August 19, 2015

August 19, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is the second response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). The direct environment(that is, body)-changing effects of the sound of our voice are often ignored as we are inclined to think that ‘cognitions’ play a bigger role than they actually do. Yet, these physiological effects “are induced with latencies on the order of 10 ms and require no substantive cortical mediation”. Neurologically, these sound-effects are “induced by a very short, direct circuit connecting the auditory nerve to brainstem regions controlling whole body arousal and activation: axons in the auditory nerve project to cochlear root neurons in the brainstem, which project to giant neurons in the nucleus pontis caudalis of the reticular formation, from which projections then radiate to a large number of motor neurons in the brainstem and spinal cord. This simple circuit has been studied extensively in rats and cats and is thought to be the same in humans, attesting to its very deep and broadly conserved nature." There is continuity of behavior...

As we are mostly conditioned by Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we are often unable to go recognize how the listener is actually affected by the speaker’s voice. We may agree what is a sad song and what is a happy song, but as we are mainly engaged in stressful, anxiety–provoking NVB, we don’t acknowledge the SVB/NVB distinction while we speak. In SVB the speaker is his or her own listener, but in NVB others are forced to listen to the speaker, who doesn’t listen to him or herself. As NVB speakers don’t self-listen, they are ‘tone-deaf’; their voice negatively affects the listener. “Sounds of a particular sort are only a few short synapses away from brainstem, midbrain and limbic system regions that regulate major aspects of organismal autonomic function and whole body arousal and activation.” 

In NVB the speaker is not talking with the listener, but he or she is talking at the listener. Thus, the NVB speaker dysregulates the listener, while only the SVB speaker regulates the listener. It is perhaps better to say that in SVB the speaker and the listener co-regulate each other, as the speaker is also his or her own listener; the other listener can also become the speaker, and, the speaker can also become a listener to the listener who became a speaker. If this does not occur, there will be autonomic activation and the  body of the listener will be aroused to flee, fight, or freeze. These subtle physiological changes caused by our conversations are only apparent to those who are listening to themselves while they speak. As long as listeners are forced by NVB speakers to remain only listeners or to only speak in a NVB manner, they focus, anxiously, fearfully and hyper-vigilantly on the speaker, but they don’t have the chance to speak and listen to themselves. 

Speakers must feel safe enough to be able to listen to themselves. SVB can only happen in the absence of aversive stimulation. NVB happens as the speaker doesn’t acknowledge that his or her voice dysregulates the listener. The speaker produces “vocal signals” which “have the capacity to induce a range of affective effects in listeners.” Only the speaker who listens to him or herself while he or she speaks is capable of inducing positive affective experiences in the listener. In NVB the speaker coerces the listener into the direction the speaker wants him or her to go, but in SVB, they produce “signals with smooth onsets and gradually descending pitch”, which “decrease motor activity.” It is the increase of motor activity in NVB, which makes NVB so problematic. In NVB people are stirring the pot...

“Pastoral herders and domestic animal handlers have long capitalized on the impact of sounds to manage the behavior and activity of their animal charges. To capture attention and increase motor activity, they typically use rapidly repeated pulses of signals with abrupt onsets (e.g., tongue clicks and lip smacks) or signals with dramatic frequency upsweeps (e.g., whistles). In contrast, to decrease motor activity, or to soothe excited animals, they use signals with smooth onsets and gradually descending pitch (e.g., whistles or hums).” As we are so used to having NVB it is difficult for us to map these easy examples onto how we talk. Also, as we become more developed, the content of our speech gains in prominence; the more important content becomes, the less inclined we are to pay attention to how we sound. When what we say is most important, then how we say it is often completely ignored. Thus, the SVB/NVB distinction in spoken communication is not as easy to learn as the herding of cattle. It is easier for herders to recognize these sounds, because while they are herding their cattle, they themselves mobilize when they increase the motor activity of their animals and they slow down when they decrease motor activity in their animals. Exactly the same is true for NVB and SVB. In NVB, the speaker arouses him or herself as well as the listener, but in SVB, the speaker calms down him or herself and the listener. Thus, in NVB the speaker dysregulates the listener as his or her voice induces a negative experience (motor-activity) in the listener, which interferes with the perception of what the speaker says.  

