August 26, 2015

August 26, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my ninth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010).  I have now arrived at that part of the paper in which the authors talk about “affective and behavioral resonance.” Of course, the is just a figure of speech. They don’t talk about it, they write about it, but we say that they talk about it while we are referring to their writing, and we, the readers, don’t say anything either, as we only read about it. I already pointed out this phenomenon in my previous writings, but it can’t be addressed often enough that there are serious problems involved in our interchanging of speaking and listening with writing and reading. These different realms are often assumed to interact, when in reality they don’t.  Many things have been written with the assumption that it would make a difference in how we talk and that it would change our behavior, but it didn’t. It didn’t because it couldn’t. It couldn’t because reading doesn’t affect how we are talking.  

What does change our way of talking is how we sound. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) the speaker produces a sound which expresses his or her wellbeing. When speakers express wellbeing, we have a different interaction than when speakers have a sound which signifies stress, fear, anxiety, frustration or guardedness, in other words: negative emotions. Under such circumstances we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).  The listeners are always affected by such speakers, whether they know it or not, recognize it or not, express or are allowed to express it or not. During NVB the speaker is on automatic pilot as he or she doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. Since the NVB speaker doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she isn’t the least interested in how the listener is affected by this. Stated differently, the “affective resonance” that these authors are wring about is always prevented by NVB. It only occurs during SVB, that is, when NVB has been stopped. 

“Affective and behavioral resonance” during spoken communication is a real possibility which, unfortunately, we often miss out on as we don’t know how to stop NVB. The problem is not SVB, but the problem is NVB. NVB is difficult to extinguish as we keep triggering each other into it. Also, we are not having NVB because we want to have it; we have NVB as we don’t know how to have SVB. Once we know the difference between SVB and NVB, we know we want to have SVB. As long as we seem to want NVB, the difference between SVB and NVB has not yet been discriminated. 

SVB equals “affective and behavioral resonance.” If circumstances are such that it can happen, it will happen. Moreover, it will happen effortlessly. It “emerges from the increasing realization that the neurophysiological organization of behavior depends on reciprocal influence between systems guiding the production of behavior and systems involved in perceiving, interpreting and responding to the behavior of others.” The “increasing realization” occurs because of the repeated differentiation between SVB and NVB. One cannot be known without the other and lack of understanding about NVB therefore prevents us from having more SVB.

Especially while we speak, it becomes apparent that “behavior depends on reciprocal influence.” In SVB, the speaker is his or her own listener. As the speaker and the listener are one within each person, the speaker and the listener can also be one in SVB in another person. This other person can be a speaker as well as a listener. SVB is characterized by turn-taking in which the speaker can become the listener and the listener can become the speaker. In NVB, by contrast, there is no turn-taking. In NVB the speaker and the listener roles are determined by the speaker, who coerces the listener with his or her uni-directional way of talking. In SVB, however, the speaker invites the listener to speak, so that there can be bi-directional interaction.  

Since “neurophysiological organization of behavior depends on reciprocal influence between systems”, we are dysregulated when this “reciprocal influence between systems” is made impossible by our NVB. In NVB the speaker not only dysregulates others (listeners), but also him or herself.     

"The landmark finding on this front was the discovery of mirror and canonical neuron systems in primate brains which are activated both by seeing an object, or seeing an action performed by another individual,

and by acting on that same object, or performing the same action oneself."

Mirror neurons are believed to play an important role in recognizing what the main character in a movie is feeling and in predicting what they are going to do.  Just by look and listening, our neurobiology has evolved to give us direct access to the same roller coaster of experiences that the main character is experiencing, “This perceptuo-motor integration generates an unconscious behavioral resonance between individuals via incipient “motor sympathy” for one another’s actions.” We experience feelings of joy, stress, suffering, anger and fear as we see and hear what others are going through.

“The effects have been shown to include visuomotor sympathy for certain communicative gestures in primates (Ferrari et al., 2003) and for facial expressions of emotions in humans (Carr et al., 2003 ; Hennenlotter et al., 2005). They have also been shown to extend beyond the visuo-motor system. For example, auditory-motor mirror neurons that integrate the sound of an act with the behavior required to generate it have been reported in non-human primates (Kohler et al., 2002 ; Keysers et al., 2003 ).”

There has to be congruence between what we say and how we say it as without integration we can't make any sense. During NVB in which this integration is lacking there are many problems. SVB solves these problems as it establishes and maintains congruence between what we say and how we say it. Once we know the SVB/NVB distinction, we recognize which sounds and gestures belong to either one of these subsets of vocal behavior. No gesture or sound belongs to both. It doesn’t make any evolutionary sense to keep making sounds and gestures which originate in survival, but this is what we do during NVB. Once we know the SVB/NVB distinction, we realize that, indeed, mankind’s survival is at stake and that NVB surely paves the way for our demise. Only SVB integrates what we say with how we say it. NVB prevents that as it turns us against our own biology.