October 17, 2015

October 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is a second response to “What do Animals Mean?” (2009) by D. Randall, M. Owren & M. Ryan. The ‘picture’ described in yesterday’s writing needs to be slightly altered so that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) becomes visible. The monkeys must be humans. Also they must be senders as well as receivers. Verbal behavior flows in both directions and has to be depicted by two arrows. The simultaneous, bi-directional, co-regulating effect of their nonverbal and verbal behavior can be depicted by another set of arrows. In other words, there must be four arrows, describing a feedback-mechanism in which verbal expressions will accurately describe our nonverbal experiences. In addition, the listener lets the speaker know how he or she is experiencing him or her, which stimulates the speaker to adjust his or her vocal expression to the listener. This fine-tuning of the speaker’s speaking behavior with the listener’s listening behavior, which requires turn-taking between speaker and listener, is made possible due to the absence of aversive stimulation. Stated differently, the informational approach should be abandoned as its uni-directionality, our most problematic language habit, always makes us de-contextualize ourselves and each other.

“Although informational approaches have tremendous intuitive appeal, they are at one and the same time both too loose and too restrictive to cover the broad range of animal-signaling phenomena.” These authors, who are not familiar with the SVB/Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, don’t realize that their writing is never going result into the discovery and exploration of “the fundamental properties of signal phenomena.” Like adherents of “informational approaches”, they too“often overlook, obscure or underspecify many of the fundamental properties of signal phenomena” as they don’t know how to link animal vocalizations to human vocalizations.

These animal researchers give many reasons why humans should reject “information approaches,” but they leave out the most important one, namely that humans are affected by each other’s sound in exactly the same way as primates. This common “view of language-like meaning and communication has also been used to organize studies of primates and some other taxa because our own experience with language makes it a natural metaphor for studying communication in other species.” Since words presumably ‘represent’ something for us humans, monkey signals are now also falsely believed to represent something for them.

It was believed to represent information of the human kind as “some vocalizations were found to be produced in specific contexts, such as when encountering predators or food, and listeners responded to such vocalizations in equally specific and appropriate ways as if semantic information had been exchanged” (Seyfarth et al. 1980). Nonetheless, human communication never merely was only an exchange of semantic information, but, in SVB, is a reciprocal, empathic response to how we sound. “Exchange of semantic information” by itself signifies NVB, the absence of co-regulation and a dis-regulating infatuation with words.

These researchers noted that “representational modes of signaling have been reported in only a few species, and then only in a small fraction of the vocal repertoire.” Interestingly, they found a difference between callers/speakers and responders/listeners. “Thus, although listeners sometimes respond to vocalizations ‘as if’ they contained semantic information, callers prove to be fundamentally unaware of the informational value of their own signals.” This speaker’s fact is quite similar to how most human so-called ‘interaction’ actually works. For the most part human speakers are “fundamentally unaware of the informational value of their own signals” and therefore engage in NVB. In other words, for the most part, they are unaware of how they sound.

Only in SVB do the speakers recognize how the effect the listener, but in NVB the aversive impact of the speaker on the listener is automatic.

Also non-behaviorist researchers interpret the recent findings as “an informational disconnect between signalers and receivers” and suggest “they do not share the same representational parity that characterizes human speech (Cheney & Seyfarth 1996, 1998, 2005).” Behaviorists as well as non-behaviorists are unaware about the SVB/NVB distinction. 

The reader is asked to read through the fog that is created by language. When the word ‘information’ is used it is best to think of what matters most in the animal world: safety or threat. In the former, the calling animal communicates a form of SVB, but in the latter, the speaker communicates NVB to the listener. Those who threaten others are never considerate about their effect on those who they prey upon. “In fact, the failure of calling animals to take account of the informational needs of listeners corroborates a growing literature showing that nonhuman primates show little of the perspective taking and mental state attribution abilities considered to be foundational to the referential quality of human language (reviewed in Penn & Povinelli 2007).” What is referred to in this statement as “perspective taking” only comes into play with SVB, but is completely absent in NVB.

Since most of our interaction can be categorized as NVB, we are very much like primates. The few moments that we are able to attain SVB have nothing to do with “the referential quality of human language” or with “mental state attribution abilities”, but with the speaker’s precise verbal description of how he or she is affecting the listener. Accuracy of this description requires activation of the speaker-as-own-listener; only when the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, can he or she be aware how others are experiencing him or her. Thus, by listening to him or herself, the speaker and the listener become one.

It is unclear what the authors mean with “language production” as this  can mean SVB or NVB. “Language production in humans also involves a variety of subcortical circuits but relies importantly on volitionally controlled processes in temporal- and frontal-lobe cortical regions (Lieberman, 2002).” I claim only NVB “involves a variety of subcortical circuits” and am convinced only SVB “relies importantly on volitionally controlled processes in temporal- and frontal-lobe cortical regions.” It has to be this way as in NVB the speaker threatens the listener, which activates the more ancient parts of our brains. During SVB, on the other hand, the speaker never aversively influences the listener.