“Humans are also responsive to the same sound patterns. We use whistles with a rapid frequency upsweep to capture a companion’s attention, and similar dramatic frequency variations are characteristic of the speech directed to young infants where it serves to focus and maintain attention and modulate arousal.” We should note here that we tend to be much more aware of how we sound when we are around a baby than when we are with an adult. The speaker’s voice is more likely to “maintain attention and modulate arousal” if it concerns a baby, as the baby cries if we don't do this. When we speak with an adult, he or she is expected to be able to maintain his or her own attention and to modulate his or her own arousal. However, this expectation results in NVB. We will only be able to learn to have SVB when we talk with each other as if we are talking to a baby; only when the speaker’s voice is not aversively influencing the listener, only when the speaker adequately and reliably “maintains the attention and modulates arousal” of the listener, can there be SVB. 

“Additional familiar examples in humans” of NVB “include fingernails scraping on chalk-boards, infant crying” and of SVB “contagious laughter”, all of which have direct affective positive or negative effects on listeners. Other NVB examples are: arguing wives, angry fathers, arrogant bosses, slimy sales men, self-centered professors, hate-inciting demagogues, ruthless business leaders, just to name a few. These are extreme examples which are easy to recognize. To recognize subtle differences between positive or negative affect-inducing voices listeners must learn to discern whether a voice demands or gives attention. If the speaker’s voice demands the listener's attention this indicates NVB, but if the speaker’s voice gives or creates attention in the listener, this indicates SVB. The sound of the speaker’s voice determines whether there will be NVB or SVB.

August 18, 2015

August 18, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010), published in the “Handbook of Mammalian Vocalization – An Integrated Neuroscience Approach”, edited by Brudzynski. This chapter provides evidence for the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the two subsets of human vocal verbal behavior. Rendall and Owren focus on “how vocal signals influence the affective systems of listeners in ways that steer and impel behavioral responding in them.” Only SVB influences “the affective systems of listeners in ways that steer and impel” positive emotions. NVB, on the other hand, elicits negative emotions. As “vocal signals influence the affective systems of the listener” differently, SVB and NVB result in  different ways of responding. Research by Rendall and Owren emphasizes that “affective systems can be important functional targets of signaling in animals, including humans.” We have overestimated the importance of the cognitive aspects of our spoken communication, while more often than we realize we are emotionally influenced by the sound of the speaker's voice.  

The fact that we are emotionally affected by how other people sound is rooted in our evolutionary history. However, only during SVB are we able to acknowledge that humans have a “phylogenetically widespread neuro-affective sensitivity to some sounds.” During NVB we pretend that this “affective sensitivity” to the human voice doesn’t matter, but this has grave consequences. Due to coarseness and superficiality of NVB we remained ignorant about the notion that “such sensitivity can impel responses from listeners in quite direct fashion, or combine with general processes of conditioning and learning to steer listener behavior more indirectly.”

During SVB, on the other hand, we take our emotions into account and we are able to accurately express what we feel. Moreover, during SVB we express and maintain positive emotions, the necessary basis for interaction. The sound of our voice determines if what we say is understood, making sense or paid attention to. “The effect that signals have on core affective processes and behavior in listeners can also serve to scaffold more complex communicative processes and outcomes.” However, this “scaffolding” of  “more complex communicative processes and outcomes” is only, yes, only, possible in SVB and is made impossible, yes, made impossible, by NVB.

We are all already familiar with the “affect induction” qualities of music. “That sounds can exert considerable affective influence on listeners” is not anything particularly “intuitive”, because we have all experienced “a variety of powerful emotions” which “can be sometimes quite difficult to control or resist” in response to some music or some speaker. We can be emotionally moved by each other’s voice in the same way as we can be moved by music. To the extent that we are no longer moved by music, we are also no longer moved by the sound of each other’s voice. Our decreased response to each other’s voice is an outcome of NVB, because in NVB content is more important than context or what we say is more important than how we say it. Moreover, in  NVB the speaker is not in touch with him or herself and he or she is also not in touch with the listener, who is also not allowed to be in touch with him or herself. Stated differently, NVB is dissociative in nature, as the speaker is not listening to him or herself while he or she speaks. 

In NVB the speaker doesn’t really speak and the listener doesn’t really listen. It is a bizarre phenomenon: in NVB the speaker pretends to be speaking and the listener pretends to be listening. As the listener continues to reinforce the phony speaker, the NVB speaker continues his or her phony speech. In other words, the phony NVB speaker never finds out that the listener isn’t really listening. Since in NVB the listener is coerced by the speaker, the listener obeys and complies with the speaker. The NVB speaker only finds out that nobody is really listening to him or to her if he or she finally recognizes that he or she is not listening to him or herself either. Just as “a great deal of music is designed specifically to have these affective effects” so too a great deal of what we say, a much bigger part than we acknowledge, is said to have these affective effects. In NVB, in which the speaker dominates the listener and is hierarchically above the listener, the speaker’s voice characterizes his or her superiority. The voice of someone who dominates elicits negative emotions. And that is precisely what the dominant one wants. He or she intimidates, overwhelms and forces the listener into obedience and compliance. In SVB a different interaction occurs. With how he or she sounds, the SVB speaker elicits positive emotions in the listener. The SVB speaker wants to elicit positive emotions and he or she lets the listener know that he or she is also a speaker who is part of the conversation. The SVB speaker’s voice always has a positive effect on the listener. SVB is happens in the absence of aversive stimulation.

