourselves verbally as well as nonverbally. The fact that NVB doesn’t allow this energizing and delightful process, teaches us that NVB has to be stopped before any learning can begin. 

One can learn to use a computer without knowing how the inside of the computer looks or works, but one cannot learn to behave verbally without first knowing how one's nonverbal behavior works. We verbally misbehave, because we don’t notice, while we speak, how we behave non-verbally! The computer scientist knows how the inside of the computer works, but he or she also knows how to keyboard and how to use different programs. There is a difference between learning how to take the computer apart and putting it back together again and how to use a computer. This distinction between nonverbal and verbal learning doesn’t cause much trouble when we talk about inanimate things, such as computers, but, when it concerns the distinction between how we non-verbally learn  versus how we learn verbally, it is applied to spoken communication and things get easily mixed up. 

In our spoken communication, we again and again assume that we can do things, because we know them. We believe we know how spoken communication works, but since many things are not talked about they cannot be properly addressed. We may behave verbally, but this doesn’t mean that we are communicating. We may have learned how to speak and how to write and how to use words, but our verbal learning has taken precedence over our nonverbal learning. As a consequence, we are unable to recognize that similar things mean different things to different people. This discrepancy, between what we say and what we do, ties in with our verbal fixation. It can be observed that our attention during NVB goes mainly to our verbal behavior, but rarely if ever to our nonverbal behavior.

During SVB, our attention goes simultaneously to our verbal and to our nonverbal behavior. Our overemphasis on verbal behavior blinds us for how we behave non-verbally. Behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, is only interested in observable and measurable variables. SVB is a scientific way of communicating. Verbal behavior is a bad starting point as long as even academics who are concerned with behaviorological properties of learning don’t realize that they, they like everyone else, mostly engage in NVB. The interaction between the verbalizer and the mediator is to be assessed from the mediator’s perspective. The mediator is always impacted by the nonverbal expression of the verbalizer, whose words will be better understood if the verbalizer’s nonverbal behavior is not aversively impacting the mediator. Thus, the  properties of SVB and NVB inform the verbalizer about what he or she does non-verbally to the mediator, while he or she speaks.