July 21, 2015

July 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is the thirteenth 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).

“The affect-conditioning model suggests that nonhuman primate vocalizations need not have “meaning” in the sense of transmitting referential information from a sender to a receiver.” 

Research on nonhuman primates brings us in touch with “the central role of affect” in vocal production. This makes us pay attention to how we as humans sound while we speak. By studying “monkey and ape sounds” researchers have found, however, that although they are “homologous to spontaneous human emotional vocalizations” they “have little relation to spoken language.” Nevertheless, we can learn a valuable lesson from this research on primates: by paying attention to how they sound, we begin to recognize that they are influencing each other affectively. If we would pay attention to how we sound, we would find out why and how we are influencing each other emotionally while we speak with our voice. 

Moreover, we would only do so if we would recognize that how we sound has “little relation to spoken language.” We would only be inclined to pay attention to how we sound, if we are not too overly concerned about what we say. If all the attention goes to what we say, we get carried away by words and we don’t really listen to ourselves while we speak. Our sound of our voice changes as function of us being fixated on our words. 

The authors note that “Darwin argued for close connections between animal calling and the internal states that today might be called arousal, motivation, and emotion—which we will here collectively refer to as affect.” Think for a moment: to what extent does a person’s tone of voice arouse us to speak or to listen? What does we sound like when we motivate, encourage and support others to speak or to listen? And, what does someone’s voice make us feel, and thus talk and listen like?

July 20, 2015

July 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is the thirteenth 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).

I began to read this paper again just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. In primate as well as in human vocalization “if the sender is dominant to the receiver” the sender has “ample opportunity to pair negative calls with negative outcomes” and “can routinely induce and subsequently elicit conditioned affective responses.” 

These conditioned autonomic responses of the receiver are adaptive as the  receiver has learned to respond appropriately to “individually distinct vocalizations prior to attacking or otherwise frightening another animal.” Since “the identity of the sender is the most important predictor of upcoming events” this animal’s “individually distinctive acoustic cues play a primary role in mediating any conditioning that occurs.” 

How a dominant person sounds has an immediate physiological effect on the subordinate receiver, who recognizes the “salient, discrete cues to individual identity.” The vocalizations which are called “sonants and gruffs” by the authors, map directly onto human Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

Interestingly, “sonants and gruffs” can be used by both dominant ones  as well as subordinates “in order to elicit positive conditioned responses”.  A dominant primate produces these vocalizations to let the subordinate know that there is no need to be afraid because he or she only wants grooming. The subordinate one “should pair such calls with grooming or other positive outcomes when interacting with a dominant, thereby being able to elicit positive conditioned responses in that individual on other occasions.” 

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. 

July 18, 2015

July 18, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This is the eleventh 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).

Now that I have entered my writings of the missing days, I am ready to write about the paper. I am happy to be on track again. I surprised myself by accomplishing this with one-page entries, which came out pretty good. It also felt good to keep the title of this paper listed as  my writing remained under discriminative control of what I was reading in that paper. 

“The most basic proposal of our model is that individual primates use vocalizations to produce affective responses in conspecific receivers, thereby influencing subsequent behavior of those animals.” 

Apparently, I have been proposing this affect induction model ever since I discovered Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), two universal subclasses of vocal verbal behavior, which dovetails with and are explained by this research on primates.

As the “sorts of learning involved in habituation and Pavlovian conditioning are ubiquitous among animals and occur even in the simplest nervous systems, these principles appear to provide a promising starting point.” 

Hitler’s voice was not experienced as an aversive stimulus by the millions of people who saluted him with “Heil Hitler.” However, those who were occupied by the Nazis, they didn't feel his voice as inspiring and energizing.

July 17, 2015

July 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

 

This is the tenth 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).

This paper has made me think of influencing effects of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In SVB and in NVB the speaker speaks with an entirely different voice. 

In NVB the speaker speaks with Voice I, but in SVB the speaker speaks with Voice II. These two voices have diametrically opposing effects. With Voice I we frighten and intimidate others, but with Voice II we comfort and attract each other. 

We often don’t realize that we speak with Voice I and although we are unaware of the SVB/NVB distinction, we still like to think that we speak with Voice II, while in reality we speak with Voice I. 

When people are confronted with the fact that they produce NVB, they feel embarrassed. The reason they feel embarrassed is because they were unaware of how they sounded, they were not listening to themselves. 

While we speak it is easy to get stuck in predetermined behavior. NVB is the kind of talk in which nothing new is said. SVB, on the other hand, is made possible by the properly expressed sensitivity of the speaker. 

The SVB speaker never overwhelms the listener. If a speaker is him or herself not at ease with his or her own thought and emotions, he or she is bound to overwhelm the listener. Rather than experiencing his or her own emotions, such a speaker makes others experience his or her emotions. 

If a speaker is frustrated, confused, distracted, overwhelmed or stressed, he or she will elicit these emotions in others. In SVB, by contrast, the speaker is in touch with and in control of his or her own feelings and thoughts. 

The SVB speaker induces the same well-being in the listener as he or she is experiencing. In NVB, speakers use Voice I to externalize their feelings and thoughts. The NVB speaker controls the listener with negative sounds.