That animals show “a similar affective sensitivity to sounds” and that “many of the vocal signals they commonly produce might be designed to have such effects” and that “systematic research in this area is still in its infancy” is all due to the fact that we have accepted as normal a way of communicating which is abnormal. The ubiquity of “affect induction” is quite apparent. However, such reasoning could only occur from a SVB perspective. In NVB neither the speaker nor the listener can relax. The noxious quality of the speaker’s voice elicits stress, anxiety, fear and anger in the receiver. We cannot engage in normal conversation as long as we continue to experience these negative feelings. Normal conversation requires the maintenance of positive emotions. This is very noticeable in the vocal signaling of primates. Their hierarchical interactions, unlike those of humans, require very few negative emotions. We have accepted NVB as normal and we keep stressing ourselves and each other by the way in which we sound. In NVB the speaker elicits reflexive responses in the listener. 

This involuntary response is known as the “the Acoustic Startle Reflex” (ASR) has been “demonstrated in a wide range of animal taxa (in mammals, e.g., from rats and cats to monkeys, apes and humans), and is thought to occur in every hearing species.” The illusion that humans, because they have language, are not affected by the ASR prevents understanding the extent to which our interactions are impaired by the sound of someone’s voice who induces the ASR in us. And, we induce the ASR in others too with our voice. “It is particularly triggered by sounds that are loud and have abrupt onsets (i.e., short signal rise times) that give them a harsh and plosive quality. When experienced at close range, such sounds induce a cascade of physiological and behavioral changes in listeners that include the immediate cessation of ongoing activity and abrupt shifts in attention toward, and in movement away from, the sound stimulus, and a host of reflexive autonomic changes, such as heart rate and blood pressure changes, increased muscle tonus and modulation of overall brain activity and glucose metabolism.” What is described here is NVB, not SVB. 

During NVB our voice dysregulates the listener as it stabs, grabs, pushes, pulls, chokes and forces. The autonomic changes are fight, flight or freeze mechanisms. SVB only occurs when these adaptive defensive mechanisms are not triggered. In other words, SVB only happens if we are feeling safe. It is important to view NVB events as consisting on a continuum. The startle response is the strongest physiological response, but there is a variety of negative emotions: stress, anxiety, fear, guardedness, distrust, paranoia, irritability, distraction, hostility, aggression, which accumulatively make us more negative. “Altogether, these changes describe a very broad and dramatic systemic response to sound that prepares the organism for a “fight-or-flight” response.” Although the listener is often unaware of this, he or she is always affected by the sound of the speaker’s voice, which instantaneously induces a change in his or her nervous system. “Notably , this suite of effects is induced with latencies on the order of 10 ms and requires no substantive cortical mediation.”

August 17, 2015

August 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

After writing my long response to the paper “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by Nygaard and Pisoni (1998), I feel validated that my discovery of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) makes sense in the light of the research that was done by others. I remember how frustrated I used to feel that nobody wanted to talk about my finding. Something is happening these days that I could have never imagined a couple of years ago: by reading and writing about what others have written, I somehow have become part of the conversation. It seems to me that everybody should want to know about SVB, but the reality is they don’t. In spite of the fact that the lack of SVB used to be a big problem to me, I am different from most people as I have developed an intense longing, which has led to my discovery. Without this longing, I would have never achieved what I have achieved. Most people don’t have passion, which is born out of pain and suffering. At this point, so many good things have happened in my life, so much acknowledgement of SVB has already occurred, that my intense longing for it is gone. I have it every day, it is my life. It is wonderful and I am so happy and content.

Due to my lengthy response to this research paper, I realize once more how  important the speaker-as-own-listener (SAOL) is for SVB. As long as the SAOL is not activated, we will continue to have NVB. We have been told to listen to others, but nobody has ever told us to listen to ourselves while we speak. Once we do that, we are going to have a different conversation than the one which we were used to. The mechanics of SVB and NVB are so incredibly simple: we engage in NVB when other-listening takes president over self-listening, but we engage in SVB each time when self-listing is emphasized over other-listening. In SVB we find out that self-listening includes other-listening, but other-listening excludes self-listening in NVB. The SAOL is activated during SVB, but SAOL is deactivated during NVB.  SVB is a function of environmental variables which activate the SAOL.

