June 30, 2015

June 30, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

The following writing is a response to “What do animals mean?” by Rendall, Owen & Ryan (2009). This paper explains that human vocal verbal behavior, speaking, is embedded in and inextricably connected with our nonverbal vocalizations, which, rather than carrying information, induce affective responses in the listener. Although, like the authors, I will mention “sensory and physiological processes that support signaling and responding in listeners”, I will mainly focus on our vocal verbal behavior in which a speaker affects the body of the listener. 

The sound of the speaker is a stimulus, which always has only one of two effects: it can affectively or appetitively influence the nervous system of the listener, which increases the listener's approach behavior, or it can negatively, aversively or noxiously affect the listener, which will increases escape and avoidance behaviors. By studying how animals influence each other, we get a more realistic perspective on how humans influence each other with vocal verbal behavior. The fact that humans have language doesn't mean that they don't do exactly the same as animals. We too affectively influence each other with the sound of our voice. 

With Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), however, a speaker increases the probability of a listener’s approach behavior, but with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the speaker increases the probability of escape and avoidance behaviors in the listener. The two different sounds involved in SVB and NVB result into different behavior. 

The authors, who study animal communication, are against the term “information” because it is “inadequate for many of the problems in behavioral ecology.” Skinner is for the same reason against any kind of mentalist concepts, which really don’t explain anything. In his book Verbal Behavior (1957), he introduces new terminology that refers to environmental variables which make our language possible. Humans should know that animal and human communication “suffers from the lack of clear and rigorous definitions of information, yet nonetheless affords the construct a central explanatory role.” 

As the definition of verbal behavior is itself a verbal activity, it remains easy to get carried away by the very words which are used to describe the verbal behavior. Wittgenstein has called this a ‘language game’. For radical behaviorists words like 'verbal behavior' are meaningful as they are part of a community that regularly uses those words. Mentalists don't think these words are meaningful as they are not involved in this 'game’. If we would consider words as tools, we would have a better chance of using them in ways which are agreed upon and therefore useful. 

My point is that animal communication is as impaired by the words that we use as human communication. It doesn’t even matter whether we use words like “information” or “influence”, as it takes away our attention from the fact that the speaker either appetitively or aversively influences the listener. In the former, which is Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the speaker and the listener are equals and they take turns, but during the latter, turn-taking is absent because one is more important than the other. Moreover, the latter is based on the continuation of negative emotions, but the former involves positive emotions. 

By looking at and listening to animal communication, we are  able to admit that it applies equally to human interaction and that “informational focus, whether explicitly articulated or unknowingly adopted, unduly narrows the focus of study and limits the range of questions asked and problems investigated”.

The authors state “burden of communication falls squarely on the disembodied ‘packet of information’ encoded in the signal flowing from signaler to receiver. “ What do humans have in common with “taxa as diverse as primates and frogs and signaling phenomena as diverse as predator alarm calls and mating displays?” I think that nonverbal animals have more in common with our spoken communication than we, who are both  verbal and nonverbal, are capable of admitting.

We have anthropomorphized animals, but when we, due to the great work of these authors, finally stop doing that, we are left with a new way of looking at how we as humans talk; we have an observable, measurable behavioral account. Moreover, this account is extended by the two vocal subsets: SVB is bi-directional, reciprocal and onto-genetically determined (learned during our life time) and NVB is hierarchical or uni-directional and phylogenetically determined (genetically determined behavior).

In spite of the common belief that “listeners responded to such vocalizations in equally appropriate and specific ways as if semantic information had been exchanged” (underlining added), mentalist researchers couldn’t help but notice that  “some vocalizations in animals were found to be produced in specific contexts, such as when encountering predators of food.” This was, however, again interpreted in a mentalist fashion, as if these “outcomes suggested that some animals might use vocalizations in a representational fashion, similar to the way humans use words.” What was missed and distorted by this mentalist account was that these so-called ‘representations’ are inferred from what animals do and don’t explain anything. Mentalist inferences take our attention away from what animals do - in order to refer to ‘representation’ as if animals somehow prove that humans “use vocalizations in a representational fashion.”(!)

  

What we could learn from “signaling primate species closely related to humans” is there is “a surprising absence of the intention by calling animals” (underlining added). Why was it surprising? It was surprising as humans expected it. However, in humans there is also no such a thing as intention, which is a fabricated construct. Mentalist animal researchers have continued to interpret their findings as ways of proving that humans are very different from animals as they have language.  

Although humans, as listeners, also “sometimes respond to vocalizations ‘as if’ they contain semantic information, callers [speakers] prove to be fundamentally unaware of the information value of their own signals.” This is a illustrative  reference to NVB. In NVB, the speaker doesn’t know that he or she is negatively influencing others by how he or she speaks. When a NVB speaker is interrupted by someone, he or she almost always immediately reacts aggressively. This response is automatic and below the level of awareness. It only reaches the level of awareness if the environment supports SVB, but, most environments only support NVB. Moreover, emphasis on the so-called information is always used in NVB as an end which justifies the means, to coerce the listener to do whatever the speaker wants him or her to do. “Data on the neural control of [animal] vocal production” suggests that “it primarily involves involuntary processes.”

As mammals humans have different brains than many other animals. Birds and lizards, for instance, depend on brain structures that are much older than, and therefore hierarchically below, the neocortex, which is unique for mammals. In humans, the neural control of the neocortex made possible complex forms of behavior such as social behavior, which led to tool making and to language and consciousness. Stephen Porges (2001) argues that from ancient brain mechanisms such as the brain stem and the limbic system, which facilitate immobization and mobilization responses during threatening situations, the most recent structure of the neocortex emerged, which mediates our social engagement. His Poly Vagal Perspective (2001) states we instantaneously revert to these older embedded brain structures which activate our visceral or autonomic response. Thus, in a case of a threat, our neocortex shuts down and we immediately revert back to mobilization, that is, to fleeing or fighting and if that isn’t possible, we freeze and immobilize, in order to not be seen by the predator. Porges’ Poly Vagal theory basically explains that we can’t talk as long as we are fearful, aggressive or frozen. 

This is additional evidence for SVB, in which there is no aversive stimulation and no need to freeze, flee or fight. Furthermore, Poly Vagal theory also explains why Social Engagement is impossible as long as our mobilization or our immobilization responses are triggered; we have NVB as long as that happens. 

In terms of signaling, an animal’s sense of safety is of utmost importance. Misinterpretation of a threatening signal can mean death. The details of a signal can only become important when they are safe. The fact that “more recent findings highlight an informational disconnect between signalers and perceivers” seems to “suggest they do not share the same representational parity that characterizes human speech.” This seems to be another misinterpretation. What can be learned from animals is that if we listen to how someone sounds, we accurately determine if he or she is threatening us or making us feel safe and we can learn to differentiate between SVB and NVB. 

“Vocal verbal behavior [in animals] is modulated primarily by involuntary processes involving sub-cortical brain structures, such as the limbic system, the mid-brain and the brain-stem. In contrast, language production in humans involves a variety of sub-cortical circuits but relies importantly on volitionally controlled processes in temporal –and frontal-lobe cortical regions” (Lieberman, 2002). Sub-cortical regions are involved only to the extent that they mediate safety and well-being as that activates the temporal-and frontal-lobe cortical regions.