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.”