Learn about the rhythmic structure of human speech communication, speech and music connection and Interdisciplinary Social Rhythm Researchers.
LITERACY | BACK TO THE JOURNEY
Speech and Music Connection Interdisciplinary Social Rhythm Researchers
William Condon says: "synchrony is the main channel of awareness of sociality."
Boston Univerity radio show recorded in 1970...
This page contains a Flash object. To view it requires that the Flash plugin is installed and Javascript enabled. Upgrade your Flash Player.
LITERACY | SPEECH AND MUSIC CONNECTION - SYNCHRONY
Concerning Autism:
For over three decades, William Condon and his colleagues have been studying the rhythmic structure of human speech communication. They make films of people interacting and then do a frame-by-frame analysis of body motions and speech sounds. They have discovered two kinds of synchrony, self synchrony and interactional synchrony. Self synchrony is the relationship between a person¹s speech patterns and their body movements: head, shoulders, arm and hand gestures, and so on. Interactional synchrony is about the relationship between the listener¹s body and the speaker¹s voice.
It is not particularly surprising that self synchrony exists. After all, the same nervous system is doing both the speaking and the gesturing, and the cortical structures for speech and manipulation are close to one another. But Condon found a close synchrony between speakers and listeners as well. How do the listener¹s gestures become synchronized with the speaker¹s vocal patterns? To be sure, the synchrony isn¹t exact‹the listener¹s body movements lag behind the speech patterns by 42 milliseconds or less (roughly one frame of film at 24 frames per second), ³like a car following a continuously rapidly curving road². That is a small enough lag to make one entertain thoughts of mind-reading.
It¹s not simply that gestures move to the same basic pulse as speech. That is easy enough to understand, at least superficially: the speaker needs only to detect the pulse¹s period and adopt it for herself‹all, of course, unconsciously. Synchrony, both self and interactional, involves more than this. Speech is hierarchical. Phonemes are organized into words, words into phrases, and phrases into statements (see Figure 1).[Figure 1 deleted]
In both self synchrony and interactional synchrony this hierarchical structure is reflected in the synchronized movements. Larger gestures, perhaps of the whole arm, will track phrases while smaller gestures, such as finger movements, will track words or phonemes. Furthermore, infants exhibit near-adult competence at interactional synchrony within 20 minutes of birth. Since the human auditory system becomes active three or four months before birth, we may become entrained to speech patterns in utero.
Condon and others have also investigated interactional synchrony in children suffering from various pathologies, including dyslexia and autism. Here they find multiple entrainment. They have observed dyslexic children whose the right side would entrain within the normal 42-millisecond period, while the left side would entrain with the same sound at a delay of 100 to 266 milliseconds. Autistic children were similar, except that it is the right side that is delayed.
The ability to match one¹s movements to another¹s seems to be a condition of normal interaction with others. When this capacity is hampered, as it is in dyslexia and autism, communication is compromised. Synchrony creates a space of communicative interaction, a coupling between two brains in which they can affect one another¹s internal states.
Interactional synchrony is not conscious or deliberate; it is not something one thinks about. It just happens, at least for most of us. That interactional synchrony is working at birth implies that it is mediated by core brain structures, structures that are phylogenetically old, for only these structures are operative at birth. The newest and largest brain structure, the cerebral cortex, is an uninsulated mass of nerves incapable of coherent processing at birth. Its fibers become insulated over the first several years of life. That is to say, tightly synchronized interaction with others constitutes part of the maturational environment for the cerebral cortex, just as the sounds of adult speech penetrate the womb and thus become part of the maturational environment for those neural structures active at birth. Before we can see the external world and grasp objects, we hear sounds and are able to kick and wiggle in response.
Interactional Synchrony
Several years ago, at a national autism conference, my wife and I attended a presentation by Dr. William S. Condon, a psychology professor at Boston College. For many years, Dr. Condon studied film of his patients' therapy sessions. His research led him to two major discoveries:
* People's bodies move in rhythm with speech - both their own, and someone else's.
