August 5, 2015

August 5, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my fifth response to “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). The reason that “traditionally” the “perception of linguistics concepts of speech —the words, phrases, and sentences of an utterance — has been studied separately from the perception of talker identity” is because of what I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), our usual way of talking in which this separation is created and maintained. Perhaps I should say ‘imagined and believed’, because NVB is always based on fictitious knowledge. 

“Talker identity” has not been given much attention. If we did that, we would have to acknowledge that in most our so-called interactions the speaker is aversively affecting the listener. To focus on “talker identity” requires that we take a listener’s perspective of the speaker. This would make us realize that the “perception of linguistic concepts of speech” is not, for the most part, determined by the listener, but by the speaker. 

In NVB the speaker can blame the listener for not understanding him or her. In SVB, by contrast, it is not the adjustment of the listener to the speaker, but it is the adjustment of the speaker to the listener, which makes the speech more effective. The authors write that “variability” in “talker identity” is considered to be “a perceptual problem that listeners must solve if they are to recover the linguistic constituents that carry meaning." This view elevates the speaker above the listener and relieves him or her of having to think about why he or she may not be understood. 

Only during NVB listeners are always blamed for not listening, for not paying attention, for not being obedient to the speaker, but nobody talks about the important, completely ignored fact that NVB speakers are not listening to themselves while they speak. Once we look into the “talking identity” of the NVB speaker, we find that he or she demands that others listen to him or to her, as he or she lacks the skill to listen to him or herself.

August 4, 2015

August 4, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is my fourth response to "Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). Now that I have commented on the abstract, I am going to read the entire paper and will then respond only to those things which matter for the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

As I was writing this, I realized this is not going to work. I can only get into the text by reading it sentence by sentence. Although it is taking me a long time to respond sentence by sentence, I find that my writing is most precise when I allow myself to do that. Also, I learn more and I am able to make more detailed remarks about the distinction between SVB and NVB. 

Although I didn’t call it that way, I once discovered a different talker than the one I was used to. “It is only when we encounter an unfamiliar talker with an unusual dialect or accent that we become consciously aware that we have to adjust to the idiosyncratic vocal attributes of a novel talker.” 

When I discovered SVB, I realized I was another person than I believed to be. The person I thought I was, was defined by the lack of SVB and by my repeated exposure to NVB. Also, my perception of others was based on the ubiquity of NVB and the scarcity of SVB. Because of my discovery my perception of myself as well as of others has slowly began to change. 

I now mainly have SVB and I hardly have any NVB in my life. “Perceptual learning and adaptation to individual talkers” has made me sensitive to “talker identity”, that is, to whether the speaker has SVB or NVB.  I avoid NVB as much as possible. My ability to avoid it has improved to the point that I no longer need to escape it as often as I used to.

This has positively affected “the intelligibility of linguistic aspects of speech” due to which I am more understanding and happier. I am better at recognizing or discriminating NVB and stay away from it. There is hardly any need for me to escape from it as most of my activities involve SVB. 

Anyone who experiments with the SVB/NVB distinction is predicted to go through this transformation, which occurs as we become aware of how we are affected by the sound of the speaker's voice while we speak. In SVB the speaker-as-own-listener undergoes a dramatic change in “talker identity”as he or she acquires a new understanding.

August 3, 2015

August 3, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my third response to “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). In the abstract the researcher state “We found that perceptual learning of novel voices from sentence-length utterances improved speech intelligibility for words in sentences. Generalization and transfer from voice learning to linguistic processing was found to be sensitive to the talker-specific information available during learning and test. These findings demonstrate that increased sensitivity to talker-specific information affects the perception of the linguistic properties of speech in isolated words and sentences.” 

