Dear Reader,
People tell me every day what it is like for them to listen to the sound of their voice while they speak. Of course, I listen to the sound of my voice every day as well. Consequently, I have gathered a lot of information about what it is like when we listen to ourselves while we speak. Nobody in the world knows about this matter as much as I do.
People keep telling me that nobody has ever told them to listen to themselves while they speak (we were all basically told to listen to someone else and not to ourselves). In other words, it is because of me that they begin to seriously listen to themselves. They may have listened to themselves before, but they had never done it consciously and continuously.
When people listen to themselves while they speak, they engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and they realize that they were not listening to themselves in most of their previous conversations. They recognize that they were not capable of doing that before. Now that they are capable of having ongoing SVB, they are able to acknowledge that previously they were mainly involved in and conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), and, therefore, they would mainly produce NVB. They discover that they don’t need to do this anymore and they begin to explore SVB.
The more people explore SVB, the more they will have it with me, with others, but, most importantly, with themselves. In ongoing SVB they are able to say and understand new things about themselves and others, which they had wanted to say, but couldn’t say before. SVB is about expressing all our private speech in public speech. Of course, this is impossible under most circumstances. When people express what they think and feel regardless of the negative consequences, they are said to have no boundaries. However, no matter how inappropriate it is to tell others what we are really thinking and feeling, even if we sometimes do this and get rejected, punished, ridiculed, judged and humiliated, it is still a valuable experience. I suggest to everyone to spend a lot of time just talking out loud by ourselves as this creates the least negative complications for us.
When we talk out loud with ourselves and when we listen to the sound of our thoughts and feelings, but without trying to change anything (we are not trying to sound good, confident or happy), it is apparent how easy and effortless SVB is and how this should also be possible with others in the same way. We all know that when we are with others immediately all sorts of complications arise. Thus, to get used to SVB, it is much more practical to explore it alone, as this gives us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the contingency which makes SVB possible.
To have ongoing SVB with others, we need to be able to create and maintain, with our way of talking, the same safe, comfortable, supportive contingency, which we have already experienced and explored by ourselves. Of course, we make ‘mistakes’ and engage in NVB when we may believe that we are engaging in SVB, but as we ‘catch up’ with ourselves, no time or energy is lost on having guilt feelings about NVB as this is all part of NVB. We can express our sense of shame about again and again engaging in NVB as we realize that we have gotten it wrong all along.
There is no reason to blame ourselves or each other as we were all conditioned to have high rates of NVB. We can’t help speaking Dutch or French and it makes absolutely no sense to feel bad about the fact that we grew up in a Dutch or a French verbal community. The same is true for NVB. SVB, therefore, is really like speaking a foreign language, however, the only big difference is that you know it already by the mere fact that you are able to speak. When you engage in SVB, you immediately notice how incredibly comforting and energizing it is and you also suddenly are able to understand why NVB is incredibly energy-draining.
In NVB you were never really attending to yourself as you always were preoccupied with others. It is not narcissism or ego-centrism to talk out loud by yourself and to discover that what you really think and feel is necessary to live a healthy, happy, productive and peaceful life. With NVB there was nothing but trouble. Just as it is easy to ‘forgive’ yourself for the fact that you were involved in it and couldn’t help being involved in it, it is equally easy and simple to let others know that their suffering is over once they engage in SVB. I know that all the cynics will love to attack me on this as they have done so every chance they got. The fact is, however, that their attacks are part of a pattern of vocal verbal behavior (NVB), which has nothing to do with me.
I have investigated, understood and acknowledged the pattern of speech, which I call NVB. This pattern is totally different from the pattern which I call SVB. Those who engage in SVB are not engaging in NVB. They may be affected at some point and engage in NVB again, but they either engage in SVB or in NVB. In other words, they always only engage in one or the other. This knowledge is comforting, but unknown to most people. Consequently, everyone is trying to improve, everybody is trying to have a better relationship, everyone is either working on themselves or on others. However, once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, we stop working on ourselves or on each other. You could actually say that we suddenly find ourselves without work.
When we engage in SVB, we don’t do what we usually do. Thus, SVB instantaneously replaces NVB and the issue of SVB ‘outcompeting’ NVB doesn’t even arise! The immediacy of this shift is verifiable and apparent to all. When one person is in front of people who are familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, they will all agree when he or she shifts from NVB to SVB or from SVB to NVB. Moreover, even after we have become trained in observing our own and each other’s SVB and NVB, we keep being intrigued and stimulated by the beauty and freshness of SVB. We all find out how to express SVB in the way which is unique to us and we can recognize each other’s uniqueness.
People tell me every day what it is like for them to listen to the sound of their voice while they speak. Of course, I listen to the sound of my voice every day as well. Consequently, I have gathered a lot of information about what it is like when we listen to ourselves while we speak. Nobody in the world knows about this matter as much as I do.
People keep telling me that nobody has ever told them to listen to themselves while they speak (we were all basically told to listen to someone else and not to ourselves). In other words, it is because of me that they begin to seriously listen to themselves. They may have listened to themselves before, but they had never done it consciously and continuously.