* People with autism have a different rhythm in their body response to sound that indicates their hearing is delayed and echoing. I call this different rhythm "Condon's Autism Anomaly" (CAA).
William Condon: Non-verbal communication
The Tomatis Method
A Biography of Dr. Tomatis and the overview Good learners are good listeners. In the attached pages, we will explore why. You will see why many learning disabilities are in fact listening disabilities. The good news is that we can tune up your ears, so that you can attain your full learning potential.
William Condon Writings
ERIC 2 citations
1. Multiple Response to Sound in Dysfunctional Children N/A
Condon, William S. 1975-00-00 EJ122659
2. Synchrony Demonstrated between Movements of the Neonate and Adult Speech Condon, William S.; Sander, Louis W. 1974-00-00 EJ099934
* Condon, W. S. & Sander, L. W. (1974a) Synchrony demonstrated between movements of the neonate and adult speech. Child Development 45: 456-62.
Condon, W. S. & Sander, L. W. (1974b) Neonate movement is synchronised with adult speech: interactional participation. Science 103: 99-101.
Condon, William S. (1970). “Method of micro-analysis of sound films of behavior.” Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 2(2), pp 51-54.
Condon, William, "Cultural Microrhythms", in Interaction Rhythms, Ed. ?, 1972, pp. /??
This phenomenon of social harmony arising from the void has been proven scientifically to exist cross-culturally by Paul Byers of Columbia University as well as Boston scientist William Condon. Berendt, The World Is Sound, p. 116.
Condon, W. S. (1974). "Synchrony Demonstrated between Movements of the Neonate and Adult Speech." Child Development 45: 456-462.
Condon, William S. & Louis W. Sander Louis. (1974).
“Neonate movement is synchronized with adult speech: Interactional participation and language acquisition.” Science, 183 (4120), pp 99-101.
Condon, W. S. (1975). "Multiple response to sound in dysfunctional children." Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia 5: 37-56.
Condon, W. S. (1986). Communication: Rhythm and Structure. Rhythm in Psychological, Linguistic and Musical Processes. J. R. Evans and M. Clynes. Springfield, Illinois, Charles C Thomas Publisher: 55-78.
Condon, William S. (1999). Personal communication. June 10.
For information indicating the probability of related forms of synchrony, see:
Hall, Edward T., The Silent Language, Doubleday, 1959.
Hall, Edward T., The Hidden Dimension, 1964
Hall, Edward T.,(1977). Beyond culture. New York: Anchor Books, pp 72-77. Several others have independently arrived at similar conclusions about the ability of shared activity to bond humans.
Hall, Edward T., The Dance of Life, 1983.
Hall, Edward T., Cultural Misunderstandings: The French, Germans, and Americans
Psychologist Howard Rachlin has called the process “functional bonding,” and historian William McNeill has called it “muscular bonding.” (Rachlin, Howard. (1995). “Self and self-control.” In The self across psychology: Self-recognition, self-awareness, and the self concept, p 89; McNeill, William H. (1995). Keeping together in time: Dance and drill in human history. Cambridge, MA, p 4.)
Krams, M., M.F. Rushworth, M.P. Deiber, R.S. Frackowiak, & R.E. Passingham. (1998). “The preparation, execution and suppression of copied movements in the human brain.” Experimental Brain Research, June, pp 386-98; Lundqvist, L.O. “Facial EMG reactions to facial expressions: a case of facial emotional contagion?” Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, June, pp 130-41.
Expressive Micro Timing Explained - Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), 1750 Arch Street, Berkeley, CA 94720
While researching communication between mothers and newborn babies at Boston University Medical College, DR. WILLIAM CONDON INSPECTED HIGH- SPEED MOVIIE FILM FRAME - BY- FRAME UNDER A MICROSCOPE TO DISCOVER THAT SUBLIMINAL MUSICAL HARMONY IS THE PHYSICAL CONNECTION ESTABLISHING ALL INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION. Twenty years later, Condon's story is published in the November, 1987 issue of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY.