Why is a piece on communication showing up on a health blog? A couple areas that characterize positive mental health are strong interpersonal relationships and making a positive contribution to society.
(On an only slightly related note, this is why people who only chase money in life may turn out to be really “successful”, but end up miserable, bitter, and unhealthy if they neglect cultivating strong social bonds.)
The more we understand about ourselves and our biology, the more empowered and confident we’ll be in daily life. Health is more than just nutrition and exercise!
Plus, if you’re here, I imagine you’re the type who is curious about the world and enjoys knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m glad you’re here. Now, apologies for all this nonsense, let’s get to it.
Some Science of Conversation
“Huh? Um. Oh. Uh. Mm-hmm.” How often do we hear these in our conversations? Comparatively, how often do we see them mentioned in language textbooks or other forms of formal communication?
This post is based on a book called How We Talk by N.J. Enfield that talks about the complexities of human communication and how we subconsciously assist one another to achieve smooth conversations. A great book if this topic interests you!
In conversation, it takes about 200 milliseconds (1/5 of a second) before we respond after the other person has finished talking (this varies slightly by language and is just an average).
Consider what must occur before we can respond when it’s our turn in a conversation. We need to retrieve in our mind the concept/picture of what we want to communicate, find the words to describe it from our mental ‘dictionary’, then retrieve the instructions for how to pronounce those words, and finally start moving our muscles to actually pronounce the words.
This series of events takes about 600 milliseconds, just over half a second.
This means that in the majority of human conversations, people will often decide what they’re going to say and start the series of events leading up to their turn speaking before the other person has finished talking.
How We Know When to Start Talking
Since we see this pattern throughout the world, we must be receiving some info about when the other person is going to stop speaking so we can start so quickly after they finish. There are a few sources of information that we use:
- Pitch (frequency) – any pitch other than what the speaker uses midsentence is a piece of evidence they may be coming to a stop. Watch a video of two people conversing, or observe yourself or others when speaking – do you notice your pitch changing on the last syllable you utter before the other person starts? It’s common for it to be higher in pitch. (Or, as an example that Enfield shared, say two sentences out loud (better yet, record yourself saying these): “This is a student.” “This is a student from Radboud University.” Notice how you pronounce the word ‘student’ when it is the last word in the sentence vs how you pronounce it when it’s in the middle of the sentence. Notice any differences?)
- Duration – The last syllable tends to be dragged out.
- Loudness (amplitude) – A drop in loudness also tends to signal the speaker is coming to a pause.
Human communication is a complex and precision phenomenon that can be easy to take for granted but is an extraordinary capability we have. Healthy communication is hugely impactful for our mental health, and as we know, working on one area of our health tends to lift us up in every area.