The Blueprint of a Speaker | Part 1 of 6 | Introduction
Posted Under: Beliefs, Cognitive Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Neurobiology, Neurology / Neurolinguistics, Non-Verbal/Body Language, Social Psychology, Values
What is speech? What’s the big deal about being able to talk? Very rarely do we stop to think about how amazing the ability to speak to someone really is. Could you imagine a world where there were no language, no writing and no other form of communication outside of grunts and yelling and cooing at each other? Life as we know it would not exist… Our world would literally be exactly like that of our primate neighbors.
There are some significant differences between “us” and “them” and we as a species have developed into the amazing creatures we are today largely due to two major evolutionary breakthroughs.
1. The development of our species specific articulatory system that functions under specific, conscious control. Primate call systems are largely controlled by caudal midbrain structures (these are for the most part subconscious, stimulus/response parts of the brain and not directly under our conscious control). Therefore these call systems are directly expressive of emotions such as fear, aggression, alarm, contact seeking, etc…
The only neocortical (most recently evolved part of the brain) input is from the limbic system (anterior cingulated gyrus – which is still a part of our automatic/subconscious system). This makes the calling marginally condtionable and can therefore be louder, go on for a longer period of time, etc… However speech is fully under neocortical control. Our Larynx, pharynx, tongue and lip movements are controlled by our left and right primary motor cortex (new brain) and this is an evolutionary novelty.
The development of our new brain and the articulatory system not only allows us to continue to express emotion, but also convey specific information, sing, feign emotion, etc… These are highly evolved processes.
2. The second breakthrough is the development of social competence. The size of the neocortex in man is massive compared to our primate ancestors. One surprisingly reliable predictor of the size of the neocortex volume in a species is their group size. There are large parts of our neocortex dedicated to person-recognition (face and voice) and the recognition of intention (facial expression) and to the processing of speech and language. The function of this is mainly to discern potential intention on the part of the person we are interacting with.
Now even chimps can predict intention in other chimps based on body language and facial displays… just like we can. But in order to make these intentions PREDICTABLE (which is the most important part), we created beliefs, values, wishes, hopes, etc so that we can “know” what the next step is when assessing a display.
Predictability is one of the most sought after pieces of information by our subconscious when interacting with someone. The massive size and degree of development of our neocortex strongly supports the theory that its presence is to refine social functioning.
One of the highest orders of social functioning is our ability to communicate and convey information through our speech. With such a complex system, where do you even begin to understand how we develop an utterance during a conversation? If you are going to be an effective communicator it is necessary for you to have some knowledge about where exactly the sentences are coming from when your mouth speaks them…
Not to worry though, I have taken on the burden of drudging through these massive, boring and dry books on neuroscience, neurolinguistics and neurocognition to bring you the functional and abridged version to the “Speaker Blueprint”. Till we meet again…
