July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is the sixth writing which includes findings that were reported by the animal researchers Owren and Rendall in their paper “An affect conditioning model of nonhuman primate vocal signaling” (1997). 

Today’s writing will again only be one page long. It continues yesterday’s discovery that ‘self-listening’ versus ‘other-listening’ is very different for primates than for humans. As humans have public speech, they also have private speech, but as primates don’t have public speech, they also don’t have private speech. 

‘Self-listening’ or “speaker-as-own-listener” (SAOL) requires private speech.  Humans have SAOL with words, but primates have it without words. This is not to say that humans can’t have SAOL without words, they can. 

There is a big difference between human SAOL with or without words. We commonly perceive SAOL without words as quieting down, while SAOL with words is equated with getting upset. 

Language occurs on a continuum; on one end we are very expressive, then less expressive; towards one end there is lots of private speech, but at the end there no private speech at all. 

Language naturally recedes from an overt to a covert level while we grow up. As children we are usually very talkative as we are given words for everything we see, hear, feel, eat, touch, remember, but as we get older, our language is automatically reinforcing as it recedes into our private speech.

Since humans experience Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) public speech or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) public speech, their private speech will always reflect the amount of SVB and NVB they have been conditioned by. 

Those who have experienced more NVB than SVB will be unable to have SAOL without words, while those who had more SVB than NVB, are not as impaired by or identified with their language. Moreover, those who have SAOL without words, only they can hear their own sound.