August 23, 2015

August 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my sixth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). The basis for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in humans, are the “shrieks, squeaks and screams” observed in primates. These call types “tend to be relatively unpatterned and chaotic.” The basis for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) are the “sonants and gruffs” made by primates. They “tend either to be tonal, harmonically-rich calls, or to be characterized by a more diffuse broadband spectral structure that is nevertheless regularly patterned.” SVB is fine-grained, sensitive, reciprocal interaction, but NVB is coarse-grained, hierarchical, forceful uni-directional interaction. In SVB  speaker and listener co-regulate each other, but NVB speakers dysregulate listeners. In SVB the speaker creates and generates attention, while in NVB the speaker demands and exhausts the listener’s attention.

In SVB there is acknowledgement and accurate expression of emotion, but in NVB there is no attention for emotion and therefore there is no accurate description of emotion. This is not to say the NVB speaker doesn’t elicit emotions in the listener. Surely, the NVB speaker induces powerful negative emotions in the listener. The SVB speaker, by contrast, says nothing that forces the listener. “While the chaotic features of squeaks, shrieks and screams are well-suited to having direct impact on listener arousal and affect, the more patterned nature of sonants and gruffs gives them less inherent affective force, either negative or positive.” In other words, the “sonants and gruffs” lend themselves for another way of learning. 

These direct or indirect ways of learning are facilitated by the sender and are not up to the receiver. The sender’s “sonants and gruffs” signal safety and positive emotions and this results into more complex behavior than direct-acting “squeaks, shrieks and screams.” Another reason for learning more complex behavior is that “these calls provide an excellent medium for revealing clear cues to caller identity through individual idiosyncracies. Such idiosyncracies routinely impart individually distinctive voice cues in acoustic features of these calls that are associated either with the pattern of dynamic action of the vocal folds or through resonance properties of the vocal tract cavities.” Whether we are taught by a dedicated, kind and sensitive person or by an authoritarian,  punitive, forceful teacher makes an enormous difference in what and how we learn. The latter impairs learning complex behavior. The army sergeant not only teaches different things than the piano teacher, he also sounds very different. As the teaching of the piano teacher involves closeness to the student it is no surprise that “sonants and gruffs” are used “in face-to-face social interactions.” The screaming army sergeant yells at his soldiers, who follow orders. 

The sound of the speaker’s voice influences the listener in such a way that he or she simply obeys and does what he or she is told or it allows the listener to interact with the speaker and engage in more complex forms of learning. “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.” The fact that the teacher knows more than the student makes the teacher the authority, but it doesn’t need to mean that the teacher uses coercion to dominate the student. To the contrary, if the teacher uses his or her authority correctly, the student wants to learn as his or her tone of voice is appetitive to the student. In the teacher’s “sonants and gruffs”, in his or her kindness to explain and give support, the student recognizes the teacher’s identity. “Such identity cues provide additional explicit opportunities for influential individuals to leverage the social behavior of others by controlling the behavioral sequelae that follow from vocal exchanges, providing myriad opportunities for behavioral shaping through processes of conditioning and learning.”

As humans have yet to acknowledge SVB and NVB really exist in English, Russian and other languages, research about primate vocalization is in its infancy. If we would understand more about ourselves, that is, if we would acknowledge that the listener in spoken communication is always affected by the voice of the speaker, we could make more progress in understanding primates. As long as we don’t recognize it in ourselves, by listening to ourselves while we speak, we anthropomorphize and make it seem as if primates, like us, are ‘processing information.’ Of course, neither primates nor humans are ‘processing information.’ Like primates, humans too are affected by each other’s sounds. Language is playing once again a game on us. When we talk, we can experience our words as sounds again. In SVB, our words have meaning because they are experienced as sounds.  

Although they don’t mention, Rendall and Owren get close to recognizing SVB and NVB; in both kinds of interaction the listener is directly affected by the sound of the speaker. “Sonants and gruffs” relate to SVB, in which there is positive affect-induction, but “shrieks, squeaks and screams” relates to NVB and negative affect-induction. They identify three ways in which “vocal signals might exert functional affective influence on listeners.” The first one is the “quite direct influence that vocal signals can have on listener affect through stimulation of autonomic systems organizing and impelling basic behavioral action” as just described. The second mechanism is that the “vocal signals might influence listener affect and behavior more indirectly through general processes of conditioning.” A third “possible mechanism through which vocal signals might exert affective influence is through a process of affective and behavioral resonance.” As the reader hopefully already knows, I only use this research to back up the SVB/NVB distinction in human vocal verbal behavior. The speaker’s vocal signals condition the listener's affect and, in SVB, the speaker harmonizes with the listener.

