November 4, 2014

November 4, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Today’s writing is a continuation of yesterday’s conversation between the verbalizer and the mediator within one person. It is important to understand this process has nothing to do with “talking with one self”, “being one self” or “coming closer to one self.” Most people who, when instructed to do so,  “listen to themselves”, while “they read this text out loud”, will be inclined to describe this process as “self-listening.” However, as behaviorists, we know that there is no self, there is no agent, who, based upon this text, decides to read out loud and who then, supposedly, is “listening to him or herself.” 

Although part of our environment, the environment within our own skin, is not accessible to others, speaking and listening are operant behaviors, which take place within one environment. The covert private speech, which goes on in each of us, is, of course, a function of our overt public speech. In the early stages of development there is no covert speech. A much better way to talk about the speech which occurs within and without our body, is by using the biological terms proposed by Ferreira (2013):  endo-environment, to refer to what happens within the organism and ecto-environment, to refer to what happens outside of the organism. To become scientific about speech we must view it as a biological process. Whether covert or overt, vocal speech is the process by which the organism interacts with and adapts to its environment. Ecto-speech pertains to the environment outside the organism’s body and endo-speech pertains to the environment inside of the organism's body. 

Emergence of endo-speech in childhood is made possible due to the consequation of peaceful and supportive ecto-speech. Without this, endo-speech problems will begin to occur, which turn the organism’s world upside down. When an organism’s endo-speech results from a hostile, neglectful, negative ecto-speech, what this author calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), its ability to adapt to its environment will be gravely impaired. Stated differently, instead of pro-social behavior, anti-social behavior will become more prominent. The organism’s NVB is coercive in nature, in that it primarily consists of attempts to force other organism into submission. This then creates and perpetuates the abusive survival interaction from which mankind has yet to be liberated. 

When the reader reads this text out loud and listens to the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) energy that is produced by him or her self, because he or she receives SVB-ecto-speech from this author, who urges him or her to listen to the sound of his or her SVB-endo-speech, the reader begins to produce as much SVB-ecto-speech as is needed to be able to maintain his or her SVB-endo-speech.

The reader is urged by this writer to create his or her own endo-contingency for his or her own endo-SVB, because the ecto-contingency for SVB doesn’t yet exist. This complicated single-subject multiple baseline experimental design is also known as meditation. The peace we seek outside of ourselves supposedly is only found inside of ourselves. Yet, we can’t help our biological need for relief from aversive environments. Our covert and overt verbal behavior is always a function of environmental variables. That is how our behavior works. We can’t have SVB in a NVB environment and we can’t be happy or at ease in an aversive environment. To proclaim that this is possible is total nonsense. We can close ourselves off from our environment and this is legitimized by our religions, but this doesn’t properly address the covert mediation (known as self-talk) of the overt verbalizer. This process can only as be as good as the overt mediation of the overt verbalizer (you talking with me or me talking with you). In other words, our NVB public speech results in our NVB private speech and only our SVB public speech can result into our SVB private speech.

No matter how much we meditate, non-meditative speech messes up our meditation. Unless we are going speak meditatively, meditation won’t affect our environment or, more precisely, the people in our environment. Only if we are going talk about our relationships, about our communication, can NVB ectovironments be changed into SVB ectovironments. Although meditative people, who habitually dissociate from ectovironment, may tell you otherwise, as SVB-ecto-environments, except for where this author occasionally is able to create them, don’t exist, the reader’s only option is to recognize the interaction between the verbalizer and the mediator within one single organism. 

This author, who has given hundreds of seminars about SBV, knows from his own experiments, that the only way in which an individual is going to be able to learn SVB, is when this person is going to listen more often to him or herself while he or she speaks. Two things are necessary for this to happen: the person must speak and the person must listen. Reliance on others, on environmental support, is going to enhance the exact opposite effect and will only entrench the person more deeply into NVB than before. Since other people are more likely to distract us from SVB than we ourselves will, it is perfectly okay for us to familiarize ourselves with SVB without the aid of others. We need to do this to be able to observe the independent variables in operation, that is, we need to be alone to observe the effect of how we sound on what we say to ourselves and to others. When we speak and listen simultaneously we achieve the behavioral cusp which is called SVB. Only when speaking and listening happen at the same rate and intensity level can and will they become and stay joined. 