August 16, 2015

August 16, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This writing is my sixteenth response to “Talker-specific learning in speech perception” by Nygaard and Pisoni (1998). In the general discussion of their paper the researchers conclude that the “listeners who learned to attend to talker-specific attributes of the speech signal were able to use that information to aid in the recovery of the linguistic content in the acoustic speech signal.” What does it mean for listeners to be “able to attend to talker-specific attributes of the speech signal?” When we consider the fact that the listener most often must simply suck it up, we are taking a Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) perspective, but if we bring in the possibility that the listener can become a speaker, then the listener can let the speaker know how he or she is affecting him or her with his or her sound and the speaker can then adjust the sound of his or her voice in such a way that he or she is only positively affecting the listener. This would be an example of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Thus, “attending to the talker-specific attributes of the speech signal” requires SVB, but is impossible with NVB. 

In NVB there is no feedback from the listener to the speaker in the sense that the listener can become the speaker. In NVB, there is unidirectional, hierarchical interaction in which the speaker talks at, not with the listener. In NVB there is an absence of turn-taking. The NVB speaker always demands the attention from the listener, but in SVB the speaker doesn’t demand the attention at all, because he or she generates and shares the attention with the listener, who can also become a speaker. Moreover, in SVB, the speaker is his or her own listener, but in NVB others than the listener within the skin of the speaker are the only listeners. During NVB the listener within the speaker's skin is not home, that is, the speaker is not connecting with this listener within. The reason that this occurs is because in NVB speaking and listening are happening at different rates. Only when speaking and listening are happening simultaneously and at the same rate, the speaker has SVB. 

These findings only become clear during SVB because only SVB can we address matters “at the broadest level.” In NVB we cannot, we have not and we will not be able to accurately address these matters, because NVB is based on the bias of the speaker. “This finding suggests at the broadest level that the perception of indexical or personal properties in the speech signal and the perception of linguistic properties are not independent, but rather are fundamentally linked in the perception of spoken language.” However, it is a characteristic of SVB that “indexical or personal properties in the speech signal” are “fundamentally linked” with “the perception of linguistic properties” as in NVB they are disjointed and seemingly “independent.”

This research is important, but it needs the SVB/NVB distinction to make more sense. Since this research is about the fundamental link between “perception of linguistic properties” and “indexical or personal properties”, we must explore this while we speak. Only when we verify this link while we speak will we be able to realize how different writing about talking is from talking. “This demonstration of the influence of perceptual learning of talker identity on linguistic processing has implications not only for current theories of speech perception and spoken language processing, but also more generally for theories of perceptual learning and perception.” The SVB/NVB distinction sheds light on the distortion which occurs in NVB. 

“Different kinds of talker-specific information are available in different kinds of utterances and that all levels of talker-specific information are susceptible to the effects of perceptual learning.” It's typical for NVB to dismiss the common explicit or implicit identity of the “talkers’ voice in speech perception as a source of noise that must be discarded or separated from the linguistic content.” We  accept as normal a way of talking, which, because we remain stressed is abnormal and detrimental to our relationship and health. Only by taking the time to talk about talking and by exploring while we are talking, can we “take linguistic representations out of the domain of abstract, symbolic units and into the domain of representation and memory for natural events and specific instances of these events." 

The contribution these researchers make is captured in the following sentence: “given the present findings, however, it appears that the phonetic module does “know” something about the talker’s voice.” Of course, it is all a matter of conditioning. Only to the extent that listeners have experienced SVB, do they know and can they know when they are dominated, exploited, silenced, ignored and marginalized by NVB speakers. However, the sad fact is that, by and large, people don’t receive enough SVB reinforcement to be able to withdraw from NVB. In other words, they keep being engaged in NVB and are consequently negatively affected by it.  

“Talker-specific perceptual operations are retained or developed during the course of training, and listeners find speech from familiar talkers to be more intelligible than speech from unfamiliar talkers because they are better able to disentangle talker from linguistic information." This seems to reflect what is happening in the normal course of development: “The perceptual operations that are specifically associated with unraveling the variations introduced by particular talkers could be modified to become more efficient.” Ideally, those who raise us don’t require us to “disentangle talker from linguistic information.” Ideally, we are brought up with mostly SVB.