Saturday, January 14, 2017

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.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

August 25, 2015



August 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my eight response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). “A socially influential animal has the opportunity to use a listener’s own learning processes to create vocal “leverage” over its affective states and behavior.” This puts me as the originator of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in a unique position. As a teacher and speaker, I am able to create vocal “leverage” over the student’s affective states and behavior. Moreover, I can teach students to acquire this behavior.

As I was and still am involved in singing, music and poetry, I have “the ability to induce differentiated affective outcomes” because of my use of “subtly different call types.”I am able to produce alarming as well as soothing call types. My voice stands out from others and people have repeatedly told me this. Since I know about the SVB/NVB distinction, I am no longer affected by the alarm calls that are coming from those who don’t know about this distinction. “The threat calls of subordinate animals will generally be of little affective consequence for dominants.”

Although I don’t consider myself as a “dominant” animal, I am one by virtue of my knowledge about SVB. Many calls have no effect on me, because I immediately recognize them as NVB and I don’t get involved. “Hence, the capacity to induce learned affect in others depends on the identity of the caller vis à vis the recipient.” I basically leave NVB speakers alone and they leave me alone. “This functional requirement might help to explain why the variety of calls used in such face-to-face contexts in different primate species have regularly proven to contain clear cues to caller identity when such cues have otherwise seemed entirely redundant in these contexts.” My notion of identity is about how speakers sound. Simply stated, if we sound ‘good’, we feel ‘good.’ We don’t make ourselves sound good or feel good. If we do that, we are not sounding or feeling good. Our natural voice always expresses our well-being.

Since sounding good is my identity, I respond effectively to those who sound threatening, intimidating, overwhelming and upsetting. My ability to  recognize these aversively-sounding NVB speakers never fails and affects my behavior. Initially, I felt always influenced and troubled by NVB, but now that I have come to understand that I don’t cause my own behavior, that there is no me, who causes me to be the way I am and to act as I do, I realize I can only sound good and be myself, under certain circumstances and with certain people. 

“In the social groups of many primate species, one’s influence on other group members hinges on individual identity and social status, and therefore simply announcing one’s identity vocally can also influence the affect and arousal of others.” Certainly, I influence others with the sound of my voice. It is as simple as that. Due to my influence, people experience SVB and the difference between SVB and NVB. My social status as an instructor and therapist allows me to do this. I am an “influential individual” whose “identity cues provide additional explicit opportunities to leverage the social behavior of others by controlling the behavioral sequelae that follow from vocal exchanges.” One semester or multiple therapy sessions provide “myriad opportunities for behavioral shaping through processes of conditioning and learning.” I feel fortunate to be in the situation in which I am able to do what I do best.

August 24, 2015



August 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer


Dear Reader, 
This is my seventh response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). “In natural environments, an individual’s emotional response to events is a good heuristic to what aspects of the environment are important.” Thus, the listener responds differently depending on how the speaker sounds. The Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) speaker induces positive emotions in the listener, while the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) speaker induces negative emotions. If people would have the chance, they would move away from the NVB speaker, but, unfortunately, this is often not the case as we don’t live “in natural environments.” 

“Affective learning” only occurs to the extent that we are free to move away from noxious-sounding speakers. If this is not impossible, as it so often is, we are conditioned by negative emotion-inducing voices. Such NVB voices “induce powerful autonomic responses in listeners”, but don’t “effectively serve also to highlight or tag salient events in the world, and thereby support additional learning about them.” To the contrary, ongoing NVB prevents learning because it elicits fight-flight response without the possibility of escape. I think that NVB is traumatizing, disempowering and self-defeating.