The “talker-specific information” which “affects the perception of the linguistic properties of speech” is whether the speaker sounds good or not. If he or she doesn’t sound good, the listener is experiencing the negative effects of NVB, but if he or she sounds good, the listener is experiencing the positive effects of SVB. Moreover, as we know from the animal researchers Owren and Rendall, if the sender sounds good, he or she induces a positive affective experience in the listener, but if he or she sounds threatening, he or she induces a negative affective experience in the receiver. 

The fact that “Generalization and transfer from voice learning to linguistic processing was found to be sensitive to the talker-specific information available during learning and test” tells us that there is an important link between what we say and how we say it. We are, however, inclined to ignore this link, because we are used to NVB in which supposedly only the content matters. Even if listeners don’t realize this, they are always affected by how speakers speak, that is, by the speaker sounds. 

The listener’s “increased sensitivity to talker-specific information affects the perception of the linguistic properties of speech in isolated words and sentences.” Increased sensitivity in the listener depends very much on the talker; a NVB talker decreases and ignores the listener's sensitivity.  

August 2, 2015

August 2, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my second response to the paper “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). Another result obtained by these researchers “showed that learning a talker’s voice from sentences did not generalize well to identification of novel isolated words.” 

We are not used to hearing only isolated words, but we are used to hearing sentences. Words by themselves don’t give us the opportunity to learn the talker’s voice. Thus, in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the talker demands with as few words as possible what he or she wants, there is, due to this coercive influence, no opportunity to learn the talker’s voice, even if whole sentences are spoken. Actually, in NVB the listeners are distracted from the talker’s voice, because what he or she is saying is supposedly more important than how he or she is saying it. 

NVB speakers coerce the listener. They make the listener listen to him or to her, but they are not listening to themselves and are not stimulated to do so. Depending on what kind of voice the talker has there will be aversive or appetitive effects for the listener. Although this research investigated the listener’s ability to learn the talker’s voice, it still focused mainly on content and not on how the speaker sounded. 

Fixation on the verbal is typical for NVB in which we basically ignore the nonverbal forms of conditioning. The researchers focus on novel isolated words is antithetical to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which the speaker hears his or her own voice and thus is and remains his or her own listener. 

The overemphasized importance of being able to recognize these novel isolated words indicates that there is an aversive environment in which this urgent need arises. However, such a need doesn’t arise in an appetitive environment which is created and maintained by the SVB speaker. Thus,  learning the SVB speaker’s voice from sentences generalizes better to novel isolated words than learning the NVB speaker’s voice from sentences.

August 1, 2015

August 1, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing is my first response to the paper “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by L.C. Nygaard and D.B. Pisoni (1998). My writing is to collect evidence from researchers for the existence of what I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

One of their findings was that “listeners who were given words that were produced by familiar talkers at test showed better identification performance than did listeners who were given words that were produced by unfamiliar talkers.” This indicates that familiarity with the talker enhances learning. Since the speaker is aversively affecting the listener in NVB, but is appetitively affecting the listener in SVB, it can be concluded that familiarity with the talkers is more likely to occur in the latter, which is more conducive to learning. 

Although the listener can, of course, also be conditioned by and familiar with a NVB speaker, that familiarity is qualitatively different. Familiarity with the NVB speaker is essential to developing the listener’s understanding about his or her place in the hierarchical relationships existing in his or her verbal community, while familiarity with the SVB speaker involves a process of learning which completely free from aversive stimulation. 

I hypothesize that SVB evokes the type of learning which is for the love of knowledge, while NVB elicits learning out of the fear of punishment and the necessity to survive. SVB and NVB are two diametrically opposing ways of talking we all familiar with. However, only some of us are more familiar with SVB than with NVB, while most of us are more familiar with NVB. The common opinion of what it means to learn is more determined by NVB than by SVB. Most of us believe we will have more of a competitive edge if we learn. However, this type of learning prevents those who have mainly been exposed to NVB speakers from becoming familiar with SVB speakers and from learning that takes us beyond our survival behaviors. SVB is the kind of talking in which we completely stop fighting.