March 15, 2016

March 15, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Humble Behaviorism” Neuringer (1991) writes “Contingency thinking may also influence overt behaviors. If I want to decrease candy eating, I say to myself at the point of temptation, “If I eat a candy-bar now, that will increase the probability that I eat another one tomorrow. Do I want to do that to myself?”” Too much candy-eating is bad and any kind of self-talk that supports too much candy-eating is can be construed as negative self-talk. Such negative private speech is the result of our exposure to and our involvement in negative public speech. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) public speech causes NVB private speech. The only way to change NVB private speech is to be more often involved in SVB public speech. This  results in more SVB private speech, in self-talk that stimulates moderation of candy-eating. If we look at candy-eating in terms of how private speech is related to public speech, we recognize that candy-eating is negatively reinforced by and functionally related to NVB public speech. Thus, “The covert query, “If this behavior – then what consequence?””, occurs as we were conditioned by NVB. Such a query wouldn’t even be necessary and therefore wouldn’t occur, if we were more often exposed to and involved in SVB. Any kind of self-talk about improving ourselves can be explained as NVB covert speech which is function of NVB overt speech. Probabilities of SVB and NVB will change due to our knowledge of the SVB/NVB distinction.