June 24, 2015

June 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fourth response to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). 


I went to the ear, nose and throat doctor because some weeks ago my right ear was clogged up. It had already gone away and everything was fine with my hearing, except for a little high frequency loss which comes with aging. 


The lady who tested my ears told me something remarkable. She had worked in phonological testing for more than thirty years, so she knew what she is talking about. Often when elderly people come in for hearing aids, they are brought in by their family members, who notice that they are having hearing problems.  The nurse mentioned that when people get older they have less and less contacts and therefore they talk less and less. She stated that without interaction our hearing simply atrophies.

What she didn’t talk about, however, was that people also don’t hear themselves when they talk so little with others. Readers of my writings know we don’t hear ourselves very much anyway, even if we have people to talk with all day. Most conversation is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker doesn’t hear him or herself while he or she speaks. This is because in NVB the speaker wants to make the listener listen to him or to her.

Stated bluntly, in NVB the speaker forces the listener to listen. In NVB speakers don't listen to themselves process. This process is further enhanced by the aging process when the chances to do so become slimmer and slimmer. Thus, old age is for most of us a period of decreasing opportunity for auditory stimulation. 

The nurse also told me that when elderly folks are brought in to have their hearing checked or to get a hearing aid, they often have great trouble adjusting to the hearing aid, that is, to the overwhelming amount of sounds they are now able to perceive. Not surprisingly, this leads old people to become stressed out and to not put in their hearing aid. A lot of coaching and gradually getting used to the hearing aid is needed. Another interesting observation of the talkative nurse was that once people are using their hearing aid, their hearing improves upon later testing. By having the hearing aid, they are using their user-dependent ears again, which then improve. I asked if this was always the case and she answered with an unequivocal yes. This means that older people can actually regain at least some of their hearing. 

One can only begin to imagine what would be the positive outcome if elderly folks were more often exposed to opportunities to talk and stimulated into increased social engagement. Most likely, the incidence of hearing loss would drop dramatically. 

I was reminded of an old couple I once worked with. The hard-of-hearing, moody and suspicious husband was driving his wife  nuts. Their daughter heard them bickering all the time. The wife, who was tired of having to repeat herself a million times, didn’t sound very nice to her husband. In fact, she sounded quite harsh and negative. I asked her to listen to herself while she spoke with him. Then a miracle happened. He immediately let her know that he could hear and understand her very well as she was speaking with a kinder, calmer and less controlling voice. As I coached her to not aversively influence her husband, she felt that now she had become the problem. And so we only had one session.

Another occasion came to mind which I will never forget. I was having dinner at the house of a friend. We were seated around a big table. There were at least fourteen people, including my friend’s old hard-of-hearing mother. There was a lot of talking going on. When I spoke, the old lady suddenly blurted out to me “Young man, this is unusual, I can’t understand anything of what these people are saying, but how is it possible I can hear you perfectly well?” This incident happened twenty five years ago.

While seated in the ENT office I read an article about the neuroscientist, Rebecca Saxe, who studied why people disagree. She looked at the ‘hard’ evidence, that is, at how the brain responds under circumstances of agreeing and disagreeing and she figured out that agreement would only occur when the party who has the power was willing to take the perspective of the party who doesn’t have the power. Perspective taking by the party who doesn’t have any power doesn’t make any sense.   


This applies to the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In SVB we are at our most sensitive as we listen to ourselves and each other. In SVB, we listen because we can listen as our talking is not preventing it. Many of us think that listening to each other is difficult, but it is not. The absence of doing anything makes us listen, but we are that way only if we feel safe. Listening happens without any effort and SVB speaking is also effortless.  

In the Scientific American, I read an article about “sonification of data: converting data that were otherwise displayed visually or numerically into sound.” It appears that our “ears are such terrific pattern-finders that scientists are now using audio data to detect cancer cells from particles from space.” This is possible because our ears “can detect changes in a sound that occur after just a few milliseconds.” Seeing happens at a much slower pace, because “the eyes limit for detecting a flickering light is about 50 to 60 times per second.” This is fascinating as “sonification” has been used to “listen to data” of “solar and cancer activity” and “examine the eruptions of vulcanoes and to discern pattens of changes in particles linked to cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang.” Of course, the Geiger counter has already been around since 1908 and “emits clicks in the presence of energetic particles.” All this evidence tells me there is hope that eventually we will all be listening while we speak.

