Saturday, January 14, 2017

August 27, 2015



August 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my tenth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010).  “Auditory-motor sympathy has also been shown in humans for non-verbal vocalizations, where the sound of non-verbal exclamations
of positive affect potentiates in listeners activity in motor areas involved in facial expressions associated with producing the same positively-toned exclamations (Warren et al., 2006).” This is evidence from neuroscience for how we perceive each other while we speak. Although we speak verbally, our sound is “a nonverbal vocalization.” If the speaker’s positive affect is expressed, it affects the listener differently than when the speaker’s negative affect is expressed. The message is perceived differently when the voice of the speaker induces a different emotion in the listener.

“Gallese et al. (2004) have proposed viscero-motor mirror circuits as a foundation for direct emotional resonance via simulation of at least some of the felt emotions of others.” There are many implications for this “vocal-affective influence.” If we stay with the fact that we experience positive or negative emotions when we hear someone speak, we recognize that we either engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). These two subsets of vocal verbal behavior occur in every verbal community around the world. Regardless of whether one speaks Chinese or Arabic one will either experience SVB or NVB. Similarly to listening to different languages, when the listener listens to SVB, that listener is not experiencing NVB, but when the listener is listening to NVB, he or she is not experiencing SVB. Likewise, when the listener is familiar with the Dutch language but not with the French language, he or she will not be able to understand the French language. Likewise, when the listener is familiar with NVB, but not with SVB, he or she will not be able to understand SVB.  Without the environmental stimulation by some SVB speaker, a teacher, the listener cannot become a SVB speaker by him or herself. 

“Given the reciprocally integrated neurophysiological networks
for perception and action, and in so far as vocal signals are reliably driven by emotional states in signalers, then the process by which listeners perceive emotion-laden signals includes the capacity for experiencing some similar emotions and thus also potentiating behavioral responses that might naturally flow from that shared experience.” The authors cautiously mention only “some similar emotions” potentiate behavioral responses, but once the SVB/NVB distinction is known, we recognize that each language actually consists of two languages and all emotions potentiate “behavioral response” that “naturally flow from that shared experience.” However, I would reserve phrases like “naturally flow” for SVB, as nothing flows in NVB, which is coerced. Only positive emotions flow. As we share the same negative emotions we continue to have NVB. Certainly, our shared anger, frustration, hatred and animosity results in behavioral responses which are different from those which only “naturally flow from” SVB. These predictable outcomes are lawful. If there is SVB we get another predictable outcome, and, if this outcome wasn’t obtained, this simply means that NVB must have prevented it. This is another way of looking at ourselves and each other. Things happen for a reason. When we find why they are happening, we find ways to change them. If we don’t know that the perpetuation of our problems was preceded and maintained by our NVB, if we don’t see any reason to decrease our NVB and increase our SVB, we are not going to be able to solve any of our problems. The solutions to our communication problems will only “naturally flow from” our shared positive affect. It cannot and will not result from our negative emotions. 

The question is really: are we going to speak the same language? Are we going to have SVB? If we have SVB, we find that SVB is the same in every language. Whether we get along with each other doesn’t depend on whether we speak Spanish or Swedish. Everywhere when people get along with each other they engage in SVB. SVB is a universal phenomenon, it transcends all our differences. “Empirical confirmation” of this type of process will only be obtained if we are going to engage in it. Writing and reading about it is not the same as experiencing it. Experiencing SVB is the only way in which we can individually verify its validity. Reading about it will not and cannot provide this experience. Also, a “neurophysiological account” is not really needed to prove what we already know through direct experience: “affective and behavioral resonance in humans such as contagious laughter, contagious crying and comfort-seeking.” We need a SVB way of talking, which makes us familiar with our emotions and more capable of expressing them accurately. NVB can be defined as our failed attempts to express our emotions. We cannot wait for “empirical confirmation” to get better at expressing what we feel. The “vocal-affective influence” is there whether we know it or not. Although we may have a lot of trouble because of this, unconsciously, we still experience our own and each other’s emotions.

The authors argue in favor of “vocal-affective bootstrapping of complex communication.” This is opposed to the long-held, reigning Chomskyan view that language learning “must be governed by some innate coding of its deep organizational properties in a special language module in the brain (Chomsky, 1957). Such a view disregards that “speech sounds, as physical signals, influence attentional and affective systems of listeners in ways that might promote language acquisition.” This could mean we learn about SVB, a different language than NVB, the language which we had accepted as ours. Not surprisingly, Chomsky’s voice incites frustration in most of his listeners. Even though he wishes to reduce violence and oppression, his sound has an aversive effect on listeners, who think that this is okay. A similar effect is created by others who adamantly try to change the world.  Amy Goodmans, Rush Limbaughs, Clintons, Popes, Dalai Lamas, Doctor Phils all mainly have NVB and teach people to have NVB. They know how to attract the attention, but are unaware of the SVB/NVB distinction. All of them are supposedly simplifying things. Fact is, their NVB complicates things. Only SVB can simplify things, because it includes rather than excludes complexity. Supposedly, if we listen to these people we obtain the solution to our problems. Nothing is further from the truth. Only a different way of talking is going to solve our problems and this way of talking is not demonstrated by any of these people. They cannot demonstrate it as they don’t know about it. Of course, they have all experienced SVB and they have some familiarity with it, but this hasn’t resulted into a persistent adn skillful focus on the “vocal-affective influence” of the speaker on the listener. Such a focus is needed to achieve and maintain SVB.

August 26, 2015



August 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my ninth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010).  I have now arrived at that part of the paper in which the authors talk about “affective and behavioral resonance.” Of course, the is just a figure of speech. They don’t talk about it, they write about it, but we say that they talk about it while we are referring to their writing, and we, the readers, don’t say anything either, as we only read about it. I already pointed out this phenomenon in my previous writings, but it can’t be addressed often enough that there are serious problems involved in our interchanging of speaking and listening with writing and reading. These different realms are often assumed to interact, when in reality they don’t.  Many things have been written with the assumption that it would make a difference in how we talk and that it would change our behavior, but it didn’t. It didn’t because it couldn’t. It couldn’t because reading doesn’t affect how we are talking.  

What does change our way of talking is how we sound. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the speaker produces a sound which expresses his or her wellbeing. When speakers express wellbeing, we have a different interaction than when speakers have a sound which signifies stress, fear, anxiety, frustration or guardedness, in other words: negative emotions. Under such circumstances we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  The listeners are always affected by such speakers, whether they know it or not, recognize it or not, express or are allowed to express it or not. During NVB the speaker is on automatic pilot as he or she doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. Since the NVB speaker doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she isn’t the least interested in how the listener is affected by this. Stated differently, the “affective resonance” that these authors are wring about is always prevented by NVB. It only occurs during SVB, that is, when NVB has been stopped. 

“Affective and behavioral resonance” during spoken communication is a real possibility which, unfortunately, we often miss out on as we don’t know how to stop NVB. The problem is not SVB, but the problem is NVB. NVB is difficult to extinguish as we keep triggering each other into it. Also, we are not having NVB because we want to have it; we have NVB as we don’t know how to have SVB. Once we know the difference between SVB and NVB, we know we want to have SVB. As long as we seem to want NVB, the difference between SVB and NVB has not yet been discriminated. 

SVB equals “affective and behavioral resonance.” If circumstances are such that it can happen, it will happen. Moreover, it will happen effortlessly. It “emerges from the increasing realization that the neurophysiological organization of behavior depends on reciprocal influence between systems guiding the production of behavior and systems involved in perceiving, interpreting and responding to the behavior of others.” The “increasing realization” occurs because of the repeated differentiation between SVB and NVB. One cannot be known without the other and lack of understanding about NVB therefore prevents us from having more SVB.

Especially while we speak, it becomes apparent that “behavior depends on reciprocal influence.” In SVB, the speaker is his or her own listener. As the speaker and the listener are one within each person, the speaker and the listener can also be one in SVB in another person. This other person can be a speaker as well as a listener. SVB is characterized by turn-taking in which the speaker can become the listener and the listener can become the speaker. In NVB, by contrast, there is no turn-taking. In NVB the speaker and the listener roles are determined by the speaker, who coerces the listener with his or her uni-directional way of talking. In SVB, however, the speaker invites the listener to speak, so that there can be bi-directional interaction.  

Since “neurophysiological organization of behavior depends on reciprocal influence between systems”, we are dysregulated when this “reciprocal influence between systems” is made impossible by our NVB. In NVB the speaker not only dysregulates others (listeners), but also him or herself.     
"The landmark finding on this front was the discovery of mirror and canonical neuron systems in primate brains which are activated both by seeing an object, or seeing an action performed by another individual,
and by acting on that same object, or performing the same action oneself."

