July 19, 2015

July 19, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is the twelfth 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). 

Currently, I read more than I write. I find the research on primates by Owren and Rendall, who have produced many papers together, very interesting as it relates to the phylogenetic origins of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Before I go back to reviewing their paper, I want to let the reader know I am sitting in a coffee shop downtown. I just saw a homeless person walking by. He was gesturing wildly and raising his voice to attract attention and pity from the people who were sitting outside on the patio. They gave him some money. When he was about to cross the street and had to wait for the traffic light, he pulled out a cell phone from his pocket, looked at it intently, texted and then put it back. It surprised me that a guy like that would still have an I-Phone. Although he was dressed in dirty clothes, he suddenly seemed like a normal person waiting for the traffic light to turn green. 

This homeless person is a good illustration of what these primate researchers found: subordinate primates produce noxious vocalizations, such as screams and shrieks, to influence dominant one’s in order to deflect attacks. The ‘attack’ this disheveled guy, who probably is schizophrenic, wards off with his loud symptoms, is that people judge him and stigmatize him as mentally ill. The dominant, normal ones respond to his noxious behavior, by giving him some dollars. They get rid of him while still feeling good about themselves, probably a little less guilty as they have supposedly helped him. Nobody seems to realize that these presumably generous, positive behaviors and these disturbing, strange behaviors are related. 

One would have to know about primate vocalizations to be able to make such an analysis. To diagnose a person as a schizophrenic is to obfuscate the environment with which such a person interacts and to remain oblivious about how this environment creates and maintains his odd behavior. 

Something else really struck me. Before the person had crossed the street, he did a little act, as if he was acting for everyone to see that he was crazy. He talked at the sky and waved his arms at the cars that were passing by. Having probably more than only my attention, he then started rummaging through a garbage can. He reached in there, picked out a plastic cup, held it in front of his face and showed how disgusted he was by this item and threw it back. Then he demonstratively shrugged his shoulders, as if saying, “I can’t eat or drink this crap” and walked away seemingly angered. 

Research on primate vocalizations suggests that “callers use vocalizations to elicit affective responses in others, thereby altering behavior of these individuals.” Interestingly, the guy didn’t talk a word with those people who gave him some money. He didn't need to and so he acted non-verbally. 

In working with people with mental disorder it has occurred to me many times that they mainly act non-verbally. Sadly, this is how they get their needs met. Most mental health clients have yet to become speakers, but as long as they are able to use their vocalizations to get what they need, their behavior is not going to change. Similarly, when parents of autistic children keep reading into their children’s nonverbal behavior what they want, they are not stimulating them to become verbal and thus they actually increase and maintain their children’s autistic behaviors. 

“Responses can either be unconditioned, being produced directly by the signal itself, or conditioned, resulting from past interactions in which the sender both called and produced affective responses in the receiver through other means.” 

From the successful behavior of the presumably schizophrenic man it is apparent that he primarily relied on the unconditioned responses that were “produced by the signal itself.” As a subordinate sender, he had “little power over a given receiver” and he “also had little opportunity to use [his] calls as predictors of negative affective responses.” In other words, he was actually well-behaved, in that he didn’t threaten the people with his antics. 

On the other hand, he was able to influence them with his vocal nonverbal behavior precisely in such a way as to elicit their pity. Perhaps, both the givers of money as well as the homeless person had a Catholic back ground, due to which he was able to exploit their guilt feelings. If that was the case, he was capitalizing on a conditioned response.  It is also possible that the givers of money were culturally conditioned to give money to the poor and it is likely that the homeless man was aware of it and skillfully played into this with his Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As this example clearly demonstrates, direct and indirect effects can occur together. 

Vocalizations such as “squeaks, shrieks and screams” with which nonhuman primates elicit unconditioned effects in the receiver map beautifully onto NVB.  To be effective, unpleasant sounds “should occur in acoustically variable streams – thereby maximizing unconditioned affective responses in the receiver while minimizing habituation effects.” A new account emerges of the positive symptoms and treatment of this schizophrenic man, who was not talking with real people, but only with unseen others. 

The variability in symptoms is always a combined function of ontogenetic, phylogenetic and cultural contingencies. I have worked in psychiatric hospitals where people were hospitalized because they were a danger to themselves or others. When I told people that I was teaching them to listen to themselves while they speak, they instantly felt it and we had remarkably normal conversations because I facilitated SVB. All I did was to shift their attention from NVB to SVB. I simply explained that when we sound good, we feel good and we don’t need to try to feel good. I let them listen to my sound. They recognized that my sound was making them feel good and consequently they began to sound and feel good too.