November 15, 2015

November 15, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Student, 

This is a second response to the paper “Seeing with ears: Sightless human’s perception of dog bark provides a test for structural rules in vocal communication” (2009) by C.Molnar, P.Pongracz and A. Miklosi. Before I will further comment on this paper, I first want to tell you about the wonderful day I had yesterday with my wife Bonnie. We had our thirty year marriage anniversary. In the morning, we went for a nice walk in the park. Then we went shopping and bought two honeysuckle plants, which I planted in our garden. It was a day filled with joy and peace. I had a wonderful skype conversation with Arturo, my behaviorist friend from Colombia. It was so nice to share our happiness with him. After a lovely lunch and some wine I took a blissful nap, while Bonnie was watching her favorite show on TV.

In the evening, I was interviewed by Sue Hilderbrand. She has her own talk-show called “The Real Issue” at KZFR, the local radio station. The interview went very well and my message of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) had a big impact on her and on many others. Ben, a friend of Sue, also joined the conversation and was explaining in his own words what I was talking about. Jake, an environmentalist, who was to be interviewed after me, also said many validating things about our need for SVB. Sue, who is involved in local politics, said that she would definitely have me in her show again. Bonnie was reading a book in bed when I came home. It was cozy to join her. I also read a little, but soon I was overcome by sleep. I slept well and long and had a beautiful dream about the history of my knowledge. I was feeling so grateful that I almost started to cry, but I didn’t. I slept much longer than usual as I was having these positive emotions. 

My body feels rested and my thoughts about the distinction between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are clear. To my knowledge nobody has analyzed spoken communication in the way I do. There are immense implications of my analysis. Sue, who interviewed me, brought up the issue of fear for being open. I said that our fear is not for SVB, but for NVB or rather, our fear signifies the absence of SVB. She agreed. We talked about how SVB public speech causes SVB private speech and how such SVB private speech allows us to recognize, avoid and ultimately prevent NVB public speech. Jake, the environmentalist, believed  it is because of NVB that our environment is in decline and Ben said we must learn to talk about difficult issues with SVB.

In spite of the fact that humans have language, our spoken communication is very much like that of animals. “Perhaps the best known examples can be found among alarm calls, which refer to different types of predators of a given species and elicit type-specific avoidance behavior(Diana monkeys, Cercopithecus diana , Zuberbuhler, Noe, & Seyfarth, 1997; suricata, Suricata suricatta , Manser, Seyfarth, & Cheney, 2002; prairie dog, Cynomys spp., Slobodchikoff, Fischer, & Shapiro, 1986; chicken, Gallus gallus, Evans, Evans, & Marler, 1993).” Like monkeys, we too produce “alarm calls”, that is, we produce NVB; like prairie dogs, we too produce NVB sounds “which refer to different types of predators”; and, like chickens, our sound too changes when we are threatened by predators, who produce NVB. NVB is produced by those who threaten as well as those who are threatened. NVB is the language of threat, fear, intimidation and aggression. SVB, on the other hand, is the language of affiliation, sociality and peace. Unfortunately, “These calls are” mistakenly “considered as functionally referential.” Animal researchers anthropomorphize by thinking that humans are different from animals as they have language. Although we have language, we are, biologically speaking, more similar than different than animals. 

As we misunderstand our verbal behavior, as we believe to be causing it, we explain animal behavior in terms of reference too. Presumably something inside of the animal, the “caller’s inner state”, causes it to call. Consequently, ethologists wrongly continue to “emphasize animal communication is more than simply sending signals about the caller’s inner state: Showing the proper behavioral response to a referential signal also requires learning from the receivers.” Let’s leave out “a referential signal” as it doesn’t explain anything. “The proper behavioral response” only “requires learning” or conditioning due to environmental stimuli, in other words, behavior is selected by consequences. Another way of describing the process, in which the caller, the speaker, learns from the receiver, the listener, is by emphasizing the two can’t exist separate from each other. 

The caller doesn’t only learn from the receiver, but the receiver also learns from the caller. Calling and receiving are bi-directional rather than uni-directional phenomena. These authors misrepresent the research by Owren and Rendall (1997), which points out that this whole information processing business is wrong. The organism-environment relationship is sufficient for explaining behavior. Their ““affect-conditioning” model for nonhuman primate (and many other animal) vocalizations”, also accounts for human vocalizations and doesn’t involve a self.  

“The most effective signals are” NOT “those that directly affect the receivers’ inner state”, and consequently the behavior, but those that directly change “their behavior.” This phenomenon can be experienced when our interaction changes from SVB to NVB. If we pay attention to how we sound while we speak, we immediately notice that as soon as a threat occurs this changes the sound of our voice. We are used to talking about feelings as inner states and that is why we are so bad at expressing emotions. As long as we continue to think emotions represent some imaginary inner state, we have an inaccurate account of how we are immediately affected by our environment, that is, by each other. There is a distinction between contingency-governed and rule-governed behavior. Due to language we overestimate the importance of rule-governed behavior, behavior that is function of verbal instruction, and underestimate the importance of contingency-governed behavior, behavior that is a function of other people.

Not surprisingly, these researchers don’t go into Owren’s & Rendall’s (1997) “Affect-Conditioning Model.” They mention it only in passing, but they don’t and can’t acknowledge the importance of this model for human interaction. Similar to primates, during human interaction “responses of receivers can be unconditioned, when the response is being produced by the signal itself, and conditioned, when the receiver’s response is a result of past social interactions between them—that is, where the caller elicited affective responses in the receiver through other means." They mention here the difference that behaviorist make between contingency-shaped versus rule-governed behavior. However, they completely misrepresent the “Affect Conditioning Model” by using it to validate research which was debunked by Owren and Rendall. The whole issue of “referentiality” is bogus.

Nothing can stop these authors from writing “This latter approach [Affect Induction Model], especially in nonhuman animal species, is not far from the definition of functional referentiality and gives further support for those opinions, which argue beside the dual (affective/referential) nature of many of the animal signal” (e.g.,Seyfarth& Cheney, 2003). Owren and Rendall wouldn’t give any support to this definition of “functional referentiality,” which is based on the debunked “Information Processing Model”. This is a classic example of what is described in entry-level psychology books as confirmation bias, “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities”. They hang on to their NVB of the “referential/affect-conditioning paradigm.”