When people listen to themselves while they speak, they engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and they realize that they were not listening to themselves in most of their previous conversations. They recognize that they were not capable of doing that before. Now that they are capable of having ongoing SVB, they are able to acknowledge that previously they were mainly involved in and conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), and, therefore, they would mainly produce NVB. They discover that they don’t need to do this anymore and they begin to explore SVB.
The more people explore SVB, the more they will have it with me, with others, but, most importantly, with themselves. In ongoing SVB they are able to say and understand new things about themselves and others, which they had wanted to say, but couldn’t say before. SVB is about expressing all our private speech in public speech. Of course, this is impossible under most circumstances. When people express what they think and feel regardless of the negative consequences, they are said to have no boundaries. However, no matter how inappropriate it is to tell others what we are really thinking and feeling, even if we sometimes do this and get rejected, punished, ridiculed, judged and humiliated, it is still a valuable experience. I suggest to everyone to spend a lot of time just talking out loud by ourselves as this creates the least negative complications for us.
When we talk out loud with ourselves and when we listen to the sound of our thoughts and feelings, but without trying to change anything (we are not trying to sound good, confident or happy), it is apparent how easy and effortless SVB is and how this should also be possible with others in the same way. We all know that when we are with others immediately all sorts of complications arise. Thus, to get used to SVB, it is much more practical to explore it alone, as this gives us the opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the contingency which makes SVB possible.
To have ongoing SVB with others, we need to be able to create and maintain, with our way of talking, the same safe, comfortable, supportive contingency, which we have already experienced and explored by ourselves. Of course, we make ‘mistakes’ and engage in NVB when we may believe that we are engaging in SVB, but as we ‘catch up’ with ourselves, no time or energy is lost on having guilt feelings about NVB as this is all part of NVB. We can express our sense of shame about again and again engaging in NVB as we realize that we have gotten it wrong all along.
There is no reason to blame ourselves or each other as we were all conditioned to have high rates of NVB. We can’t help speaking Dutch or French and it makes absolutely no sense to feel bad about the fact that we grew up in a Dutch or a French verbal community. The same is true for NVB. SVB, therefore, is really like speaking a foreign language, however, the only big difference is that you know it already by the mere fact that you are able to speak. When you engage in SVB, you immediately notice how incredibly comforting and energizing it is and you also suddenly are able to understand why NVB is incredibly energy-draining.
In NVB you were never really attending to yourself as you always were preoccupied with others. It is not narcissism or ego-centrism to talk out loud by yourself and to discover that what you really think and feel is necessary to live a healthy, happy, productive and peaceful life. With NVB there was nothing but trouble. Just as it is easy to ‘forgive’ yourself for the fact that you were involved in it and couldn’t help being involved in it, it is equally easy and simple to let others know that their suffering is over once they engage in SVB. I know that all the cynics will love to attack me on this as they have done so every chance they got. The fact is, however, that their attacks are part of a pattern of vocal verbal behavior (NVB), which has nothing to do with me.
I have investigated, understood and acknowledged the pattern of speech, which I call NVB. This pattern is totally different from the pattern which I call SVB. Those who engage in SVB are not engaging in NVB. They may be affected at some point and engage in NVB again, but they either engage in SVB or in NVB. In other words, they always only engage in one or the other. This knowledge is comforting, but unknown to most people. Consequently, everyone is trying to improve, everybody is trying to have a better relationship, everyone is either working on themselves or on others. However, once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, we stop working on ourselves or on each other. You could actually say that we suddenly find ourselves without work.
When we engage in SVB, we don’t do what we usually do. Thus, SVB instantaneously replaces NVB and the issue of SVB ‘outcompeting’ NVB doesn’t even arise! The immediacy of this shift is verifiable and apparent to all. When one person is in front of people who are familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, they will all agree when he or she shifts from NVB to SVB or from SVB to NVB. Moreover, even after we have become trained in observing our own and each other’s SVB and NVB, we keep being intrigued and stimulated by the beauty and freshness of SVB. We all find out how to express SVB in the way which is unique to us and we can recognize each other’s uniqueness.
Dear Reader,
Since we, as human beings, can acquire very quickly the vocal verbal behavior that is appropriate to a particular environment, we don’t have much of a need, as Skinner writes in his paper “Selection by Consequences” (1981), for “an innate repertoire.” A baby, who was born in the United States and is raised in the Chinese verbal community ,will learn to speak Chinese and a Chinese baby which is raised in the United States readily learns to speak English without any problem.
Ideally, the operant learning involved in becoming verbal not only supplements natural selection, but it actually replaces it. It has yet to be recognized, however, that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is absolutely needed for respondent behavior to be outcompeted and replaced by operant behavior. Stated differently, we have not been able to become fully verbal as our environment inevitably favored Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).
Although there are obviously tremendous advantages to our more sophisticated operant verbal repertoire, we have not been able to capitalize on this as the SVB/NVB distinction was not yet known. NVB has unknowingly been a stand-in-the-way to verbal learning throughout human history.
