Talk
| 12 January, 2011 | Richard P. Grant |
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Professor Sophie Scott is at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. She is interested in the neurobiology of speech perception, including the evolution of speech and recovery from aphasia (see all evaluations related to aphasia on the F1000 website). She works on on dyslexia and processing of emotional information in the voice, and is involved in a project looking at reading and rehabilitation of patients suffering from partial word blindness, hemianopic alexia.
In this video she talks to us about non-verbal expressions of emotion, such as laughter or expressions of disgust, and how universal these are (giving the Himba people of North Namibia, and even rats, as examples). She also talks about the reasons for laughing, and studying the differences between real and fake, or posed, laughter.
I would be more likely to laugh than I would be to say, “That is very funny.”
What a larf, eh?
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Very cool, Sophie! Look forward to the next installment… and I’m going to be watching my rats more carefully now, too! Thanks for posting!
I really enjoyed this. It was clearly delivered with a lot of information in a short time.
I ws very interested in your clip. Please do more and longer ones and keep us up to date with your research. As an ex-pat Brit living 45 years in Canada I have found that my british intonation often leads those born in canada , as well as recent immigrants from non-english speaking countries, to misunderstand me. They sometimes think I am angry because even if I speak in a normal (not emotional) way and use a north american vocabulary, my natural intonation is quite varied compared with the flat way Canadians speak. I would have thought that variable pitch was closer to an animal sound than speech, and would not connvey erroneous information in . Dr. Logan please comment. Have you thought of including this aspect in your research?.I would be most interested to hear from you. (I started at the U. of Sussex and graduated from the University if Toronto with B.SC. in Physical Anthropology – I think this is called Human Biology in Britain – with special interest in Human evolution in general, and in the development of speech in particular. I have studied the role of upright striding early in the primate line leading to Homo and its role in hemispherical differntiation and the devleopment of speech centres in the brain. In particular, I was was interested in the use of the fossil record to inferspeech through study of the linear aspera( the attachment of the gluteus mazimus so marked in striding Homo erectus.)
Hi Deirdre,
I think I you may have misunderstood what I intended. By “rats”, I was referring to my pets rather than subjects, and my weblink may’ve led you to assume I was a PhD, but I am not. I appreciate your comments about the way people interpret the non-verbal components of communication, particularly in the case of cultural differences. I often seek to speak in the language of my listener to the degree I can, both literally and non-verbally. Carry on! Your work sounds very interesting.