August 8, 2015

August 8, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my eight response to  “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by Nygaard and Pisoni (1998). “The human voice conveys a considerable amount of information about a speaker’s physical, social, and psychological characteristics, and these aspects of speech, referred to as indexical information, complement the processing of linguistic content during spoken communication.” 

A speaker’s voice produces Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and this “indexical information” about the speaker conveys to the listener, whether he or she is safe or not. Since there is no aversive stimulation of the listener by the speaker during SVB, SVB is the spoken communication of safety. In NVB, by contrast, the speaker’s voice is experienced as a noxious stimulus, which aversively affects the listener. 

During NVB the speaker threatens the listener. Only during SVB can these indexical effects be separated from the linguistic content, but during NVB they contradict the content or distract from it. As the listener is affectively influenced by the sound of the speaker’s voice, it is important to detect whether the speaker induces positive or negative emotions in the listener. 

Since each speaker is also his or her own listener, the speaker-as-own-listener must make sure whether he or she is not producing a sound with which he or she makes him or herself feel unsafe. It is hypothesized that the paranoid schizophrenic produces his or her own paranoid affect, that is, the covert speech of the paranoid schizophrenic is considered to be an effect of the overt NVB speech of others. Thus, NVB private speech is a result of NVB public speech. Moreover, the paranoid schizophrenic is believed to be stuck with his or her own negative self-talk, which distracts from and often completely negates public speech. Similarly, a bipolar person’s mania, a depressed person’s isolative behavior or an obsessed person’s fear of germs, is a function of NVB self-talk, which is conditioned by NVB public speech. 

The only way to remedy negative NVB self-talk, which, due to different phylogenetic, ontogenetic and cultural variables is expressed differently by different people, is to join listening and speaking behaviors, that is, to listen and speak simultaneously and to produce SVB. ‘Mental illness’ therefore is construed as a listener’s response to NVB, which can only be remediated by SVB in which an individual's listening and speaking behaviors are joined. 

In practice this means that the listener must be speaking in order to be able to hear him or herself. Based on the SVB/NVB distinction, the goal of every therapist should be to shape speaker-as-own-listener behaviors in patients. When given the opportunity to do so, that is, when appropriately stimulated to express him or herself, the ‘mentally ill’ listener will be again capable of recognizing if he or she experiences the speaker as threatening or not.  


“These psychological factors are readily perceived when anger, depression, or happiness is recognized in a speaker’s voice.” The fact that this listener’s ability is not learned and is causing all sorts of problems, which, from a behavioral perspective can be accounted for as the separation of speaking and listening behavior, has always been downplayed by the NVB speakers. 


Many so-called ‘mental health problems’ would never exist if speakers, therapists and psychiatrists included, would notice how their coercive voice negatively affects the listener. “In everyday conversation, the indexical properties of the speech signal become quite important as perceivers use this information to govern their own speaking styles and responses.” 


When a listener is repeatedly exposed to or involved in NVB he or she will be conditioned to produce NVB. ”From more permanent characteristics of a speaker’s voice that provide information about identity to the short-term vocal changes related to emotion or “tone of voice,” indexical information contributes to the overall interpretation of a speaker’s utterance.” 


The meaning of what the speaker says is found most importantly in how he or she sounds. If it doesn’t resemble how the listener was conditioned to sound it will make no sense to him or her. NVB has conditioned listeners with coercive behavioral control. A listener thus conditioned would only be able to respond to a forceful and demanding voice of a NVB speaker.