August 15, 2015

August 15, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

This writing is my fifteenth response to “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by Nygaard and Pisoni (1998).  The problem with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is that it is disembodied communication. During NVB communicators become like talking heads which have no awareness at about their body. Not surprisingly, we get stuck with “abstract, symbolic units” whenever “talker-specific sensitivity” supersedes “linguistic content.” It is important to realize that this is done by the threatening speaker, who exploits the fact that the listener can be imprisoned by and consequently controlled by words. Another way of explaining this is that in NVB the listeners fail to acknowledge that the speaker’s descriptions are not the described; they don’t realize  that the speaker speaks with what Native Americans have called ‘a forked tongue.’

People who are not in touch with their feelings are always troubled by that. They long to be in touch with what they feel, but can be deluded by those who pretend to be in touch with what they feel. We describe our emotions inaccurately and get easily trapped by words which take us away from instead of get us in closer to our feelings. Such words may be part of some song, ceremony or text that was presented by some singer, poet, writer, actor, priest or guru, who supposedly knows better than the listener how to express him or herself. NVB is the kind of talking in which we can’t help but fake our emotions. When we don’t really feel our emotions, that is, when we have no awareness of our body, we cannot describe our emotions. When the speaker attains Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), however, because he or she listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, although he or she may still have to look for the right words, he or she is quite capable of accurately expressing what he or she feels. Stated differently, the NVB speaker is constantly putting words into the mouth of the listener, but in SVB the speaker has his or her unique way of expressing him or herself. 

The authors write in the discussion part of their paper that “as overall intelligibility of the stimulus set deteriorated, listeners were more likely to bring to bear talker-specific information to aid in their transcription performance.” The authors focused on how the listener deals with the speaker, but how the speaker deals with listener was not mentioned by them. The above example describes NVB, because “talker-specific” variables deteriorate the “overall intelligibility of the stimulus” due to the hierarchical differences between the speaker and the listener. When the speaker exerts power over the listener he or she expresses NVB. Under such circumstances the listener is coerced, while he or she is experiencing a fight, flight or freeze response. Such involuntary responses take the attention away from what is being said. As a result, the NVB speaker can get away with superficiality, mediocrity, lack of knowledge and unaccountability and they can continue to brag, intimidate and be insincere.

 

Consequently, “listeners may use talker information to a greater extent in listening situations that are degraded” because they are forced and have no other choice. The “vocal attributes” of the speaker that are most familiar to the listener are those to which the listener responds innately. To recognize the sound of danger or safety in the speaker’s voice is not a cognitive, but an innate pre-verbal behavior. Although often overruled by language, this phylogenetic mechanism is still there in humans and widespread across many species. A listener’s “familiarity with a talker’s voice” is a nonverbal phenomenon. The “cocktail party” effect, which occurs when a listener is able to focus his or her auditory attention on the voice of one particular speaker, while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as the voices of others who are also talking, is a mostly a nonverbal phenomenon. 


As the example makes clear, understanding a speaker in a noisy room depends on the listener’s familiarity with a talker’s sound. If my hypothesis is correct, listeners will be able to understand SVB speakers in a noisy room much better than NVB speakers, because the SVB speaker focuses on his or her own sound while he or she speaks. In NVB the attention of the speaker is not going to his or her sound, but to what he or she is saying. It has been  the experience of those who are familiar with the distinction between SVB and NVB that one can have SVB in noisy environment just as easily as in a silent environment. Noise in itself is not the point, but threat is. Noise can  facilitate the stimuli (Establishing Operation) which make it more likely that we will listen to ourselves while we speak.

The SVB/NVB distinction predicts that sentences will be "a rich source of talker-specific information” and “that learners are sensitive to the additional talker information in sentence-length utterances.” However, the distinction between SVB and NVB brings our attention to the kind of “talker-specific information” which only the listener deals with. Whether the listener knows it or not, is aware of it or not, recognizes it or not, he or she will always respond differently to a SVB speaker than to a NVB speaker. The NVB speaker, because of his or her demands is bound to speak shorter sentences and give orders than the SVB speaker. As the NVB speaker provides less “talker-specific information”, he or she is more difficult to understand. “Sentences appear to provide information about talker-specific acoustic–phonetic implementation strategies in addition to higher order information about idiosyncratic prosody, rhythm, and meter. During training, listeners apparently exploit all sources of information to help them learn the set of voices in this task.”

This research provides straightforward evidence for the distinction between SVB and NVB as the “results confirm the importance of the role of talker information in spoken language processing.” Listeners cannot afford to become “familiar” with a NVB speaker, as they have to remain on guard. They can and they will only be able to relax with a SVB speaker. Thus, the negative or positive affect induced in the listener by the speaker always either hinders or enhances the listener’s ability to understand what the speaker is saying. “Familiarity with talker-specific information not only aids speech perception when higher level, top-down strategies are limited, but also when several sources of linguistic information are available to the listener.” This interpretation is in my opinion incorrect because the authors are not aware about the distinction between SVB and NVB. These “higher level, top-down strategies are limited” only in NVB, but they are always stimulated and enhanced by the SVB speaker. Indeed, the NVB speaker elicits bottom-up processes, which impair and diminish the listener’s ability to make use of “top-down strategies.” Thus, only in SVB are “several sources of linguistic information available to the listener.” Stated more bluntly, the NVB speaker forces the listener into a sense of dissociation.  

“These findings suggest that the use of talker-specific information is

important in general in the perception and comprehension of spoken language and is used in conjunction with other sources of information to derive a linguistic interpretation of a talker’s utterance.” Only the SVB speaker can facilitate interaction, because only the SVB speaker continues to induce and maintain positive emotions in the listener. Amazingly, we haven’t yet gotten clear on the simple fact that as long as speakers induce negative emotions in listeners they undermine interaction. It is important to recognize that although the NVB speaker induces negative emotions in the listener, he or she isn’t experiencing negative emotions in him or herself. 


The NVB speaker is only capable of feeling his or her own negative emotions once he or she is no longer capable of dominating others. As long as he or she is able to dominate others, the NVB speaker is totally unaware about his or her own feelings, but comes across as guarded, pretentious and predetermined. The “other sources of information to derive a linguistic interpretation of a talker’s utterance” are only available with a SVB speaker, who allows for a fair amount of spontaneity. The NVB speaker always narrows down the conversation, while the SVB speaker broadens it. This is not to say that the SVB speaker prevents the listener from focusing. To the contrary, the SVB speaker creates a better, effortless focus in the listener.