January 16, 2016

January 16, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

One occasional instance of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is not going to make much of a difference. One moment of Voice II, the discriminative stimulus and the consequences of SVB, such as happier relationships and a decrease of problem behaviors and an increase of effective behaviors, cannot prove the validity of this functional relationship.  Only experimentation can give us confidence in the reliability of these functional relations. Moreover, this experimentation must start with self-experimentation and then proceed to other-experimentation. 

First, you must talk out loud and listen to yourself while you speak, all by yourself. This is when you find and explore that you have a sound which is automatically reinforcing. Once you know that you can have SVB on your own, new opportunities to learn reveal themselves as you are now paying attention to the speaker-as-own-listener. By joining and synchronizing your listening and speaking behavior while you speak, you realize that the merging of observing and producing responses seldom happens while you were talking with others, but each time it happened, it produced positive consequences. 

When you are able to share your self-experimentation SVB experience with others, you will have achieved a transformational behavioral cusp. You will know from your self-experimentation, what is needed to make SVB happen in others. Although learning how to listen and how to speak happened independently under influence of special contingencies, your self-experimentation will reveal to you the unique contingency which is needed to link and unite these separately learned behaviors. In SVB speaking and listening happen at the exact same rate of responding.

January 15, 2016

January 15, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

When we look, or better yet, listen to, the postcedent events that will reliably follow Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), we can’t miss the many positive social consequences. SVB results in an increased attention, exploration, playfulness and wonder. The most sublime consequence for the SVB speaker is when the listener becomes a SVB speaker. Then, there occurs an increasingly more refined, better attuned and mutually reinforcing interaction. If SVB can continue, there occurs an increase of SVB instances and a decrease of NVB instances for all the other communicators. The refinement of our interaction will be exciting, energizing, full of humor, dynamic and fulfilling for all those involved. 

If on past occasions these effects have been repeatedly obtained, if listeners who transformed into SVB speakers have contributed to the interaction, if SVB was effective as it was reinforced by many new opportunities for improved and enhanced social relationships, we can predict with high probability: if we listen to ourselves while we speak and switch from Voice I to Voice II, we will be able to engage in SVB, which will then be followed by tremendously beneficial consequences. 

However, as long as we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, we can’t and don’t differentiate between Voice I and II and therefore we produce high rates of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which has social disintegration and negative emotions as a consequence. NVB will leave us with a different environment than SVB. The energy transfer that occurs between NVB and its consequences will make the listener feel abused as he or she is aversively impacted by the coercive speaker. 

January 14, 2016

January 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

To analyze Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) as our response of concern we  must place it within the three-term contingency of reinforcement.  To answer questions why we are able to talk in a peaceful manner, we must identify the antecedent and postcedent events which are functionally related to SVB.  The event that preceded SVB tells us why on such an occasion SVB can and will occur. This antecedent event also informs us about the history of the speaker; if,  on past occasions, the speaker was able to engage in SVB, because he or she, by listening to him or herself while he or she spoke, produced a sound, which was strikingly different from the sound which he or she produced when he or she was not listening to how he or she sounded while he or she spoke, we can be confident that his or her SVB was under antecedent control of his or her own voice, which functions like a discriminative stimulus. 

We have discovered why SVB can and will occur on the aforementioned occasion. In addition to this behavioral analysis, we find, that we, as speakers, experience with our body, when we listen to ourselves while we speak, a different sound. This visceral, embodied experience of our own sound is essential to identifying the antecedent discriminative stimulus that functionally evokes our SVB. In other words, SVB is a function of how you sound, since you directly experience the instant energy transfer that occurs between your own voice and your own body which produces this voice. Thus, your own experience of your own body completely changes due to your sound.  This experience can only be obtained, explored and verified by means of self-experimentation.

January 13, 2016

January 13, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I was describing the discriminative stimulus and the response, that is, the first part of the three-term contingency of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The second part of the three-term contingency of SVB deals with the consequences of SVB, which are, among others: understanding, better relationship, positive emotions and involvement in behaviors which make us happy and successful. However, without the evocative effect of the speaker’s voice SVB cannot and will not occur. 

It is the speaker, who is listening to him or herself while he or she speaks, who can teach the listener to also become a speaker, who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. People have of course had instances of SVB, but attributed it to the friendliness, empathy, kindness, openness or compassion of the speaker. Such dispositional, mentalistic explanations didn’t and couldn’t bring attention to the sound of the speaker’s voice, because, supposedly, something inside of the speaker caused him or her to behave the way he or she did. 

We don’t pay attention to the audible and measurable environmental stimuli, the sound of the speaker’s voice, as long as we believe in an imaginary inner self, which is causing the speaker to speak. We have felt confused and deluded about our so-called explanations, as  they could never explain why a speaker one moment is kind, but the next hostile. The sound of the speaker’s voice can set the stage for SVB, but can also set the stage for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The hostile, defensive, distrustful, aggressive, dramatizing, intimidating sounding speaker sets the stage for NVB with terrible consequences

January 12, 2016

January 12, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The antecedent event which functionally evokes Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is difficult to trace as each time the contingency changes, our way of speaking changes. Under what we have come to accept as ‘normal circumstances’ the contingency isn’t stable enough to continue with SVB. 

Each time we engage again in a fear-based way of speaking, we will engage again in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Since NVB is so common, we don’t realize that SVB is preceded by an entirely different evocative stimulus, a different sounding voice, than NVB. 

We have not been able to control for our fears long enough during our interactions to trace the independent variable which causes us to talk the way we do. The sound of the voice of the SVB speaker creates an appetitive contingency, whereas the sound of the NVB speaker’s voice creates an aversive contingency for the listener. This discriminative stimulus was never properly analyzed because of the lack of attention in NVB for the speaker-as-own-listener. 

The speaker-as-own-listener is also immediately affected by his or her own voice.As long as the speaker is not listening to him or herself while he or she is speaking, he or she cannot know what causes him or her to speak in the way that he or she speaks. Only when the contingency is without any aversive stimulation will the speaker be able to listen to him or herself while he or she is speaking. When a speaker is familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, he or she can calmly describe the three-term contingency in which other speakers will listen to themselves while they speak as well. When other speakers do that, they will be able notice that their way of speaking has effortlessly changed from NVB to SVB.