During this multiple baseline experiment, the phase in which we become our own mediator is inevitably going to be alternated by the phase in which we will be once more a non-mediated verbalizer. Alone, however, we will begin to notice that the periods of time during which we are able to mediate the verbalizer, become longer and longer. Moreover, we will say very different things, because we express without hesitation or effort our covert speech into our overt speech. This design creates an opportunity for us to be alone, so that we can find out that by listing while we speak, we can create SVB, which is mostly impossible when we are together and keep eliciting NVB.

Once we achieve SVB, we know we have achieved it, because it is strikingly different from the NVB, which preceded it. If nothing happens, the reader should acknowledge that NVB is happening. Once SVB happens, the reader notices a shift from what he or she is saying, to how he or she is saying it or from how he or she is saying it, to what he or she is saying. In each case, there is an adjustment: the verbalizer may be adjusting to the mediator and the mediator is becoming capable of understanding the verbalizer. What matters mostly is that this adjustment can begin to stabilize. The experimenter, that is, the reader, is working on becoming a better listener as well as a better speaker. Overt speech must not recede to a covert level, because adjustments can only be explored and made overtly. The aim of this experiment is to change first our NVB-ecto-speech into SVB-ecto-speech, so that NVB-endo-speech can be changed into SVB-endo-speech. As is always the case in a multiple-baseline design, each subject serves as his or her own experimental control across all phases. 

As this reading continues and as the reader begins to join his or her speaking and listening behavior, he or she will notice, while reading out loud, that repeatedly mediating and verbalizing these words,  brings attention to the vocalization of SVB. Listening to someone else usually doesn’t  result into self-listening. To the contrary, listening to someone else usually means the exclusion of self-listening. Reason for this is that most other-listening is based on NVB. This means that in NVB the mediator is forced to listen to the verbalizer. The NVB verbalizer is mediated by a coerced, aversively-stimulated and eventually a NVB-conditioned mediator, but a SVB verbalizer is mediated by an appetitively-stimulated and eventually SVB-conditioned mediator. Thus, there are two verbalizers and two mediators in each of us. This makes it a bit tricky to whom we are paying attention, but the NVB verbalizer can’t be mediated by the SVB mediator. Likewise, the SVB verbalizer can’t be mediated by the NVB mediator. This experiment teases apart the two verbalizers and the two mediators. Each time the independent variable, our voice, changes, verbalizers engage in SVB or NVB.        

November 3, 2014

November 3, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer wishes to inform the reader about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), which is a different way of talking than Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the way of communicating which we are all familiar with. By reading these texts out loud, the reader engages in a multiple baseline experiment. This makes him or her realize, that he or she is simultaneously the verbalizer as well as the mediator. This particular design is chosen because it demonstrates how the treatment this writer is proposing will lead to an increase of positive emotional behaviors, which the reader doesn’t want to reverse. 

NVB is considered the problem behavior and SVB is the replacement behavior. Once NVB is replaced by SVB, it is important to continue with SVB and to investigate where it leads. SVB is achieved because the reader reads out loud and listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. The calming sound of one’s own voice has an automatic reinforcing effect, which is noticed due to the process of self-listening. As the reader observes the tangible physiological effects of this feed-back mechanism, he or she is bound to notice that each time he or she returns to NVB, he or she in effect reverses the treatment. The reader finds, but will have to continue to verify as often as is needed, that each time he or she inadvertently produces NVB, he or she is no longer listening to him or herself while he or she speaks. The intervention: self-listening, is a methodologically sound verification of whether SVB occurs or not. In the absence of SVB, the reader will always produce NVB and each time the reader catches him or herself not listening, self-listening will re-establish SVB.

