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It ain't what you do (it's the way that you do it)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2013
Abstract
Knowledge of the complexity of human communication comes from three main sources – (i) studies of the linguistics and neuropsychology of dysfunction after brain injury; (ii) studies of the development of social communication in infancy, and its dysfunction in developmental psychopathologies; and (iii) the evolutionary history of human communicative interaction. Together, these suggest the need for a broad, integrated theory of communication of which language forms a small but critical component.
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Pickering & Garrod (P&G) are correct in pointing out problems with treating expressive and receptive language as the only separable, distinct, and sufficient components to human communication. Their own discussion of communication as a more elaborated system involving personal action, action perception, and joint action as inextricably linked and continuously interacting components is a useful extension to this model. It is an advance on the Markov-type linear analyses to which transcribed language lends itself. Their proposal only begins to touch on the complexities inherent in human communication and its evolution.
P&G have previously proposed that humans are “designed” for dialogue, not for monologue (Garrod & Pickering Reference Garrod and Pickering2009). Their suggested model moves communicative analysis in this direction but provides a rather simplistic approach that they have contrasted, somewhat quixotically, with an even simpler one.
Recent work on the functional neuroanatomy of language suggests at the least that the expressive and receptive phonological, syntactic, and semantic systems, although closely interlinked, can be disambiguated (see, e.g., Ben Shalom & Poeppel Reference Ben Shalom and Poeppel2008; D'Ausilio et al. Reference D'Ausilio, Pulvermüller, Salmas, Bufalari, Begliomini and Fadiga2009; Sidtis & Sidtis Reference Sidtis and Sidtis2003). Communicative interaction may also involve many nonlinguistic processes, including proprioception (Sams et al. Reference Sams, Möttönen and Sihvonen2005) and interpersonal timing (Richardson et al. Reference Richardson, Marsh, Isenhower, Goodman and Schmidt2007), not inherently linked to communicative intent or content.
Some of the richness and complexity in the systems of human communication have been highlighted through neuropsychological analyses of what have been called disconnection syndromes (see Catani & ffytche Reference Catani and ffytche2005). The approach has illuminated the importance of many nonlinguistic features as in the analysis of “emotional dysprosodias” (Ross Reference Ross1981; Van Lancker & Breitenstein Reference Van Lancker, Breitenstein, Bogousslavsky and Cummings2000).
Functional neuroimaging is demonstrating the roles of distributed neural networks in human communication (Vigneau et al. Reference Vigneau, Beaucousin, Hervé, Duffau, Crivello, Houdé, Mazoyer and Tzourio-Mazoyer2006). The utility of this approach is being extended through the development of explanatory models for conditions such as the autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs; Geschwind & Levitt Reference Geschwind and Levitt2007).
Our capacity to understand the complex neural systems in human communication at both the individual and the dyadic level was limited until the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging. Progress has been a function of the development of technologies sufficient to the task rather than through advances in understanding per se. Methods to enable such investigation of the brain in interaction are being actively developed (Schilbach et al. 2012; Schippers et al. Reference Schippers, Roebroeck, Renken, Nanetti and Keysers2010).
The need for a developmental perspective
The human infant communicates with caregivers in part because of a range of evolutionary adaptations that are successful in engaging with those around them to ensure their survival and in part because of being reared in an environment that has co-evolved to nurture their use of these adaptations. Language is a relatively recent addition to this process that subsequently enables the rapid transmission of knowledge and culture. This rapid transmission of learning to the infant through acculturation by the caregiver is a process seldom observed in other primates (Tomasello Reference Tomasello2008).