Mirror neurons are believed to play an important role in recognizing what the main character in a movie is feeling and in predicting what they are going to do.  Just by look and listening, our neurobiology has evolved to give us direct access to the same roller coaster of experiences that the main character is experiencing, “This perceptuo-motor integration generates an unconscious behavioral resonance between individuals via incipient “motor sympathy” for one another’s actions.” We experience feelings of joy, stress, suffering, anger and fear as we see and hear what others are going through.

“The effects have been shown to include visuomotor sympathy for certain communicative gestures in primates (Ferrari et al., 2003) and for facial expressions of emotions in humans (Carr et al., 2003 ; Hennenlotter et al., 2005). They have also been shown to extend beyond the visuo-motor system. For example, auditory-motor mirror neurons that integrate the sound of an act with the behavior required to generate it have been reported in non-human primates (Kohler et al., 2002 ; Keysers et al., 2003 ).”

There has to be congruence between what we say and how we say it as without integration we can't make any sense. During NVB in which this integration is lacking there are many problems. SVB solves these problems as it establishes and maintains congruence between what we say and how we say it. Once we know the SVB/NVB distinction, we recognize which sounds and gestures belong to either one of these subsets of vocal behavior. No gesture or sound belongs to both. It doesn’t make any evolutionary sense to keep making sounds and gestures which originate in survival, but this is what we do during NVB. Once we know the SVB/NVB distinction, we realize that, indeed, mankind’s survival is at stake and that NVB surely paves the way for our demise. Only SVB integrates what we say with how we say it. NVB prevents that as it turns us against our own biology.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

August 25, 2015



August 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my eight response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). “A socially influential animal has the opportunity to use a listener’s own learning processes to create vocal “leverage” over its affective states and behavior.” This puts me as the originator of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in a unique position. As a teacher and speaker, I am able to create vocal “leverage” over the student’s affective states and behavior. Moreover, I can teach students to acquire this behavior.

As I was and still am involved in singing, music and poetry, I have “the ability to induce differentiated affective outcomes” because of my use of “subtly different call types.”I am able to produce alarming as well as soothing call types. My voice stands out from others and people have repeatedly told me this. Since I know about the SVB/NVB distinction, I am no longer affected by the alarm calls that are coming from those who don’t know about this distinction. “The threat calls of subordinate animals will generally be of little affective consequence for dominants.”

Although I don’t consider myself as a “dominant” animal, I am one by virtue of my knowledge about SVB. Many calls have no effect on me, because I immediately recognize them as NVB and I don’t get involved. “Hence, the capacity to induce learned affect in others depends on the identity of the caller vis à vis the recipient.” I basically leave NVB speakers alone and they leave me alone. “This functional requirement might help to explain why the variety of calls used in such face-to-face contexts in different primate species have regularly proven to contain clear cues to caller identity when such cues have otherwise seemed entirely redundant in these contexts.” My notion of identity is about how speakers sound. Simply stated, if we sound ‘good’, we feel ‘good.’ We don’t make ourselves sound good or feel good. If we do that, we are not sounding or feeling good. Our natural voice always expresses our well-being.

Since sounding good is my identity, I respond effectively to those who sound threatening, intimidating, overwhelming and upsetting. My ability to  recognize these aversively-sounding NVB speakers never fails and affects my behavior. Initially, I felt always influenced and troubled by NVB, but now that I have come to understand that I don’t cause my own behavior, that there is no me, who causes me to be the way I am and to act as I do, I realize I can only sound good and be myself, under certain circumstances and with certain people. 

“In the social groups of many primate species, one’s influence on other group members hinges on individual identity and social status, and therefore simply announcing one’s identity vocally can also influence the affect and arousal of others.” Certainly, I influence others with the sound of my voice. It is as simple as that. Due to my influence, people experience SVB and the difference between SVB and NVB. My social status as an instructor and therapist allows me to do this. I am an “influential individual” whose “identity cues provide additional explicit opportunities to leverage the social behavior of others by controlling the behavioral sequelae that follow from vocal exchanges.” One semester or multiple therapy sessions provide “myriad opportunities for behavioral shaping through processes of conditioning and learning.” I feel fortunate to be in the situation in which I am able to do what I do best.