In a multiple baseline design the baseline becomes broader and broader, because each phase, that is, each moment of self-listening, sets the stage for the next phase. As one catches oneself more often, one realizes, while shifting back and forth between SVB and NVB, that the sound of one’s voice changes. No matter how often one forgets to implement the intervention, each time one is again self-listening, one is once more experiencing SVB. This tells us that NVB is always only noticed after it has occurred, while SVB only happens consciously. SVB makes us more and more conscious, while NVB makes us more and more mechanical. We are unconscious because of NVB, because of how we talk, and we become and stay conscious because of SVB, a new way of talking. We compare again and again what happens to our voice, while we are and while we weren’t self-listening. This exploration answers our control question: how does our tone of voice effect our communication?  

November 2, 2014

November 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

It is amazing to discover how memory works. From today on this author remembers the professor’s name he spoke with last week. Today he met him again. He mentioned something about his family tradition, which emphasizes hard work. He clarified things that were said last week and his questions signified that he had given a lot of thought to what this author had said. He described that when he and this writer were having their conversation last week, someone nearby had been overhearing what they were talking about. A recovering addict, who, after years of sobriety, was still involved in AA meetings, had said to him that this author wouldn't be “able to change anybody.” Intrigued by this author’s insistence on the fact that we don’t cause our own behavior, he had tried to explain to this AA groupie that AA participants surrender to a “higher power”, because they admit that they are powerless against their addiction. Not being a religious person himself, he understood this surrender, which, of course, is aimed at changing the behavior of the addict, is nothing but covert behaviorism. While acknowledging his failed attempt to reason with this religiously inclined recovered addict, he realized how difficult it is to address the actual issue of not being responsible for one’s own behavior. Due to his inability to talk with this zealous AA member, he became convinced of the validity of the behaviorological account, which was reiterated by this author.

 

Another thing happened when this author ran into a chaotic and attention-demanding female, who had been to a couple of his seminars. She was obviously troubled and spoke a hundred miles an hour about problems she was having with the people who live where she lives. This author only felt like agreeing with her, because there was no other way to talk with her. It took her a while to realize that this author was completely ignoring her hyper-verbal behavior, but when she began to notice, she was instantly calm and resolved about the matters she had been feeling so worked up about. It became clear that she kept saying to herself to do this and to do that, but that in reality she seldom acted on anything she said. This author had no doubt she could do what she said she had wanted to do. When she finally began to listen to him, she agreed and said she was going to do what she wanted to do. Her dilemma is everyone’s: in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) we keep saying something different from what we do. Only once we come to know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) do we do as we say.

November 1, 2014

November 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

When one engages in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), one knows one is learning something new. With every word uttered one realizes one is no longer the same, one is changing. Moreover, one says things one was incapable of saying.  SVB proves that it is possible to say things in new ways, which weren’t possible before. In SVB, one is capable of saying what one wasn’t capable of saying before. 

To learn about SVB, we must first know about the behavior that was already there: Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Since NVB is opposed to SVB, it is as important to know about NVB as it is to know about SVB. The more one knows about NVB, the more one will find out about SVB. To learn about SVB, one must start with NVB. In other words, one must begin with what is already there, with what already could be there. NVB is the stepping stone to SVB. 

The NVB we first pay attention to is an innate behavior, which we have in common with other animals. However, NVB makes SVB possible. By understanding our ancient NVB, we get a sense of what our behavior is like without verbal learning. This involves an exploration of what life is like when language had not yet evolved. To learn about, evolutionary-speaking, new verbal behavior, we must go back to our nonverbal origins, to learning without words. We can talk about this!

Behavior of other nonverbal organisms becomes more tangible when we communicate once more as nonverbal creatures, with our attention focused on our nonverbal instead on verbal behavior. SVB is defined by this nonverbal focus. During SVB, we experience the emergence of the verbal from the nonverbal, because we listen to our words as sounds. In other words, in SVB we witness alignment of nonverbal and verbal behavior. During NVB, our attention is fixated on our verbal behavior and our nonverbal behavior doesn’t seem to exist. Denial of our nonverbal behavior is characteristic for NVB.

Once we differentiate between SVB and NVB, it becomes clear that we habitually engage in NVB and we only incidentally engage in SVB.  This recognition, that we engage most of the time in NVB and only occasionally in SVB, revives our ability to focus more often on our nonverbal behavior, on what we experience in our body while we speak. That being said, during SVB, nonverbal learning facilitates verbal learning. However, in NVB, in which what we say takes our attention away from how we say it, this nonverbal learning is made impossible. This is causing huge problems.  

Unless we know about the distinction as well as the connection between SVB and NVB, we are not yet truly verbal. In NVB our verbal behavior distances itself from our nonverbal behavior, whereas during SVB there is alignment of our verbal and our nonverbal behavior. Reading about SVB cannot bring about this alignment in our spoken communication and to fully understand that one has to talk about it. Only by talking can one begin to great differentiate between our understanding and our experiencing of SVB. As long as one tries to understand SVB, one actually prevents oneself from experiencing it. To experience it, one doesn’t first need to understand it, but rather, to understand it, one must first experience it. In SVB the nonverbal is more important than the verbal, but this doesn’t mean that we are not verbal in SVB.  To the contrary, in SVB we can be more verbal, because the connection between the nonverbal and the verbal is strengthened by how we speak. There’s nothing mysterious about SVB’s emphasis on the nonverbal. We make more sense while we speak if we built upon what existed before words were there. Another way of stating this is that our language comes out of wordlessness...out of silence....out of nothingness....out of meditation. 

SVB is the best way to talk about how learning actually works, because the interoceptive changes involved in this process are continuously expressed by how we speak. Due to NVB, the way of speaking with which we are all too familiar, we believe that it is impossible to precisely express what is felt inside our body while we speak. Once we engage in SVB, however, we always find our own words, our own rhythm, our own pace and our unique way of expressing what is going within our own skin, while we talk. Thus, during SVB, our verbal description of our nonverbal experience is tremendously improved, enhanced and perfected. In NVB, however, our verbal description of our nonverbal experience is fabricated and inaccurate because it is not even experienced. This doesn’t mean, however, that in NVB our nonverbal experience is no longer there. It is always there and if we don't pay attention to it, it is negatively effecting how we speak. Communicators who neglect, reject and misrepresent their own nonverbal experiences engage in NVB, which is abusive interaction. 

SVB teaches us under what conditions we are benefitted by our language. During SVB it is apparent what we do while we learn, since interaction increases  understanding. In SVB we feel appreciation, acceptance and respect for each other’s unique learning history. This then results into novel ways of expressing ourselves verbally as well as nonverbally. The fact that NVB doesn’t allow this energizing and delightful process, teaches us that NVB has to be stopped before any learning can begin. 

One can learn to use a computer without knowing how the inside of the computer looks or works, but one cannot learn to behave verbally without first knowing how one's nonverbal behavior works. We verbally misbehave, because we don’t notice, while we speak, how we behave non-verbally! The computer scientist knows how the inside of the computer works, but he or she also knows how to keyboard and how to use different programs. There is a difference between learning how to take the computer apart and putting it back together again and how to use a computer. This distinction between nonverbal and verbal learning doesn’t cause much trouble when we talk about inanimate things, such as computers, but, when it concerns the distinction between how we non-verbally learn  versus how we learn verbally, it is applied to spoken communication and things get easily mixed up. 

In our spoken communication, we again and again assume that we can do things, because we know them. We believe we know how spoken communication works, but since many things are not talked about they cannot be properly addressed. We may behave verbally, but this doesn’t mean that we are communicating. We may have learned how to speak and how to write and how to use words, but our verbal learning has taken precedence over our nonverbal learning. As a consequence, we are unable to recognize that similar things mean different things to different people. This discrepancy, between what we say and what we do, ties in with our verbal fixation. It can be observed that our attention during NVB goes mainly to our verbal behavior, but rarely if ever to our nonverbal behavior.