The human infant is born largely neotenous but with an altricial capacity to engage with caregivers in nonlinguistic forms of reciprocal interaction. Examples are “interactional synchrony” (Condon & Sander Reference Condon and Sander1974); the bidirectional influence seen in the patterning of interaction (Cohn & Tronick Reference Cohn and Tronick1988); selective preference for maternal voice (e.g., Hepper et al. Reference Hepper, Scott and Shahidullah1993); imitation of facial expressions (Meltzoff & Moore Reference Meltzoff and Moore1977), and the infant's ability to track the objects of others' eye movements (Beier & Spelke Reference Beier and Spelke2012; Navab et al. Reference Navab, Gillespie-Lynch, Johnson, Sigman and Hutman2011). Many sensory systems are well developed and involved in communication from tactile (Stack Reference Stack, Bremner and Fogel2007) to the olfactory (Doucet et al. Reference Doucet, Soussignan, Sagot and Schaal2009).
It is becoming clear that these processes are neurobiological in origin with individual variations in function arising in part through transgenerational differences in early experience (see Barrett & Fleming Reference Barrett and Fleming2011).
Timing and prosody are essential features of communicative interaction, and concepts such as vitality contours of interaction and proto-narrative envelopes are helpful in better describing both verbal and nonverbal interaction (see Stern Reference Stern2010). Prosody in speech is both language and culture dependent, as is neonatal crying (Mampe et al. Reference Mampe, Friederici, Christophe and Wermke2009), presumably through in utero vocal exposure to maternal inflection patterns.
In describing any contingent linguistic system of communication, we need to characterise the dyadic nonverbal mechanisms that are its prerequisite base.
The evolution of human communication
The development of more-complex communication in early Homo sapiens is likely to have paralleled the selection pressure for the earlier birth of less-mature infants that enabled more brain growth to occur after birth and reduced the risks of mortality and morbidity to mother and infant through childbirth (see Falk Reference Falk2004). In consequence, mothers were required to spend more time in caregiving and became more dependent on other adults to support this process. This was also made easier by the division of labour in the production of food, clothing, and shelter, and by the use of fire for warmth and cooking (see Wrangham Reference Wrangham2009).
Human communication cannot be simply reduced to a linguistic means for epistemic exchange. Its ontological (Bråten Reference Bråten1998; Gerhardt Reference Gerhardt2004) and phylogenetic (Arbib Reference Arbib2012; Denton Reference Denton2005; Panksepp Reference Panksepp2004) origins are in the communication of basic affect such as hunger, thirst, discomfort, threat, and affection (Feldman Reference Feldman2007).
The breadth of differing forms of human communication suggests that it is the functional significance of being able to communicate that is critical, and the specific form that this takes is of secondary significance. In terrestrial species, human language may be unique in its complexity and its ability to convey certain types of information, but there is tremendous variation in what can be conveyed. Similar discussions are also found regarding human music (see, e.g., Fitch Reference Fitch2006), but for the same reasons evolutionary arguments remain speculative.
To deconstruct communication into expressive and receptive language and their associated actions is to deal only with a small aspect of this far more complex but fundamental process (Aitken Reference Aitken2008; Aitken & Trevarthen Reference Aitken and Trevarthen1997; Trevarthen & Aitken Reference Trevarthen and Aitken2001). Greater understanding of the processes involved in deconstruction is likely to require more detailed analysis with, at the least, the triadic modelling of communication's functional components (Fivaz-Depeursinge & Favez Reference Fivaz-Depeursinge and Favez2006; McHale et al. Reference McHale, Fivaz-Depeursinge, Dickstein, Robertson and Daley2008), and the development of a robust methodology for what is being called “second-person neuroscience” (Przyrembel et al. Reference Przyrembel, Smallwood, Pauen and Singer2012; Schilbach et al. 2012). Incorporating these broader aspects to communication will also require a broader appreciation of human communication's various components including the contributions of the tactile, the olfactory, and the pansensory.
Many different assessment and assimilation approaches will be needed to facilitate such analyses. Some have been developed and can form the basis for a more comprehensive framework for the understanding of human communication (see Anders et al. Reference Anders, Heinzle, Weiskopf, Ethofer and Haynes2011; Delaherche et al. Reference Delaherche, Chetouani, Mahdhaoui, Saint-Georges, Viaux and Cohen2012).