March 17, 2015

March 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Like many other mornings, this writer woke up from another interesting dream about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The thought he woke up with this time was clear and simple: a skilled mediator can mediate a verbalizer better than one who is not so skilled. There are many implications to this.

The verbalizer is only capable of verbalizing to the extent that he or she is accurately assessing the mediator. At any given moment, a verbalizer may overestimate the mediator's ability to mediate and assume that he or she talks with someone who is good at mediating, while in fact they are not. At other moments, a verbalizer may underestimate a mediator, completely missing the fact that the mediator hears more than the verbalizer thought he or she was capable of or comfortable with. In other words, the verbalizer is capable of verbalizing effectively only to the extent that he or she him or herself is a skilled mediator of his or her own verbalizations. In SVB the speaker listens to his or her own sound while he or she speaks, but in NVB the speaker is not hearing his or her own sound.

The above situation deals with only one verbalizer and one mediator. Under such circumstances whether SVB can occur depends on only one mediator. With only one verbalizer, let's say the boss, and three mediators, three employees, there are likely three different levels of mediation, because three mediators are unlikely to mediate the verbalizer in the same way. It is possible that one of the three mediators is very capable of mediating the verbalizer, that another one is least capable and that the third one is somewhere in the middle. It can also be that none of them are capable of mediating or that each of them is a competent mediator. The proportion of SVB and NVB instances during each verbal episode, let’s say during a business meeting, is determined by the mediator or by the mediators. 

The more skilled a mediator is in SVB or NVB, the more preference the verbalizer develops for this particular mediator, who mediates his or her SVB or NVB. Since NVB instances are more numerous in any given verbal episode than SVB instances, generally speaking, mediators who mediate NVB well are more appreciated than those who can mediate SVB well. And, since there are many more NVB verbalizers controlling the mediator’s behavior with aversive contingencies than there are SVB verbalizers controlling the mediator with a positively reinforcing contingency, there are very few skilled mediators of SVB. 

Pretention of listening has troubling consequences for our relationships. It always goes hand in hand with the pretention of communication. Indeed, , NVB is the pretention of communication in which the verbalizer pretends to speak and the mediator pretends to listen. Stated differently, in NVB the verbalizer talks at the mediator, but the mediator pretends that he or she is being spoken with, but only in SVB the verbalizer the talks with the mediator, who, of course, can also talk with the verbalizer. 

Another way of viewing the aforementioned is that recognizing the difference between SVB and NVB always involves a change in mediation. Surely, the verbalizer will speak in a very different tone, but that is made possible by the mediator, who not only hears it, but who is also capable of reinforcing what he or she hears. We have so little SVB as there are no mediators capable of reinforcing it. Once these mediators are there, our instances of SVB will increase. When it can happen, it will happen. This writer has seen this process at work each time he has spoken about SVB. To explain, as a verbalizer, SVB, he has to make the mediator aware of his or her tendency to listen to and reinforce NVB rather than SVB.

By inviting the mediator to become a verbalizer and by inviting the reader to become a writer, so that this blog makes sense to other readers and by emphasizing the verbalizer is also his or her own mediator, communicators  change the way in which they mediate other verbalizers than themselves, but also change the way in which they mediate their own verbalizations. Only when they mediate their own sound as verbalizers, are they capable of recognizing how aversive they and other verbalizers sound and notice the difference between SVB and NVB. Thus, listening to our sound while we speak changes our ability to mediate others and learn from them.  

When one listens to oneself while one speaks, a unique situation occurs. There is only one verbalizer and there is only one mediator and they occur in the same person. This would be emphasized if the reader would read this writing out loud.The likelihood for the verbalizer to have a similar competence level as the mediator is much higher when the verbalizer and the mediator occur in the same person than when they occur in different persons. Stated differently, it is much easier for speaking and listening behavior to become joined and to occur at similar rates and intensity levels within one person than within two persons. With two persons or more the distractions that make SVB impossible multiply exponentially. 

If verbalization occurs at a higher rate than mediation, this verbalization doesn’t make any sense, but as verbalization decreases, mediation can and will begin to improve and increase. Likewise, if our mediation occurs at a higher rate than our verbalization, nothing much is said, at least not in our public speech. It is only by appealing to such a mediator’s private speech that his or her rate of public speech can and will be increased. Without the deliberate appeal to this person’s private speech, rates of mediation will outnumber rates of verbalization, making public speech impossible. 

In different individuals NVB is maintained either by high rates or by low rates of public speech or private speech. It is revealing when an individual assesses his or her own rates of verbalization and mediation and begins to recognize how this co-occurs and correlates with his or her rate of public speech and private speech. 

This writer has found that SVB requires changing the mediation at the level of the individual organism. However, for some individuals this means that they must talk more, so that there is more to mediate, but for others it means to talk less, so that there is less to mediate. In SVB depressed individuals become less depressed, manic individuals become much calmer, psychotic individuals become again coherent, angry individuals begin to enjoy again, anxious individuals feel more at ease, emotional individuals become more rational and rational individuals begin to show and express more emotion. These significant differences have been confirmed by others. Change in mediation of one individual generalizes quickly to others.