During SVB, our attention goes simultaneously to our verbal and to our nonverbal behavior. Our overemphasis on verbal behavior blinds us for how we behave non-verbally. Behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, is only interested in observable and measurable variables. SVB is a scientific way of communicating. Verbal behavior is a bad starting point as long as even academics who are concerned with behaviorological properties of learning don’t realize that they, they like everyone else, mostly engage in NVB. The interaction between the verbalizer and the mediator is to be assessed from the mediator’s perspective. The mediator is always impacted by the nonverbal expression of the verbalizer, whose words will be better understood if the verbalizer’s nonverbal behavior is not aversively impacting the mediator. Thus, the  properties of SVB and NVB inform the verbalizer about what he or she does non-verbally to the mediator, while he or she speaks.  

October 31, 2014

October 31, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Once the distinction has been made between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), it becomes apparent what communicators “get” or “avoid” by these diametrically opposing ways of communicating. NVB is to be categorized as a child’s acting out behavior, against which reactive measures will only make things worse. When we punish, while we talk, someone’s NVB, we only address the symptoms of the problem, but not the underlying negative emotions of which NVB is always function. Unless these negative feelings are addressed in such a manner that they decrease or disappear, SVB will be impossible. 

SVB makes us talk about other things than what we say and how we say it.  In other words, SVB helps us to look beyond the topography of our verbal behavior, with which we inevitably get stuck each time we engage in NVB. It is only during SVB that we can properly address the biological, social, affective and environmental variables that stimulate, shape and maintain our verbal behavior. Moreover, only SVB can lead us beyond the pathological symptoms that are created by NVB. As long as we remain trapped by these symptoms, as we most often unknowingly do, we are unable to attend to what is actually causing them. 

NVB is based on the Establishing Operation (EO), which makes us escape, avoid or want something.  Like a child that is acting out, NVB is a form of misbehaving. Problem behavior is inappropriate, but of what it is a function is not considered as inappropriate. For instance, a child’s temper tantrum, when he doesn’t want to do his homework, is considered to be inappropriate. The reason that this child throws a temper tantrum is to attract the attention from adults. If this happens, it distracts the attention from the homework. Thus, temper tantrums may be functionally related to not doing homework. Increased attention from adults could help solve the child’s acting out behavior. 

NVB, in which a verbalizer demands a mediator’s attention, is a function of the verbalizer's need for attention. During NVB adults speak in a childish manner. Only in SVB do communicators mature and acquire appropriate ways of asking the attention of others. The question of what our behavior is a function can address and solve a wide range of problems. SVB is a replacement behavior which serves the same function as NVB, the problem target behavior. We can replace NVB by SVB. 

Although everyone claims to be an expert on how human behavior works, SVB and NVB remain as of yet unknown to us because we are carried away by our own way of communicating. What we accomplish or cause is as unknown to us as what is actually causing us to behave the way we do. We think that talking is just talking and that opening a door is just opening a door, but it is not that simple. Just as opening a door may be caused by heat, which we seek to reduce by letting in fresh air, by wanting to enter our house, by going out or by letting someone in, verbal behavior can be a function of multiple antecedent and/or postcedent events. The opening of the door is the same and the movement of our mouth while we talk is the same, but why we open the door or why we open our mouth, is an entirely different matter. Not all mouth movements have the same purpose or are caused by the same antecedent stimuli.

   

If we want to be able to change the way in which we talk, we have to precisely describe it.  Just as there are different functional classes of verbal behavior, such as manding and tacting, there are also different stimulus classes. We must be very specific about the target behavior we try to change. Behavioral control can only be achieved if we know which independent variables impinge upon which dependent variable.  We can only come know what we are talking about if SVB and NVB are described in sufficient detail, that is, if they are defined by topography, function and environment in which they occur.

Behaviorology cautions us not to classify dissimilar events as similar. Our way of talking may look and sound similar, but it may be a function of something entirely different. Furthermore, we must know at what rate our target verbal behavior, which we are trying to change, is occurring. This poses a great challenge, because before we can measure baseline rates at which SVB and NVB are occurring, we must first know exactly what they look and sound like. Thus, two or more people must consistently agree that what they see and hear is reliably SVB or NVB. High inter-observer agreement has been known to exist about the SVB/NVB distinction. Once we are exposed to it, our experiences of SVB and NVB are unequivocal.