February 6, 2016

February 6, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016)  Kraus & Slater write “A recurring theme throughout this review is that our experience of sound is rooted in the physical world, that sound is rooted in movement, and that our motor systems play an essential role in our perception of the inherent structure of sound.” It seems that these cognitivist researchers reach a behaviorist conclusion! 

“The sophisticated systems of modern communication are rooted in our more ancient relationship with sound.” They propose our brains have evolved to seek out patterns “as we try to make sense of the sounds that we hear.” Furthermore, “these patterns also provide a framework for communicating with others and there is close integration between our ability to produce as well as perceive communication sounds.” They have gathered evidence that “the same neural networks involved in generating the movements to produce sound are also intimately involved in the perception of underlying patterns. Therefore, communication is not simply the transfer of sound signals from one person to another but rather is an interaction between physical entities.” Interestingly, they abandon an information-processing cognitive interpretation for an inclusive and more parsimonious behaviorist functional relationship. 

Indeed, we either reinforce each other’s Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) or each other’s Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). “Evidence indicates that when two individuals synchronize their movements, this increases affiliation between them and promotes bonding.” These authors describe SVB (not NVB) when they conclude that “From the dyadic exchange between mother and child, to conversational turn-taking and improvisational jazz, these patterns in time not only streamline information processing, they also help us to connect.”  

February 5, 2016

February 5, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016) Kraus & Slater write about those who have better “pre-reading skills”, which should perhaps better be called pre-verbal skills.  “The ability to make use of rhythmic cues when perceiving speech has been linked to reading skills.” Those who have this skill are said to be better at “synchronizing.” Before we are able to “separate words into their individual sounds”, however, we must first be able to pay attention to someone’s voice.  Our ability to orient to someone’s voice depends on the conditioning effect of the voice of those who spoke with us when we weren’t able to speak. To the extent that they spoke with us with a soothing, resonant voice, which made us feel safe, accepted and supported, we learned to pay attention to such voices later on, but to the extent that we were exposed to someone who sounded impatient, demanding or angry, we were conditioned, pre-verbally, to adjust to and endure such threatening stimuli. 

In the light of this inevitable conditioning effect of how we sound, it is interesting to consider the relatively high response rate of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and the relatively low response rate of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In NVB, the speaker doesn’t listen to himself, but forces others listen to him, while in SVB, each speaker listens to himself, due to which there is a total absence of aversive stimulation.  Although SVB has been part of it, a lot of pre-verbal learning has taken place with NVB. Moreover, our ability to align our verbal and nonverbal expressions, to synchronize what we say with how we say it, depends on the joining of our speaking and listening behaviors. Only when our speaking and listening happen at the exact same rate can we produce SVB, but when there is more speaking than listening or more listening than speaking, we inevitably produce NVB.   

February 4, 2016

February 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016) by Kraus & Slater, the authors refer to research by Johnson & Jusczyk (2001), who found “evidence that stress patterns in speech outweigh statistical cues for determining word boundaries when conflicting cues are pitted against each other.” In my analysis of our spoken communication, we distinguish between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), which is interaction that is based on the listener’s experience of safety and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is interaction that is based on the listener’s experience of threat. The above should be re-worded in: NVB stress patterns outweigh SVB cues of safety. 

From an evolutionary perspective this makes total sense. As long as the SVB/NVB distinction is not made, the extent to which aversively-sounding threatening patterns of communicating impair learning is not properly understood. Although the authors mention that “sensitivity to durational patterns is particularly important for understanding speech under degraded listening conditions” (read NVB) and acknowledge that “violations of expectation can also influence processing”, they can’t and do not explain the “tension between conformity and deviation” as SVB and NVB. 

“Nuanced relationship with patterns” is not arbitrary, but biological. Without describing the pattern of safety (SVB), which is absolutely necessary in learning how to speak, read and write, the authors state it “is important to note that patterns therefore provide a framework that can modulate processing in two ways, either by emphasizing the importance of elements that are consistent with the pattern or by drawing attention to elements that do not fit with the pattern.” In NVB, the speaker’s sound impairs the listener’s ability to synchronize and “separate words into their individual sounds”, but in SVB listening  skills are stimulated and increased due to the sound of the speaker.

February 3, 2016

February 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In “Beyond Words: Human Communication Through Sound” (2016) by Kraus & Slater, the authors write about the connection between “the patterns of sound we create and the movements that create them.” By “examining” their own verbal descriptions, they seem to go “beyond words”, which form the “principles of information processing that are common to human communication and music.”

These authors try to suspend their cognitivist interpretations, but fail, yet they are able to “peel back these layers” and uncover “the biological foundations of human communication.” Since every healthy human being is born as a vocal, but not as a verbal organism, it should be clear to us that, ontogenetically, our words are always embedded into our sounds. More importantly, since, as a species, it was only fairly recent in evolutionary history that our vocal cords came under functional control of the environment, the phylogenetic origin of our vocal behavior is determined by our body’s ability to produce and observe sounds.

Sounds produced by and observed with or rather, listened to with our body only have two functions:  signaling safety or threat. This brings us to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), two universal response classes, which we have not analyzed due to our infatuation with words. The authors emphasize survival value of speech patterns, but do not recognize the two most basic patterns of vocal verbal behavior, which are involved in the experience and expression of safety and threat. We keep “searching for patterns” that presumably “tell us something about the physical world” as long as we feel threatened and engage in NVB. Only during SVB can we embody our spoken communication. The author's claim “we are not disembodied listeners” refers to SVB. We disconnect from our body during NVB.   

February 2, 2016

February 2, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971, p. 125) Skinner writes “The struggle for freedom and dignity has been formulated as a defense of autonomous man rather than as a revision of the contingencies of reinforcement under which people live.” 

I argue “the struggle for freedom and dignity has been formulated as a defense of” a particular way of talking rather than “as a defense of autonomous man.” Because of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the illusion of “autonomous man” can be continued, but once we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), this illusion disappears. Only in NVB do we struggle, not to defend “autonomous man”, but to continue NVB. 

This is a paradoxical phenomenon: we struggle to formulate, to verbalize, to communicate, only to be able to continue the struggle; NVB never gives rise to SVB. Only when NVB, the communication that involves struggle, has been recognized and stopped, can SVB begin. 

The rates of SVB and NVB determine a culture. Skinner writes (p.131) “We tend to associate a culture with a group of people. People are easier to see than their behavior, and behavior is easier to see than the contingencies which generate it. (Also easy to see and hence often invoked in defining a culture, are the language spoken and the things the culture uses, such as tools, weapons, clothing and art forms)” (bold italics added). 

Skinner’s emphasis on seeing instead of on listening prevents behaviorists from paying attention to how we sound while they talk. Consequently, they have remained ignorant about the two most obvious response classes which occur in every language of the world: SVB and NVB. Even if we formulate, write, read and study their accurate descriptions, the contingencies which generate SVB or NVB cannot be seen; they can only be observed by speakers who listen to their own sound while they speak.