Vervet monkeys would never have been able to develop their typical alarm call system if their vocalizations were not followed by effective escape responses. “They produce a small number small number of different alarm vocalizations that are specific to the different major classes of predator that prey on them, and each predator requires the monkeys to engage a functionally different escape response.” However, only with ‘experienced’ adult listeners do these alarm calls elicit different responses “as though the calls themselves encoded referentially specific, or semantic, information about the type of predator encountered, similar to the way human words function." Unless the infant monkeys are taught by more mature family members how to respond appropriately to these different calls, they will not be able to learn how to do it. “Predator-naive infant vervets do not respond in adult-like fashion with differentiated escape responses to the different alarm calls.” Although they are born with an innate startle response and different alarm calls “preserve a common set of affect-inducing acoustic features”, only “over time, do infants’ responses begin to differentiate into the more adult-like repertoire of escape options.” During this time they must be exposed to and be conditioned by behavior of conspecifics, who they can see and hear. For vervet monkeys, alarm calls serve to escape from predators. “The powerful effects that the alarm calls of vervets have from the very start on attentional and affective systems likely serve to  tag the significance of these events for naive infants and promote additional learning about the different predators involved and the specific behavioral responses that follow and are appropriate to them.”

Take note that NVB is linked to survival. SVB can only be learned over time, as a result of the fact that there was safety and stability and at least for some time no need to struggle for survival. The authors state that “learning effects like this that are scaffolded on a foundation of affect induction might be critically functional not only in non-intentional species including primates, but also in many other species.” Species which don’t behave (verbally) like humans, are still able to “instruct naïve infants about predators and other dangers (or other aspects of the local environments, e.g. appropriate food items)” by means of sound. Indeed, “such vocalizations promote additional learning about the environment without either the adults or the infants being aware of this fact.” Only if alarm calls resulted in the appropriate response will there be time for more learning. 

NVB is at one end of the continuum of learning and SVB is at the other end. If something goes wrong in verbal learning we should pay more attention to nonverbal learning. Nonverbal species may “lack the social cognitive abilities that would motivate adult members to instruct naive infants about predators and other dangers”, but “alarm vocalizations that by themselves induce powerful affective responses in infants offer a functional, evolutionary “work-around” to the problem.” This should make us pay attention to how we sound while we speak, as our vocalizations induce the affective responses, which makes us into conscious communicators in SVB or into unconscious, imprisoned and entangled communicators in NVB.

“Learned affect” refers to the “conditioned response of the listener to the affective consequences of vocalizations” because particular sounds from the speaker become paired with “salient emotion-inducing acts.” As with primates, so also with humans “more dominant group members routinely antagonize their subordinates.” There is NVB each time speakers aversively influence the listener. NVB always involves speakers who dominate, coerce and intimidate listeners with their way of talking. In the world of primates “the dominant typically produces distinctive threat vocalizations while biting and chasing the subordinate”. Humans do more or less the same. 

“The dominant’s threat calls predict the associated, aggression-induced affect.” As we get too overly involved with what we say, we don’t pay attention to how we say things. Listeners don’t do what speakers tell them to do due to what they say, but because of how they sounded. Thus, “the dominant can elicit similar negative affect in previous victims by use of the calls alone.” However, dominant ones also may produce “an acoustically distinctive affiliative sound before approaching a subordinate with peaceable intent.” With primates this happens when “the dominant one inspects or interacts with females or infants in the group.” Under such circumstances, the subordinates will associate calls produced by dominant ones with “a different set of emotional responses, like those experienced during the positively-toned grooming episode that often follows approach and calling.” With humans too words become associated sound and only certain people are able to influence each other in particular ways.

August 23, 2015



August 23, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 
This is my sixth response to Chapter 5.4 “Vocalizations as tools for influencing the affect and behavior of others” by Rendall and Owren, (2010). The basis for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in humans, are the “shrieks, squeaks and screams” observed in primates. These call types “tend to be relatively unpatterned and chaotic.” The basis for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) are the “sonants and gruffs” made by primates. They “tend either to be tonal, harmonically-rich calls, or to be characterized by a more diffuse broadband spectral structure that is nevertheless regularly patterned.” SVB is fine-grained, sensitive, reciprocal interaction, but NVB is coarse-grained, hierarchical, forceful uni-directional interaction. In SVB  speaker and listener co-regulate each other, but NVB speakers dysregulate listeners. In SVB the speaker creates and generates attention, while in NVB the speaker demands and exhausts the listener’s attention.