August 22, 2015

August 22, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my fifth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). As we don’t pay attention to how we sound while we speak, we accept Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) as normal. The other day I was at a presentation for faculty about equity. The teacher who presented this topic had invited a panel of students, who shared their experiences, struggles and triumphs at college. The teacher spoke with an intense, angry tone of voice. When she finally gave these students a chance to talk, what struck me was the difference in tone. The students sounded so pleasant and positive.

After the meeting was over I mentioned to one of my colleagues the contrast between the NVB of this presenter and the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) of these students. She responded she had felt the same way and was amazed by the irony of this NVB presenter, who talks so forcefully about equity. It was clear to my colleague that a speaker who is not treating the  audience well, must be like this to students as well. During this lengthy presentation about equity, the presenter showed a slide of three people of different sizes, who were standing on crates and were looking over a fence to watch a ball game. Each person stood on a crate of equal size, but since they were different in size, the smallest was still unable to look over the fence, the medium one could just see over it and the tallest had no problem seeing the ball game that was going on on the other side of the fence. This picture was meant to illustrate an example of equality, that is, they had all been given a crate to stand on. Equity, by comparison, was when the tallest person had no crate, since he was already big enough to look over the fence without one, the person of middle height had one crate and could see over the fence and the smallest person was given two crates so that he too could see over the fence. it was about individual needs. Although this image seems straightforward, it doesn’t capture the sensitivity faculty must have towards  students to be truly equitable. This lady was absolutely unaware of how she sounded, but everyone seemed to accept her speech as normal.

She talked for about one hour about equity with an aversive sounding voice and she got a loud applause. This teacher’s overemphasis on visual data by means of slides about equity statistics stood in stark contrast to the neglect of the auditory data presented by these students. This teacher, who represents the faculty, demonstrated the lack of connection between faculty and students. Although she gave the students an opportunity to speak, she didn’t connect with them. She spoke with the audience in admonishing and judgmental manner. She didn’t connect with the audience either. It was only the students, with their SVB stories, who connected with the audience. 

“Everyday experience and systematic perceptual studies on humans confirm that such screaming is extremely grating and aversive to listeners, and very effective in catalyzing responses from them". Responses obtained after a presentation about equity by a teacher like that are mandatory, coerced and consequently superficial. If equity had been the issue then how the faculty and staff talk with students should have been addressed. The tone of voice would be discussed, because equity depends on how we sound while we speak. However, this lecture was given by a semi-“dominant individual”, who dictated the college equity policy. Also she was infuriated about inequity and that presumably justified her NVB. 

“The functional value of such aversive screaming is not limited to immature animals, however, because adult animals can be equally impotent, particularly in highly social species with developed dominance hierarchies. In such species, daily activities involve regular interaction with more dominant individuals, who often antagonize and attack subordinate group members.” I rated her as a semi-“dominant individual” as she functions in the college hierarchy where she is in reality not very high on the totem pole.

Only on an occasion like this she represents authority and the forcefulness of her speech also derived from her insecurity. This brief analysis shows how important it is to pay attention to how we sound and to acknowledge that we all sound stressed during stressful situations. She seemed stressed about the presentation and her superiors must have been listening. “Like immature animals, such low-ranking victims of aggression cannot offer serious physical resistance to their dominant counterparts. However, they can make themselves unappealing targets of further attack by screaming vociferously. When experienced at close range, the aversive qualities of such screaming may be extremely aversive and quite difficult to habituate to, thereby testing a Dominant’s commitment to further antagonization."

In my country of origin, Holland, we have a saying ‘he is screaming already before he is hit’ which means we make a big fuss about something when nothing is really happening. With the above explanation, we have a reason why someone would scream before he is being hit. I was often hit by my father and I screamed to avert it. If we look at screaming as a way to avoid being hit, we will deal with it differently, as we are inclined to reassure the screamer that they are safe and will not be hit. We don’t realize our NVB sound may feel to someone as if they are being hit or are going to be hit. Also, we sound louder and more intense when we fear we will be judged or rejected by others. This is a much more parsimonious explanation for why someone would become manic.  The reassuring, supportive sounds which I just referred to can be described “sonants and gruffs” and they lay the foundation for what I call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). “The vocal repertoire of most primate species contains an additional class of sounds referred to as “sonants and gruffs. ” This class of sounds is, in many ways, the structural antithesis of squeaks, shrieks and screams.”

