April 6, 2015

March 6, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

Today, I address the importance of what is known as automatic reinforcement in the conditioning of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We learn to speak our language by producing similar sounds as those from our verbal community. Initially, we were reinforced by others, but as we grew older, we became more capable of reinforcing ourselves. Our dialect is produced by response topographies that bring forth similar sounds. The difference between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is best described as a difference in sound.

Like Chinese and Italian, SVB and NVB sound different. Only when we listen to how we sound while we speak, can we acknowledge that everyone, regardless of language or dialect, produces and experiences instances of SVB and NVB. Most us find NVB, not SVB, automatically reinforcing, because our behavioral history has been mainly with NVB. This is why we worry so much or think a lot about negative things. We didn’t learn to speak the language of happiness. We are all somewhat delayed in the vocalization of our positive emotions. How do human beings catch up with this gigantic, world-wide communication delay? Behaviorists have known for a long time that language is not learned through “explicit shaping of every verbal response by teachers or parents and that such instruction comprises only a small portion of the relevant reinforcement histories in a person’s history” (Yoon & Bennett, 2000).

The role of indirect reinforcement contingencies is of crucial importance for what still needs to happen in human relationship: generalization of positive emotions. Over the course of development, our verbal behavior moves from an overt to a covert level. That is, what was first overtly reinforced by others later becomes covertly or automatically reinforced by the individual, who in this process perceives him or herself as both the speaker and the listener.

Behaviorist research has gathered empirical evidence for B.F. Skinner’s position that the strengthening of verbal operants is more parsimoniously explained by automatic reinforcement than by some imaginary language acquisition device. In the same way that languages were learned and didn’t need any further explicit reinforcement from the members of the verbal community, most of us unfortunately automatically reinforce NVB, the language of negative emotions.

Only what was part of our individual history of reinforcement could generalize by means of automatic reinforcement. “A response might serve a reinforcing function if the stimulus properties of that response are familiar, that is, if they already exert discriminative control over the individual's behavior” (italics added)(Yoon & Bennett, 2000). Most of us are far more familiar with the communication of negative than positive emotions. Communication of negative emotions was more often reinforced. This familiarity is now causing us to have NVB, not SVB. As it conforms to the existing practices of our verbal community, NVB is now automatically reinforced. Thus, we relish in misery as certain sounds exert discriminative control over our vocal verbal behavior. 

People always described me as enthusiastic. However, I often felt upset about the fact that my happiness was not reinforced by them. In spite of this lack of reinforcement, I have continued to feel happy and positive about my life. Apparently, I must have received positive reinforcement early on. There is no other explanation for the ability to deal with the amount of rejection that I have endured my entire life. 

For years, I was searching for ways to acknowledge myself, because I didn’t receive the kind of attention from others that I wanted. I was so frustrated about how others were talking with me that I decided to talk with myself. From the moment I began talking with myself, I became fully capable of giving myself something which others apparently weren’t able to give. Even though I kept crying and complaining about it endlessly, I was able to give it to myself. I became my own listener and reinforced what I said to myself. 

As I began demonstrating SVB to others, they found, with my support, that they too could listen to and reinforce themselves. I haven’t met anyone who wasn’t able to learn it. This is not to say that everyone who was taught by me has learned it. Most people haven’t learned it and weren’t able to learn it, because they didn’t continue long enough. Only those who stuck it out with me long enough have learned it. I should say only those who stick it out with themselves were capable of learning it. Indeed, those who can stick it out with me, stick it out with themselves. When you speak with your own natural sound, the reinforcing event which follows is that you will be your authentic self and your sound will then become a conditioned reinforcer. 

Only behaviorism can inform us about how behavior is stimulated, shaped and maintained by our environment. Only behaviorism doesn’t make a big deal about that part of the environment, which exists inside of our skin, which, according to ignorant people causes our behavior. The artificial distinction which divides the natural world, existing inside or outside our skin, involves all fictions about ourselves and is maintained by our way of talking, NVB.

Communication of the oneness of the environment inside and outside our skin requires SVB and cannot be accomplished by NVB. When the oneness of the environment is simultaneously perceived from a first-person perspective and from a third-person perspective and is talked about in NVB manner, people can’t feel it or experience it. In NVB they will refer to the incongruence or the negative feelings, which are generated by the mismatch between what a person says and how he or she says it. If, on the other hand, oneness of what is inside and outside of the skin is expressed in a SVB manner, people will acknowledge their positive interoceptive experiences, which can only occur when a speaker’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors are and remain aligned.