The “sound-file has been a revelation” because “ a year’s worth of field measurements which would take months to analyze by eye [bar graphs & pie charts], thus become two hours of sound” (words between brackets added). Bechara Saab , a Swiss neuroscientist addressed the brain mechanisms involved. He says “the ear can pick out subtle patterns” because “a mammal’s auditory system is faster at transmitting neural signals than most other parts of the brain. This system holds the largest known connection between neurons, a giant synapse called calyx of Held. This flower-shaped junction transforms sound waves into spikes in neuron activity; to do so the calyx can release neurotransmitters – the brain’s messengers – 800 times a second.” Our eyes are much slower than our ears. 


Saab emphasizes “in the end these differences in mechanics mean that stimuli that would be “invisible’ to the eye could be easily picked up by the ear.” Not surprisingly, “although sonification offers advantages over visual display” these neuro-sound specialists “face a major hurdle: simply getting researchers to try this new way of exploring data.” This goes right along with our fixation on the verbal in NVB. 


Words, images and diagrams, prevent us from listening. Listening, on the other hand, doesn’t prevent us from seeing. Many people have told me they see things more clearly since they have discovered SVB. Furthermore, they agree that seeing is impaired by NVB. I am reminded of the saying that someone couldn't see the forest for the trees. “From elementary school onward we’re surrounded by visual representations.” We have been and we continue to be conditioned by visual stimuli, which overrule the importance of auditory stimuli. Reality shrank to images on I-Phones, which presumably represent the world.

Scientists, who read and write more than talk and listen, are biased towards the verbal and to bar graphs and pie charts. “By the time someone becomes a scientist, they have a syntax, they have an understanding of how these plots function and a sort of internal logic, whereas if you push ‘play’ and listen to the data for the first time, you don’t have a vocabulary, so you don’t really have a basis for comparison.” The big challenge remains: how do we talk about our scientific findings and will someone be able to listen? Wouldn’t it be much simpler if researchers realized that the reason people don’t listen is because of the vocal verbal behavioral pattern called NVB? SVB arranges a totally different pattern of auditory data and we use different words as well. We would be able to make enormous progress if we would aim to create stable SVB environments in which we controlled for NVB. 

Now I will respond to “A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do it” by Greer and Longano (2010). The authors explain the “Multipel-Examplar Instruction” (MEI), in which “multiple responses are learned for single stimuli and variants. That is, an observational instance results in stimulus control for both listener and speaker responding. Initially the response may be one (e.g. a tact) that produces the stimulus for the other response (e.g. a listener response), but eventually the original stimulus evokes both responses.” 

This made me think about how I learned about SVB. I have always been drawn to people who have a lot of SVB and was always repulsed by people who have a lot of NVB. Over the course of my life I have become more selective and I choose mainly for people who have already a lot of SVB. When I began to explore SVB, it was on my own by talking aloud with myself. I gave attention to whatever asked my attention and I would talk about anything that I could think of. Therefore, my attention would jump from something I thought, felt, remembered, saw, said, heard, moved, smelled or touched. I didn't seek to analyze what I said, but would describe whatever was in my attention and I felt that this made it easy for me to listen to myself. By not editing what I was saying I found my own sound, which expressed my relaxation, well-being and meditation. Although of course I produced lots of NVB, I was able to get back to SVB quicker and quicker, to the point where just thinking about it was enough for me to have it. At this point, I am not even trying to have it anymore. I have it so often that it has become part of my life. 

What made the biggest difference for me, however, was when I stopped having contact with my family. Their negative feedback had been so problematic, but since I have kept them out of my life I have doing better than ever before. I am happier without my family. My ability to express and listen to what I think and feel, made me realize I found a treasure, which needs protection.