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.      

January 10, 2016

January 10, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

It is no exaggeration to state that due to Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) - the spoken communication that we are continuously exposed to and conditioned by - we are becoming more and more speech-impaired. As a consequence of our speech impairments our relationships are troubled. Furthermore, our failure to effectively communicate results in less and less communication. In addition, due to our excessive use of technology, our communication failure and lack of skills are obfuscated, unaddressed and continues to remain unresolved. Yet, our impairment is very real and it must be remediated like any other behavioral problem. 

SVB is the replacement of NVB, our target behavior. As you witness the increase of SVB you notice an overall increase in communication. Liberation from your speech impairment and isolation will co-occur with a sense of freedom and a thoroughgoing understanding that something better is both possible and necessary. NVB could only pretend to offer this, but could never deliver it. What goes wrong in interaction has to do with your way of talking which causes, perpetuates and exploits your negative emotions. 

You may laugh at this and think that this too simple, but most likely you haven’t experienced the ongoing interaction which is based on positive emotions. You may have thought of it, dreamed about it or hypothesized about it, but you have never consciously engaged in it as there was no person who evoked SVB and reinforced it. To have SVB or NVB is not a matter of being right or wrong, but whether you are happy or not. Being unhappy isn’t wrong and being happy isn’t right, it is just what it is.  By listening to the sound of it you can accept it.

January 9, 2016

January 9, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

If you are not deaf or speech-impaired, there should be no problem for you to learn about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, just as Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) will condition you to remain tone-deaf for the sound of your own wellbeing it will also condition you to become speech-impaired. Characteristic for this speech impairment is the ongoing conflict between how you would like others to perceive you and how you perceive yourself. Along with this goes the usual discrepancy between what you feel and think, that is, between private, covert speech and public, overt speech. Another way of describing this conflict is the imaginary separation of the speaker and the listener. 

In NVB we are led to believe that there is such a thing as a speaker and a listener as these behaviors occur in different people who are hierarchically assigned to their different roles. In SVB, on the other hand, we find that there are neither listeners nor speakers, there is only listening and speaking behavior going on, which happens at the same response rate and simultaneously in one and the same person. 

In NVB the listener can hear that the speaker is not listening to him or herself. The sound waves produced by the NVB speaker as well as the SVB speaker are not immediately heard. The listener who is not the speaker always hears the sound waves which were produced by the speaker in the recent past. The NVB speaker, who doesn’t listen to him or herself, is listened to very differently than the speaker who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. The latter, whose speaking and listening behaviors are synchronized, is listened to and understood effortlessly as SVB makes and keeps the communicators conscious.

January 8, 2016

January 8, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

If you are not deaf or speech-impaired there should be no problem for you to learn about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the speaker doesn’t listen to him or herself and demands that others are listening to him or her. The fact that in NVB the listener is always someone else than the speaker determines that the NVB speaker becomes deaf to his or her own sound. This is not due to a defective auditory mechanism, but due to conditioning. When you don’t listen to yourself while you speak and nothing is stimulating you to do this, you are bound to become insensitive to that which is most delicate: the sound you only produce when you are completely at ease. 

Stated differently, due to aversive environments you are so often in a fight-flight-freeze response while you speak, that you don’t produce the sound which you make in the absence of these threatening vocal stimuli which are produced by NVB speakers. Moreover, when the sound of your relaxation and wellbeing is repeatedly punished, your ability to hear this sound will slowly extinguish. 

There is a lot of stress and anxiety in everyone because NVB happens everywhere at a high rate, but SVB happens at a very low rate. In other words, our way of talking conditions us to be and remain anxious, upset, stressed, dysregulated, angry, agitated, fearful and worried. This can be heard in how we sound. During NVB we all sound horrible. Our voices grab, stab, push, pull, choke and drain, and, consequently, NVB is an exhausting and energy-consuming affair. SVB, by contrast, gives us energy. In SVB our voice has a soothing effect on both the speaker as well as the listener.

January 7, 2016

January 7, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

A dear friend of mine in the Netherlands described writing as slow speaking and reading as an even slower kind of listening. The writer can endlessly rewrite what he or she is saying until he or she has found the best way to state his or her case. The reader, on the other hand, can reread what he or she is reading until he or she has fully grasped what the writer is saying. I follow his advice to keep perfecting my writing and I am grateful that his teaching is having this beneficial effect on me. He has this effect on me as I accept him as my teacher. I accept him because we have mainly Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) together. 

Someone who comments on my writing, but who doesn’t engage in SVB with me, can’t have this effect on me. I am informing you about this because I think it is important for you to know that I am learning to write like this because of SVB. This writing is not what you usually read. Reading this writing gets even better when you read it out loud, because then your sound will be able to resonate with these words.  

One of my students wrote in a paper that SVB had made her aware of the surprising fact that she preferred to speak much slower than she normally did. She described herself as someone who always has her heart on her sleeve. She explained, however, that she really would like others to know what she is thinking and she would also like to know what others are thinking. Because of listening to herself she slowed down how she talked and she discovered that speaking less intensely created a sense of calmness, which made her speech more effective. She described the same process I went through as I discovered SVB.