January 11, 2016

January 11, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

There are good reasons why it has taken such a long time to come up with the contingency analysis for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the conversation in which we understand each other, listen to each other, respect each other and remain calm and sensitive towards each other. We only find out about that contingency while we engage in SVB. 

SVB could not become our response of concern as long as we were unscientific about what caused it. In absence of scientific knowledge about how SVB works we invented many spurious explanations, which compete with each other and only cause more Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We didn’t and couldn’t engage in SVB long enough to be able to find out what really causes it. By the time we raised the question: what is the discriminative stimulus without which SVB cannot occur?, the contingency had already changed and we were engaging again in NVB. 

To understand what causes SVB we must go back and forth between instances of SVB and NVB. Stated differently, we can only find out the cause of SVB if we can also acknowledge what causes NVB. Different environmental stimuli set the stage for each response, but one cannot be found without the other. The discriminative stimulus that is functionally related to SVB is not what someone is saying, but how he or she sounds. 

I call the sound which evokes SVB Voice II as it can only be produced if we differentiate it from Voice I, which causes NVB. Voice I is Voice I because it must be recognized first. We cannot recognize Voice II as long as we haven’t recognized Voice I and we keep having Voice I, because we don’t recognize it as such and refuse to call it NVB.