August 21, 2015

August 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fourth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). Humans, like primates, have an “evolved sensitivity to certain kind of sounds” which “naturally creates additional opportunities for signalers to use vocalizations to engage others by influencing their attention, arousal and concomitant behaviors in many contexts, sometimes even overriding their ability to resist such influence.” The affect-inducing ability of any speaker has only two possibilities: the speaker induces negative or positive affect in the listener. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the speaker’s voice has a threatening effect on the listener, but in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the sound of the speaker comforts and supports the listener. 

Among non-human primates “one entire class of vocalizations that has been labeled “squeaks, shrieks and screams” resembles the phylogenetic origins of NVB. “These sounds are numerous and diverse, and are produced by every primate species studied, as well as by many other mammals, birds and amphibians. This broad class of vocalizations is characterized by sharp signal onsets, dramatic frequency and amplitude fluctuations, and chaotic spectral structures, which are exactly the acoustic features that have direct impact on animal perception.” Humans make these sounds when they get angry or hostile or when they are in despair and cry for help. These sounds are only made when something’s wrong, when we are threatened. It doesn’t  matter whether we “squeak, shriek and scream” in an attempt to be heard, to defend ourselves or to fight others. Fact is, such a voice of a speaker is experienced as an aversive stimulus by the listener. This listener may not know he or she is aversively stimulated by the NVB speaker, but whether he or she  knows about it or not doesn’t make any difference, it still happens. 

 

In NVB the speaker has a very different sound than the SVB speaker. We are only going to be able to pay attention to this difference if we listen to ourselves while we speak. This difference can be heard in the sound of our own voice.  By listening to our own sound while we speak, we can figure out how we are affected by biological processes while we talk. Those who are threatened as well as those who threaten  produce the same “squeaks, shrieks and screams.” “Vocalizations of this class are produced especially frequently by infants and juveniles, and this pattern is not simply a reflection of an immature vocal production system in young animals. Instead, squeaks, shrieks and screams are likely to be especially functional to youngsters who otherwise have relatively little ability to influence the behavior of older and larger individuals in their groups.” Although this “pattern is not simply a reflection of immature vocal production system in young animals”, when we look at how this applies to human interaction a very different picture emerges. Humans, who still produce these demanding sounds at an old age, did not become fully verbal. We cannot be fully verbal as long as these nonverbal, unconscious sounds overtake us.

Another way of stating this is that NVB kept us unconscious. A child who doesn’t know how to speak can only make sound, but a child who knows how to speak is able to regulate him or herself and able to prevent him or herself from producing a sound which aversively influences the listener. This can only occur if this child grows up in a safe, sensitive and caring environment. Such a child doesn’t need to scream as it is nourished and taken care off. Calling the NVB speaker immature and the SVB speaker mature doesn’t capture that the NVB speaker is limited by involuntary processes. Speech of the SVB speaker doesn’t activate these fight-flight responses. When we grow up in stable, caring environments, we learn the basics of SVB, but when we grow up in chaotic, threatening surroundings, we are bound to be more inclined towards NVB. This lawfulness transcends the whole question about consciousness. We must be safe to be conscious.

Rather than considering these sounds immature, “squeaks, shrieks and screams are likely to be especially functional to youngsters who otherwise have relatively little ability to influence the behavior of older and larger individuals in their groups.” It is appropriate to make these sounds during the pre-verbal stage of development, but once we become verbal such sounds get in the way of speech. ”For example, a young weanling who has been repeatedly rejected from the nipple by its mother cannot physically force its mother to relent and allow nursing or close physical contact. However, it is not entirely helpless, because it is capable of producing loud protracted bouts of harsh and variable vocalizations that effectively influence the mother’s attention mechanisms, increase her arousal state, and with repetition become quite aversive.” The continuation of such “vocal protest” is maladaptive during verbal development as it aversively affects the listener and hinders interaction, which can only improve if noxious vocalizations no longer occur. The fact that NVB is ubiquitous and is basically accepted by everyone as normal signifies that things went wrong in the context of weaning, in the pre-verbal stage of development. “Vocal protests like this in the context of weaning are ubiquitous across species, including humans, and they share a set of common acoustic features that include rapidly varying combinations of loud, noisy screams and piercing high-frequency tonal cries, with dramatic amplitude and frequency modulations." Freud may have had a point with his oral fixation after all.

August 20, 2015

August 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my third response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). When I read this chapter I was intrigued and flabbergasted. I was intrigued by the findings in support of the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). However, I was also flabbergasted and baffled by the lack of reasoning of these researchers.

My reasoning is a function of the SVB/NVB distinction of which these researchers are only indirectly aware. They write “Non-human primates are an especially interesting group in which to consider the potential affective influence of vocalizations on listeners.” They are an "interesting group" because of their “phylogenetic proximity to humans.” Humans must have a lot in common with primates. The authors state “The neurophysiological substrates for affective influence are clearly very broadly conserved and, indeed, humans who have even larger brains and (presumably) more sophisticated cognitive capacities than any of the non-human primates show considerable susceptibility to affective influence. Therefore, it is likely that affective influence is also an important part of the vocal signals of non-human primates.” This reasoning is upside down. Since humans are affectively influenced by vocal signals, primates must possess the same neurophysiological substrates which gave rise to language in humans. And, since primates can only use vocalizations to influence each other, they must be able to affectively influence each other with vocalization. The authors state that it is “likely” “affective influence is also an important part of the vocal signals of non-humans primates”, but I think it is out of the question. The fact that affect-inducing influences exist in many species should make us less inclined to fixate on these “” higher-level” cognitive processes that [presumably] organize communication behavior in primates.”

“The alarm vocalizations that are produced during encounters with predators are structurally similar across a range of primate species, and they preserve acoustic features that are well-designed for capturing and manipulating attention and arousal in listeners.” For these vocalizations to be effective, they must have an immediate affective effect. “Alarm calls tend to be short, abrupt-onset, broadband calls. These punctuate designs of alarm calls make them stand out against background noise and make them easy to localize.” During NVB the listeners are aroused because they are made to believe that they are being threatened. 

In NVB the speaker is always localizing a predator and his or her speech creates, maintains and exploits the threat, which presumably is upon the listener. Currently, Trump is high in the poles, because he appeals to the notion that the country is being threatened and going down the drain. His confrontational style of speaking is appealing and effective as he localizes and blames those who are supposedly causing this. Democrats understand that Trump is fear-mongering and deliberately stirring his listeners, but many republican listeners have favorable responses that “involve immediate orienting in the direction of the calls, coupled with reflexive movements preparatory to flight.” Trump’s speech directly appeals to the “functional sensitivity to punctuate sounds in ancestral vertebrates as an aid in identifying and localizing predators, and for capturing prey.” As this presumably strong and capable man is saying that he is going to make America great again, he, like any other demagogue, activates the most ancient parts of the brain. “Developmental studies in primates have shown that such generalized startle responses to species’ alarm calls are induced even in very young infants in the absence of significant experience with either the calls or predators, as would be expected from the operation of widely conserved and low-level brainstem and subcortical processes associated with sound localization, orienting and autonomic responding.” If we know about NVB, Trump's success is a real no-brainer, so to speak!

“Such evolved sensitivity to certain kinds of sound naturally creates additional opportunities for signalers to use vocalizations to engage others by influencing their attention, arousal and concomitant behaviors in many contexts, sometimes even overriding their ability to resist such influence.” Especially the last part of this sentence is very important for how biological processes effect how we speak. We are constantly overwhelmed by NVB and SVB is again and again easily dismissed. However, this always involves a speaker, who dysregulates the listener. I say dysregulate to emphasize that when the speaker elicits a fear response in the listener, SVB is impossible even if the listener wants to or tries to have it. SVB will and can only occur in the absence of aversive stimulation. The voice of the SVB speaker is an appetitive stimulus to the listener, but the voice of the NVB speaker is an aversive stimulus to the listener. A NVB speaker will override a SVB speaker, but a SVB speaker cannot override a NVB speaker. This is a much misunderstood phenomenon. Although SVB speakers can self-regulate, they are unable to prevent the aversive effects from the NVB speaker. 

No matter how well-intended and controlled the SVB speaker may be, when he or she is in the company of a NVB speaker, he or she is bound to experience the negative consequences of the NVB speaker’s influence. The only way to not have these experiences is to move away from this NVB speaker, which is our natural, biological response. We must recognize these are implicit, autonomic processes, which are effective because they don’t require any cognitive input. Thus, we are never inclined to question NVB influences, which so often surround us. Such questioning usually only happens when we decrease our proximity to the NVB speaker. This allows us to attend to our private speech which can then catch up with our public speech. In NVB our private speech is excluded from our public speech, but in SVB our private speech is included. Also, in NVB our private speech is considered as causing our public speech. Of course, our NVB public speech causes NVB our private speech. The only moment that we can actually listen to our NVB private speech is when we say out loud what we really think. Only then can we begin to recognize NVB due to our SVB.