August 28, 2015

August 28, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my eleventh response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010).  Before I continue commenting on this important paper, I want to write about a dream I just woke up from. It was a about magnificent feast.  Accompanied by music, a big, canoe-like dish was carried in by eight men and eight women. The food displayed looked beautiful. It was a piece of art, so colorful and abundant. As they ceremonially came to the middle of the room that was filled with the many participants for this celebration, it was apparent to everyone that the food was alive. People let out sounds of joy, thankfulness and anticipation and were amazed by the wave-like changing patterns and colors of the food. The huge dish seemed to float off the shoulders of the carriers, who, with great care and calmness lowered it to the ground. It seemed to take a long time for the dish to land and everyone admired the grace with which this was done. People drew closer and were ready to eat from this gorgeous dish. Plates had been handed out and while this boat of sacred food came closer to the ground, it began to overflow. Everyone came closer and held out their plates to catch the food and plates were passed from one person to the next until everyone had been provided. Before the eating began, a song was sung by a female and a male singer, which described the waiting for, the arrival and the meaning of this food. As everyone swayed to this graceful music, their eyes filled with tears of gratitude. It was now time to eat, to use our hands and to nourish ourselves.

While we speak, we either adjust and attune to each other or we don’t. If we don’t, speakers produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but if we do, we make Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) available to the listener. Because of their punitive conditioning many adults never acquired the ability attune. As children, we were born sensitive and in need of attunement and attachment. Without attunement there can be no attachment. Attachment is only possible if we are and remain attuned. However, even if were fortunate enough to have good parents, most of us only experience this wonderful attachment and attunement while we grow up.  As we get older, we become less and less reinforced for this and, consequently, this creates many problems. There is of course a more obvious need for reinforcement while we are young, because without it we are unable to learn anything. As we have learned things, we are capable of reinforcing ourselves, but this never means that we can completely do without the reinforcement of others.

The authors wrote “In many cultures, the speech that adults use when talking to infants is quite different from the speech they use when talking to other adults. Infant-directed speech is often simplified compared to adult-directed speech, but it also often involves exaggerated prosodic features, such as wider excursions of voice pitch; more variable amplitude, tempo and delivery; and more varied patterns of word stress. These modifications to infant directed speech mean that, as a physical acoustic signal, it is inherently both more salient and more variable than adult-directed speech, and these properties also make it more functional in capturing and focusing infant attention and modulating core arousal.” It is interesting that we, as adults, also want to see and hear actors and performers act out “exaggerated prosodic features.” Our emotional need continues to exist. However, we can’t get our need for “salient” and “variable” speech met by passively listening to actors, performers, leaders, preachers and professional speakers, who supposedly do the talking for us. Unless we engage in SVB, our need for interaction can’t be met. Every time we engage in NVB this need is frustrated and we become more isolated. Also, our therapists and teachers usually can't help us achieve SVB as they tend to be too busy with what they are saying. Their common verbal fixation causes NVB and is based on a misunderstanding about talking and listening. As long as the sound of our voice is not our focus while we speak we will continue to have NVB.

The aforementioned more “salient”, “variable” speech, which seems to come natural when adults talk with children, is needed for adults as well.  However, during the course of our normal development our overt speech becomes covert. Initially, everyone is happy when a child says its first few words and begins to formulate sentences, but once they acquire language, speech begins to recede to a covert level, where it becomes what we say to ourselves and determines to what extent we are able to regulate ourselves. Obviously, negative self-talk is dysregulating and only our positive self-talk is regulating. Such negative or positive self-talk is a function of the NVB or SVB which we have experienced while growing up. For most people there is more SVB while growing up then while being grown up. Therefore, as adults, we are mainly determined by what we say to ourselves, by covert speech. To the extent that our positive self-talk allows us to be open to what others say to us, we will engage in SVB, but to the extent that our negative self-talk prevents us from being open to others, we will engage in NVB. Thus, how we were being talked with while we were growing up determines how we later talk as adults. We cannot produce SVB as long as it was not reinforced. And, of course, then, we also cannot reinforce SVB in others.

Our ability to become an effective speaker is determined by the extent to  which we can be an affective speaker. We don't become fully verbal as long as the sound of our voice doesn’t support what we are saying. This is only be the case in SVB. During NVB our voice contradicts what we are saying, that is, our negative affect influences the listener in such a way that he or she experiences our sound as an aversive stimulus from which they want to escape. To learn, not only children need to hear a positive sound, adults need to hear a positive sound too. Without that listeners will not fully understand what the speaker is saying. “The resulting modulatory effects have been shown to facilitate semantic learning and to highlight additional organizational properties of language. For example, exaggerated pitch excursions and word stress in conjunction with manual gesturing and manipulation of concrete objects facilitates semantic labeling. Variable tempo and pausing help to highlight phonetic boundaries, clausal boundaries and higher syntactical units (reviewed in Kuhl, 2000 ).