August 14, 2015

August 14, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

This writing is my fourteenth response to “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by Nygaard and Pisoni (1998).  The authors conclude in the discussion section of their paper with “Although lexical and indexical information are arguably higher order aspects of spoken language, they may nevertheless behave like lower level perceptual dimensions” This finding supports this writer’s SVB/NVB distinction, which makes us realize that when we talk, our sound is congruent with and supporting what we say or incongruent with and therefore distracting from what we say. We  have SVB in the case of the former and NVB in the case of the latter. 

It is important that the speaker pays attention to how he or she sounds. If the distinction between SVB and NVB is not made by the speaker, as is always the case in NVB, it can only be made by the listener in response to the speaker. If this listener becomes the new speaker and is also not listening to him or herself, as is always the case in NVB, the previous speaker is not going to be convinced by someone who is not listening to him or herself, to listen to him or herself. Consequently, communicators in NVB struggle to get each other’s attention, but they are not paying attention to themselves. 

By focusing on the speaker and the listener separately, the researchers omit what is the most important aspect of verbal behavior: the speaker-as-own-listener. The SVB/NVB distinction only makes sense in the light of the speaker-as-own-listener. As long as listening to others is over-emphasized, listening to ourselves is not getting the attention. Listening to ourselves while we speak requires our attention, as the speaker who makes others listen to him or to her, but who is not listening to himself, will be talking at others, but not with them and will therefore still not feel listened to.

We only feel listened to when we listened to ourselves while we speak.

“Although all listeners received the same amount of training, only listeners who could successfully identify the talkers’ voices explicitly showed a benefit in the word recognition test.” These researchers did not think of training the talkers in identifying their own voices. The speaker, who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, who is responsive to the listener within his or her own skin, has a very different effect on the listener outside of his or her skin. Such a SVB speaker is easier to listen to as the listener doesn’t need to differentiate between “talker-specific” and “listener-specific” variables, because the talker has already done that.

“Detailed representations of linguistic events appear to be retained in longterm memory, and linguistic categories may consist of collections of instance-specific exemplars rather than some type of abstract prototypical summary representation in which aspects of spoken language such as talker’s voice (and speaking rate, vocal effort, etc., for that matter)

are eliminated.” Only during NVB the listener is forced by the speaker to “eliminate” certain “aspects of spoken language such as talker’s voice.” And, even if the listener, who became a speaker, listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, as in SVB, and tries to explain to the former speaker that he or she was not listening to him or herself, this seldom will actually result in this speaker beginning to listen to him or herself. Most likely this listener, who became a speaker, looses his or her SVB and switches back to NVB, while trying to talk with the other NVB speaker.

The NVB speaker is hardly ever really in the position to give up his or her dominance, which is exerted and maintained by his or her NVB, as he or she is only capable of listening to him or herself if the situation is created in which he or she can do that. In other words, only when he or she is given the adequate kind of environmental support will he or she be able to shift from NVB to SVB. The fact that an annoyed listener may experience a NVB speaker as aversive and then tries to change this speaker’s behavior by talking with him or her, doesn’t mean this listener is capable of providing the speaker with what he or she needs to be able to listen to him or herself while he or she speaks and produce SVB.  

The following statement is made by a SVB speaker, because only such a speaker is capable of expressing him or herself in such a fashion that the listener is not forced to separate “talker information” from “lexical information.” The SVB speaker possesses a skill which the NVB speaker simply doesn’t have, because the NVB speaker was never reinforced on previous occasions for listening to him or herself while he or she spoke. Thus, the NVB speaker is incapable of producing the behavior which was never taught to him or her to begin with. Now read the following statement: “Not only is talker information retained along with lexical information, but these two dimensions do not appear to be separable or independent in perception and attention.” Stated more accurately, listening and speaking behaviors “are two dimensions” which are inseparable as in “perception and attention” they occur simultaneously. The “memory” of a listener is a function of the extent to which his or her listening and speaking and also his reading and writing behaviors became joined. In NVB there is a separation between the speaker and the listener and between the writer and the reader.

“There are important processing consequences for a shared or detailed representation of linguistic events. One of these consequences is that perceptual learning of voice identity can result in talker-specific sensitivity to linguistic content.” If we like how a speaker sounds, we are more likely to learn from him or her, but if we are repulsed by the speaker’s voice, our attention will be drawn to how he or she sounds instead of to what he or she says. This has nothing to do with “processing”, but with whether the listener experiences the speaker's voice as reinforcing or punishing. 

Our nervous systems respond phylogenetically, that is, we respond in the only way that is biologically possible, and ontogenetically, how we have been conditioned during our lifetime. Based on our behavioral history the speaker-as-own-listener is our worst enemy or our best friend. Writing something without reading it makes absolutely no sense and saying something and without listening to it is a symptom of insanity. All insanity is based on the separation of the speaker from the listener and all of our problems with perception and attention can be reduced to this.