Skinner gives two simple examples: one about food and one about sex. He differentiates between food, which is eaten simply for survival value (in which case eating is a product of natural selection) and eating that results from “the evolution of special susceptibilities.” Under the former circumstances food “does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer,” but under the latter circumstances eating is operantly controlled. Also, when sexual behavior is simply a product of natural selection, “sexual contact does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer.” Like food, sex only becomes a reinforcer “through the evolution of special susceptibilities.” With these two examples it is very easy to think about our verbal behavior.
Our verbal is like any other behavior. Stimuli in the environment set the stage for our verbal responses, which are followed by consequences, which then either increase or decrease their likelihood. In operant conditioning we speak about reinforcement when we refer to the increase of behavior and punishment when we refer to the decrease of behavior. NVB is a function of our innate endowment. This coarse-grained behavior is insensitive to the environments in which people are reinforced for a their more fine-grained version of behaving verbally, environments in which SVB can and will occur. Just as food and sex are not reinforcers as long as they are only function of our phylogenetic history and only become reinforcers due to “the evolution of special susceptibilities”, so too can our verbal behavior become a reinforce or remain constrained. As long as our verbal behavior is still reactionary, involuntary behavior, it is controlled by our innate, nonverbal repertoire. Only if verbal behavior is (like food or sex) a reinforcer, is it under operant control.
We receive more positive reinforcement during the early stages of our overt verbal development than in the later phases of our lives. Moreover, as we mature, our verbal behavior recedes to a covert level. Thus, most of our verbal behavior occurs as private speech, commonly referred to as thinking. Furthermore, it is believed that reinforcement is no longer needed when we get older. All of this presumably prepares for being able to navigate our world in which NVB is everywhere, but SVB is happening only accidentally, momentarily and sporadically. At the early stages of development verbal behavior is under operant control, but during later phases of our lives, our verbal behavior is often, sadly, way too often, controlled by classical conditioning. Surely, becoming literate is all about becoming verbal, but while we are engaging in NVB, we are less verbal than we believe to be. Only in SVB can we be fully verbal.
Since we, as human beings, can acquire very quickly the vocal verbal behavior that is appropriate to a particular environment, we don’t have much of a need, as Skinner writes in his paper “Selection by Consequences” (1981), for “an innate repertoire.” A baby, who was born in the United States and is raised in the Chinese verbal community ,will learn to speak Chinese and a Chinese baby which is raised in the United States readily learns to speak English without any problem.
Ideally, the operant learning involved in becoming verbal not only supplements natural selection, but it actually replaces it. It has yet to be recognized, however, that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is absolutely needed for respondent behavior to be outcompeted and replaced by operant behavior. Stated differently, we have not been able to become fully verbal as our environment inevitably favored Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).
Although there are obviously tremendous advantages to our more sophisticated operant verbal repertoire, we have not been able to capitalize on this as the SVB/NVB distinction was not yet known. NVB has unknowingly been a stand-in-the-way to verbal learning throughout human history.
Skinner gives two simple examples: one about food and one about sex. He differentiates between food, which is eaten simply for survival value (in which case eating is a product of natural selection) and eating that results from “the evolution of special susceptibilities.” Under the former circumstances food “does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer,” but under the latter circumstances eating is operantly controlled. Also, when sexual behavior is simply a product of natural selection, “sexual contact does not need to be, and presumably is not, a reinforcer.” Like food, sex only becomes a reinforcer “through the evolution of special susceptibilities.” With these two examples it is very easy to think about our verbal behavior.
Our verbal is like any other behavior. Stimuli in the environment set the stage for our verbal responses, which are followed by consequences, which then either increase or decrease their likelihood. In operant conditioning we speak about reinforcement when we refer to the increase of behavior and punishment when we refer to the decrease of behavior. NVB is a function of our innate endowment. This coarse-grained behavior is insensitive to the environments in which people are reinforced for a their more fine-grained version of behaving verbally, environments in which SVB can and will occur. Just as food and sex are not reinforcers as long as they are only function of our phylogenetic history and only become reinforcers due to “the evolution of special susceptibilities”, so too can our verbal behavior become a reinforce or remain constrained. As long as our verbal behavior is still reactionary, involuntary behavior, it is controlled by our innate, nonverbal repertoire. Only if verbal behavior is (like food or sex) a reinforcer, is it under operant control.
We receive more positive reinforcement during the early stages of our overt verbal development than in the later phases of our lives. Moreover, as we mature, our verbal behavior recedes to a covert level. Thus, most of our verbal behavior occurs as private speech, commonly referred to as thinking. Furthermore, it is believed that reinforcement is no longer needed when we get older. All of this presumably prepares for being able to navigate our world in which NVB is everywhere, but SVB is happening only accidentally, momentarily and sporadically. At the early stages of development verbal behavior is under operant control, but during later phases of our lives, our verbal behavior is often, sadly, way too often, controlled by classical conditioning. Surely, becoming literate is all about becoming verbal, but while we are engaging in NVB, we are less verbal than we believe to be. Only in SVB can we be fully verbal.