August 24, 2015



August 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my seventh response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). “In natural environments, an individual’s emotional response to events is a good heuristic to what aspects of the environment are important.” Thus, the listener responds differently depending on how the speaker sounds. The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) speaker induces positive emotions in the listener, while the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) speaker induces negative emotions. If people would have the chance, they would move away from the NVB speaker, but, unfortunately, this is often not the case as we don’t live “in natural environments.” 

“Affective learning” only occurs to the extent that we are free to move away from noxious-sounding speakers. If this is not impossible, as it so often is, we are conditioned by negative emotion-inducing voices. Such NVB voices “induce powerful autonomic responses in listeners”, but don’t “effectively serve also to highlight or tag salient events in the world, and thereby support additional learning about them.” To the contrary, ongoing NVB prevents learning because it elicits fight-flight response without the possibility of escape. I think that NVB is traumatizing, disempowering and self-defeating.

Vervet monkeys would never have been able to develop their typical alarm call system if their vocalizations were not followed by effective escape responses. “They produce a small number small number of different alarm vocalizations that are specific to the different major classes of predator that prey on them, and each predator requires the monkeys to engage a functionally different escape response.” However, only with ‘experienced’ adult listeners do these alarm calls elicit different responses “as though the calls themselves encoded referentially specific, or semantic, information about the type of predator encountered, similar to the way human words function." Unless the infant monkeys are taught by more mature family members how to respond appropriately to these different calls, they will not be able to learn how to do it. “Predator-naive infant vervets do not respond in adult-like fashion with differentiated escape responses to the different alarm calls.” Although they are born with an innate startle response and different alarm calls “preserve a common set of affect-inducing acoustic features”, only “over time, do infants’ responses begin to differentiate into the more adult-like repertoire of escape options.” During this time they must be exposed to and be conditioned by behavior of conspecifics, who they can see and hear. For vervet monkeys, alarm calls serve to escape from predators. “The powerful effects that the alarm calls of vervets have from the very start on attentional and affective systems likely serve to  tag the significance of these events for naive infants and promote additional learning about the different predators involved and the specific behavioral responses that follow and are appropriate to them.”

Take note that NVB is linked to survival. SVB can only be learned over time, as a result of the fact that there was safety and stability and at least for some time no need to struggle for survival. The authors state that “learning effects like this that are scaffolded on a foundation of affect induction might be critically functional not only in non-intentional species including primates, but also in many other species.” Species which don’t behave (verbally) like humans, are still able to “instruct naïve infants about predators and other dangers (or other aspects of the local environments, e.g. appropriate food items)” by means of sound. Indeed, “such vocalizations promote additional learning about the environment without either the adults or the infants being aware of this fact.” Only if alarm calls resulted in the appropriate response will there be time for more learning. 

NVB is at one end of the continuum of learning and SVB is at the other end. If something goes wrong in verbal learning we should pay more attention to nonverbal learning. Nonverbal species may “lack the social cognitive abilities that would motivate adult members to instruct naive infants about predators and other dangers”, but “alarm vocalizations that by themselves induce powerful affective responses in infants offer a functional, evolutionary “work-around” to the problem.” This should make us pay attention to how we sound while we speak, as our vocalizations induce the affective responses, which makes us into conscious communicators in SVB or into unconscious, imprisoned and entangled communicators in NVB.

“Learned affect” refers to the “conditioned response of the listener to the affective consequences of vocalizations” because particular sounds from the speaker become paired with “salient emotion-inducing acts.” As with primates, so also with humans “more dominant group members routinely antagonize their subordinates.” There is NVB each time speakers aversively influence the listener. NVB always involves speakers who dominate, coerce and intimidate listeners with their way of talking. In the world of primates “the dominant typically produces distinctive threat vocalizations while biting and chasing the subordinate”. Humans do more or less the same. 

“The dominant’s threat calls predict the associated, aggression-induced affect.” As we get too overly involved with what we say, we don’t pay attention to how we say things. Listeners don’t do what speakers tell them to do due to what they say, but because of how they sounded. Thus, “the dominant can elicit similar negative affect in previous victims by use of the calls alone.” However, dominant ones also may produce “an acoustically distinctive affiliative sound before approaching a subordinate with peaceable intent.” With primates this happens when “the dominant one inspects or interacts with females or infants in the group.” Under such circumstances, the subordinates will associate calls produced by dominant ones with “a different set of emotional responses, like those experienced during the positively-toned grooming episode that often follows approach and calling.” With humans too words become associated sound and only certain people are able to influence each other in particular ways.