hOw wE cOmMuNiCaTe!!!!!!!!!

Human Communication

What is communication?

•All social behavior is a form of communication........

•But it can be inadvertent ..like age, sex, size, ethnicity, apparent strength, weakness, gender........

•Need to delimit communication in order to study it........

•It must be goal-directed and purposeful behavior.........

•Any signal given out by one individual used by another either to predict the behavior of the first

individual, or something else in the environment (Thelma Rowell)......

•Signals function to permit interaction between fellow species members (con-specifics) thereby making

reproduction and survival possible.........

Aspects of Communication

•Signal.....

•Meaning....

•Function....

•Development....

•Evolution.....

<Human Communication>

is 100% verbal/symbolic, productive (new words and meanings can be invented);

is 100% non-verbal (involves multi-modal sensory system;

  touch (tactile)…movement (kinesiology)

  use of space (proxemics)

  olfaction (smell)

  eye contact (visual)

  auditory

HUMAN Cooperation

•Two things are required for cooperation:

–Common ground or joint attentional frame

–Social motivations for helping and sharing with others......

Infant Pointing: Fundamentally Human

•Infants use their shared common ground with a pointing adult (not their own egocentric interests) to interpret both the adult’s referential intention and his underlying motive and social intention.

•For most infants, pointing emerges at around the first birthday, before language, so this indicates that the infrastructure of cooperative communication operates initially not in support of language but in the use of the pointing gesture.

•In studies, it was found that:

–Human infants understand joint activity

–Chimpanzees understand their own action from a first-person perspective and that of the partner from a third-person perspective.

–Human infants spent far more time than apes looking back and forth from object to adult, and their looks to the face of the adult were almost twice as long as those of the apes. The infants look were sometimes accompanied by smiles; apes do not smile.

Where Do Signals Come From???

@Intention movements (getting ready to run, fight, hit, play, groom, have sex, protect yourself etc........

@Physiological-by-products as in autonomic reactions such as pupil dilation, muscle dilation or constriction, heavy breathing, increased heart rate, blushing, fear, fight, ot flight..............

The message is in….

•Unlearned responses to novel, unexpected stimuli

•Surprise/startle...........

•Pain.........

•Anger.........

•Grief...........

•Embarrassment............

•Confusion/bewilderment.......

Message is enhanced by…......

•Gestures (affirming, denying, exaggerating, welcoming, distancing, connecting, rejecting, nice, nasty);

•“emblems”..such as O.K, crazy, victory, good luck, maybe, not-so-good;

•“illustrations” non-specific but somehow choreographed hand and head and body motions and movements..underlying words and emotions……

Biology of Human Vocalizations

•The 90 degree angle created by vertebral column and head articulation i.e. with foramen magnum in center of skull.......

•By design we have separate oral, pharyngeal and nasal cavities (spaces) that can by manipulating by tongue and lips be closed off from one another.........

Other adaptations for human speech#

•Short muscular tongue............

•Short jaw from front to back (brain case gets big space as mouth becomes smaller and pulled under cranium..........

•Reduced prognathism (of human jaw jutting forward)........

•Reduced anterior dentition..no big projecting, conical –shaped canines jutting from tooth row.........

•Parabolic arch (not v-shapes like monkeys, or parallel and U-shaped like apes.......

•Neural mechanisms and adaptations for speech breathing (volitional control) .......

What does language do?

•Informs

•Requests

•Shares

•Permits collaboration

•Permits helping and cooperation through mind reading and empathy;

•Emancipates hands for other tasks

•Expands beyond visual communicative domain

•Permits individual-based communication

•Permits shared imagination (including lying) 

Language is…???

A finite number of meaningless utterances, recombined into an almost infinite number of meaningful sentences and phrases........

Vocal Communication vs Gestural Communication

•In vocal communication, there is basically no monitoring.............

•Gestural communication takes place in the visual channel, spatially directed toward a single individual, which requires the communicator to check that the recipient is visually attending................

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