As we seldom have interactions in which we listen to how we sound, we have remained unaware about the extent to which our verbal behavior was based on negative emotions. Vocal verbal behavior in which we are unaware of how we sound is NVB. No matter how much our NVB has been and continues to be reinforced, the automatic reinforcement, which also occurs, is always bound to be contradicted by our own proprioceptive experiences. The person involved in NVB may say, verbally, that he or she is not upset, when in fact, non-verbally, he or she is upset. Although he or she may be anxious, stressed or sad, he or she may maintain a façade of calmness, control and positivity. It is only by listening to the sound of someone’s voice that we can accurately discern the difference between positive and negative emotions. To the extent that we have been conditioned by NVB, we accept vocal verbal behavior as positive, when it is negative. NVB can create the illusion that we can do away with reality, but that reality is there and can be measured by our heart rate, skin response, sympathetic response and muscle tone.

The most fundamental discovery for someone, who, like myself, was mainly conditioned by NVB, is not that it is still possible to engage in SVB, but that after sufficient exposure and exploration, SVB will be automatically reinforced. This phenomenon takes place within our own skin as a gradual change of our neural behavior. As a consequence of SVB, we slowly get better at avoiding NVB. I had to escape often from noxious stimuli in the past, but as the years went by, I became better at not getting closer to noxious stimuli and avoiding them. Decrease of escape behaviors went hand in hand with a decrease of approach behavior. Many noxious stimuli, once discriminated as such, are no longer approached and, consequently, don’t need to be escaped from. The stimuli which one approaches with SVB are comparable to the nonverbal stimuli that a blind person approaches by simply avoiding obstacles. Like a blind person, I experiences the freedom from obstructed movements.

Until I found behaviorism I was terrible confused about the persistence with which I tried to pursue my own well-being. It often seemed to me that what was most beneficial was also my biggest problem. As long as I didn’t have enough exposure to stimuli which are produced by SVB and believed that I could only achieve those, by creating SVB with others, my attention was, as is the case with everyone who is involved in NVB, drawn outward, to others.

Automatic reinforcement is different from direct reinforcement, because in the latter the reinforcement is delivered by others, but in the former, the mediation by another person is not needed. A good example of automatic reinforcement is a musician, who loves the sound of his or her instrument so much that he or she keeps practicing and getting better and better. I was and still am a singer. My instrument consists of my vocal cords and by listening to myself I found SVB and behaviorism. However, many people are not that lucky and go insane while listening to themselves. They don’t know that they are trying to listen to their own sound and so they get carried away by what they say.

Fixation on the verbal, like outward orientation, is another criterion of NVB. It changes the sound of our voice. The third reason our voice changes from sounding reinforcing to sounding punishing, is struggle, which I was previously describing. How could I be right and everyone be wrong? I was right about SVB and nobody else but me had come up with the idea of NVB. I was right about NVB too. Not only I, but millions of others too, who in spite of struggle, have somehow survived the negative contingencies of NVB.

It is astounding what happens when people, who have known mainly NVB, engage for an extended period of time in SVB. First, they are amazed that it is even possible. Then, as they explore this new way of communicating which is without aversive stimulation, a delightful process can be observed, which is similar to what happens in the development of a two year old. Behaviorists acknowledge that “contingencies are inadequate to explain the rapidity with which complex verbal constructions are acquired” (Yoon & Bennett, 2000). Under negative circumstances, however, our verbal development will be stunted and although we may still have acquired our language, if we haven’t been in the positive and supportive environments in which our emotions could be accurately described and thus be validated, we may live our entire lives without having this aspect of vocal verbal behavior fulfilled. As we have only experienced very brief, haphazard moments of SVB, a sensitive person’s insistence on what is automatically reinforcing, can easily be explained as mania, depression or schizophrenia. In doing so, we have accepted NVB as normal and our plea and longing for SVB has been construed as abnormal. 

Certainly, a different automatic reinforcement results from SVB than NVB. The former supports our mental health, but the latter breads psychopathology. Yes, our way of talking literally drives some people insane, especially those who are more sensitive than others. Much of what goes on in the name of our spoken communication is pure insanity and yet there continues to be massive support for it. The automatically reinforcing properties of our verbal behavior are maintained by how we sound. In an safe environment, in which we are stimulated to listen to ourselves while we speak, the shift from NVB to SVB will happen effortlessly. Once we have SVB, we overcome our communication delay as our speaking and listening behavior will become synchronized.