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.
“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.