In SVB there is acknowledgement and accurate expression of emotion, but in NVB there is no attention for emotion and therefore there is no accurate description of emotion. This is not to say the NVB speaker doesn’t elicit emotions in the listener. Surely, the NVB speaker induces powerful negative emotions in the listener. The SVB speaker, by contrast, says nothing that forces the listener. “While the chaotic features of squeaks, shrieks and screams are well-suited to having direct impact on listener arousal and affect, the more patterned nature of sonants and gruffs gives them less inherent affective force, either negative or positive.” In other words, the “sonants and gruffs” lend themselves for another way of learning. 

These direct or indirect ways of learning are facilitated by the sender and are not up to the receiver. The sender’s “sonants and gruffs” signal safety and positive emotions and this results into more complex behavior than direct-acting “squeaks, shrieks and screams.” Another reason for learning more complex behavior is that “these calls provide an excellent medium for revealing clear cues to caller identity through individual idiosyncracies. Such idiosyncracies routinely impart individually distinctive voice cues in acoustic features of these calls that are associated either with the pattern of dynamic action of the vocal folds or through resonance properties of the vocal tract cavities.” Whether we are taught by a dedicated, kind and sensitive person or by an authoritarian,  punitive, forceful teacher makes an enormous difference in what and how we learn. The latter impairs learning complex behavior. The army sergeant not only teaches different things than the piano teacher, he also sounds very different. As the teaching of the piano teacher involves closeness to the student it is no surprise that “sonants and gruffs” are used “in face-to-face social interactions.” The screaming army sergeant yells at his soldiers, who follow orders. 

The sound of the speaker’s voice influences the listener in such a way that he or she simply obeys and does what he or she is told or it allows the listener to interact with the speaker and engage in more complex forms of learning. “In the social groups of many primate species, one’s influence on other group members hinges on individual identity and social status, and therefore simply announcing one’s identity vocally can also influence the affect and arousal of others.” The fact that the teacher knows more than the student makes the teacher the authority, but it doesn’t need to mean that the teacher uses coercion to dominate the student. To the contrary, if the teacher uses his or her authority correctly, the student wants to learn as his or her tone of voice is appetitive to the student. In the teacher’s “sonants and gruffs”, in his or her kindness to explain and give support, the student recognizes the teacher’s identity. “Such identity cues provide additional explicit opportunities for influential individuals to leverage the social behavior of others by controlling the behavioral sequelae that follow from vocal exchanges, providing myriad opportunities for behavioral shaping through processes of conditioning and learning.”
As humans have yet to acknowledge SVB and NVB really exist in English, Russian and other languages, research about primate vocalization is in its infancy. If we would understand more about ourselves, that is, if we would acknowledge that the listener in spoken communication is always affected by the voice of the speaker, we could make more progress in understanding primates. As long as we don’t recognize it in ourselves, by listening to ourselves while we speak, we anthropomorphize and make it seem as if primates, like us, are ‘processing information.’ Of course, neither primates nor humans are ‘processing information.’ Like primates, humans too are affected by each other’s sounds. Language is playing once again a game on us. When we talk, we can experience our words as sounds again. In SVB, our words have meaning because they are experienced as sounds.  

Although they don’t mention, Rendall and Owren get close to recognizing SVB and NVB; in both kinds of interaction the listener is directly affected by the sound of the speaker. “Sonants and gruffs” relate to SVB, in which there is positive affect-induction, but “shrieks, squeaks and screams” relates to NVB and negative affect-induction. They identify three ways in which “vocal signals might exert functional affective influence on listeners.” The first one is the “quite direct influence that vocal signals can have on listener affect through stimulation of autonomic systems organizing and impelling basic behavioral action” as just described. The second mechanism is that the “vocal signals might influence listener affect and behavior more indirectly through general processes of conditioning.” A third “possible mechanism through which vocal signals might exert affective influence is through a process of affective and behavioral resonance.” As the reader hopefully already knows, I only use this research to back up the SVB/NVB distinction in human vocal verbal behavior. The speaker’s vocal signals condition the listener's affect and, in SVB, the speaker harmonizes with the listener.