Conmen and Conversation

At one time or other we've all been cornered by a conman. Some friendly stranger on the street strikes up a conversation at the stoplight and next thing you know he's asking for $50 to help an impoverished architect and his family flee from some underdeveloped African nation. You and I both know that there is no real African family in the picture, but it is still hard for us to get away.

How can a stranger engage our time and sympathies so quickly? It all starts with a simple question. According to the 'rules' of conversation that we all follow, when someone asks a question like "Do you have the time?" or "Do you speak English?" and we respond appropriately, we have just committed to a conversation (however brief). At this point, once he's engaged our time and attention, a conman can begin to engage our sympathies.

Similar implicit conversational rules apply to telephone calls, as the simple act of answering the phone commits the receiver to some sort of conversation with the caller. Intriguingly enough, the general conversational 'rule' for telephone conversations is that the caller ends the exchange. If you wish to end your exchange with a telemarketer, you must 'violate' a conversational 'rule' making exchanges with telemarketers are both awkward and entangling.

This information has been extracted from studies of the structure and rules that govern conversation conducted separately by Erving Goffman and Harvey Sacks during the 1980's.

Here's Looking At You, Kid

Have you ever seen the man in the moon? How about faces in rocks and trees? The brain is wired to find and focus on faces.

In a study lead by neurobiologists from Harvard Medical Center (published in Science) titled, "A Cortical Region Consisting Entirely of Face-Selective Cells," it was observed that;
"Face perception is a skill crucial to primates. In both humans and macaque monkeys, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals a system of cortical regions that show increased blood flow when the subject views images of faces, compared with images of objects. However, the stimulus selectivity of single neurons within these fMRI-identified regions has not been studied. We used fMRI to identify and target the largest face-selective region in two macaques for single-unit recording. Almost all (97%) of the visually responsive neurons in this region were strongly face selective, indicating that a dedicated cortical area exists to support face processing in the macaque."

So what we're looking at is a whole chunk of your brain that only lights up in response to a face. Now, if you think about it, looking at a picture of a face isn't tremendously different from looking at one of an apple; in both cases your visual centers perceive shape and colour/texture. That said, anyone can tell you that a face has much more (and more important) information than an apple. The brain has developed this face-sensitive area to a) make it harder for us to confuse faces for things, and b) to recognize when someone is looking at you.

Both of these functions make sense. You won't survive for long of you can't recognize the tigers face through the bushes or tell if he is, in fact, looking at you. In my "Minds and Brains" class we looked at other studies that have observed a related area of the brain in chimpanzees during facial recognition tasks, and they found that there are neurons that are specifically sensitive to recognizing faces at different angles (a neuron per degree from center, or something along those lines). Also, yet further studies indicate that the biggest keys to recognizing a face are the eyes. In this study they observed a dramatic increase in brain activity (in this area of interest) when eyes were added to an otherwise complete face.

http://anthropology.net/user/kambiz_kamrani/blog/2006/02/07/face_recognition_brain_maturation_and_mirror_neurons
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/06/990624080203.htm

The Serious Side of Laughter

Why do we laugh? When you consider the many different varieties of laughter we encounter every day, not just in response to an episode of The Daily Show, but in humor-free situations as well (like nervous or contemptuous laughter, etc), it becomes clear that there is no simple answer to this question.

Theories abound on the subject. Robert Provine claims that laughter merely a conversational attention grabber used to make sure that others know we're paying attention. Charles Darwin thought that laughter was an extension of smiling, and therefore simply associated with pleasure. He also called attention to the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon of excessive laughter impairing muscle coordination (have you ever fallen off a chair from laughing too hard?). Maybe instead laughter is a standard exhalation pattern signifying relief. Still others class laughter as a cooperative signal. JoAnne Bachorowski, a professor at Vanderbilt University, has studied a particular kind of voice-laughter which she considers to be a cooperative signal. Voice laughter is characterized by a melodious and gentle quality and occurs most frequently between good friends or romantic couples.

My own theory is that laughter and gesture may have similar functions in conversation and social interaction (especially when considering interactions that aren't face-to-face). Both gesture and laughter are used to provide emphasis or clarify an implicit point in conversation; you point to clarify where 'there' is, you laugh to let your listener know that you are joking (or uncomfortable, or contemptuous, or playful, etc. depending on the nature of the laughter and context).

Much of this post is based off of a lecture given by Dacher Keltner, PhD. in his class on the Psychology of Emotion at the University of California at Berkeley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacher_Keltner

Nature vs. Nurture: Language Edition

Noam Chomsky says that language is a uniquely human phenomenon. Even without this challenging and controversial claim, linguists have been trying to teach language to non-human species for the past century.

One of the most notable attempts of this sort was made in the 1930's by Winthrop and Luella Kellogg. Just three months after their son was born, the Kellogg family welcomed Gua the chimpanzee into their home. Their mission was to raise Gua alongside their son to scientifically compare the rate and extent of language acquisition between the two species. By the time Gua turned three the Kelloggs observed that she had not acquired much, if any, language. However, their son had developed a very, very convincing imitation of a chimpanzee. At this point the Kelloggs aborted their experiment.

Many other experiments (albeit more conventional and less personally risky) of this sort have been completed, with some success, however, thus far all of these experiments have more or less reached the conclusion that non-human species can acquire a complex system of signs, but their communication lacks several crucial elements of genuine language.

Emotion and Evolution

Humans have somewhere between 30-40 facial muscles, which are manipulated to display different emotions. For example, the display of embarrassment is characterized by a tight-lipped/ puckering smile, touching one’s face, and turning ones head to reveal the neck. This display is both systematic and coordinated, and there is evidence that it is not culture-specific, as members of various non-Western cultures recognize this display as embarrassment. In fact, a similar behavior has been observed in non-human species in the form of appeasement displays. Non-human species (primarily mammals, especially the great apes) produce these displays when apologizing for mistakes, seeking reconciliation, or backing down from a confrontation with a more dominant member of the group. The appeasement display is indicated by an odd little smile, face-touching, exposing vulnerable areas (wolves show their necks), and shrinking their posture. This study is compelling evidence in the argument for the evolutionary (rather than social) origin of emotion and emotional displays.

A Thought Experiment

Do you know that one square centimeter of brain tissue holds roughly one gigabyte of computing power and we don't really know what all is on the hard drive? Scientists of all sorts and sizes have their search engines running full blast, looking for structures and patterns in the system of mind and brain that connect us with everything we know and experience. Join me as I pick my way through the science of the mind.