Carl T. Camden

Facial expression of emotion: A comparison of posed expressions versus spontaneous expressions in an interpersonal communication setting

Many assumptions about the operation of nonverbal behaviors in interpersonal communication have been based upon studies which have not focused on interpersonal communication settings. Especially, most studies of facial expression have examined posed rather than spontaneous expressions, and the relatively few studies of spontaneous expressions have employed stimuli and/or settings of dubious relevance to everyday communication. The present study compares the identifiability of posed vs. spontaneous facial expressions of emotion elicited during ostensibly natural conversation. While posed expressions, as in earlier studies, were quite unambiguous, spontaneous expressions of emotion were found to be remarkably difficult to identify. Implications are discussed for the generalizability of certain nonverbal research results to interpersonal communication settings, for related methodological considerations, for revised conceptualizations of the function of facial expression, and for the more general issue of com...

Covert formulation and editing of anomalies in speech production: Evidence from experimentally elicited slips of the tongue

Models of speech production have been modified in recent years by the addition of an “editing” component, the supposed function of which is to verify the linguistic integrity of covert speech plans, and to prevent anomalous output. Empirical support for editing has been offered by the present authors. That evidence has been challenged, however, on the issue of whether the covert formulation of anomalous potential output in speech production has in fact been demonstrated. The present study provides a more direct test on the question of anomaly formulation by examining laboratory-generated spoonerism errors in which emotionally neutral target words may be transformed into obscene error utterances. Evidence for the covert formulation, and the prearticulatory edit-veto, of anomalous (taboo) potential output is discussed.

A new look at interruptions

The purpose of this study was to examine the assumptions underlying the communicative act of interruption. Six graduate student groups involving 35 subjects were videotaped. The data for the study were 255 transcribed interruption sequences. A category system was developed and used to code the data. The results indicated that slightly over half of the interruptions served a confirming function, and the remaining interruptions were disconfirmations or rejections. No significant differences between males and females were found in the types of speeches produced. However, cross‐sex interruptions occurred significantly more often than expected.

Experimental verbal slip studies: A review and an editing model of language encoding

Spoken language is encoded extremely rapidly and by exceedingly complex cognitive operations, yet it is amazingly free of errors. In recent years there has been debate on the question of how the speech‐production system guards itself against erroneous output. One explanation is that the system is sufficiently sophisticated and rule‐governed in its early message‐formulation stages so as generally to avoid constructing anomalous plans. The authors have argued elsewhere, however, for an explanation whereby anomalous and other error plans are formulated during early production stages but are vetoed and corrected (i.e., “edited”) during later encoding stages. We have yet to synthesize these arguments into a coherent encoding model, however, and that is our purpose here. An “Editing” model of speech production is presented, featuring prearticulatory evaluations of impending speech segments via feedback to a spreading‐activation lexicon which is susceptible to semantic, syntactic, phonological, and extralinguist...

Syntactic criteria in prearticulatory editing: Evidence from laboratory-induced slips of the tongue

Earlier studies of laboratory-induced verbal slips have provided a partial model of “prearticulatory editing” in speech production—a cognitive process by which impending phoneme strings are evaluated for their linguistic and extralinguistic integrity prior to articulation. These studies have provided evidence of editing based upon phonotactic, lexical, and semantic criteria. The present study demonstrates the existence of syntactic editing criteria via laboratory-induced spoonerisms. Experiment I demonstrates that syntactically legitimate spoonerism errors (e.g., “mice saw”) are more frequent than syntactically anomalous spoonerism errors (e.g., “mice sees”), suggesting that prearticulatory phonological processing decisions are modified on the basis of syntactic criteria. Experiment II demonstrates that the criteria for syntactically legnitimate spoonerisms can be influenced by aspects of the syntactic context. Implications are discussed.

INTERRUPTIONS and NONVERBAL GENDER DIFFERENCES

The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences in selected nonverbal behaviors associated with interruptions. Six graduate student groups involving 18 female and 17 male subjects were videotaped. The data for the study were 140 cross-sex interruption sequences and a matched, randomly selected sample of noninterruption sequences. A category system using self-related activity, gestures, body lean, facial expression and eye gaze was developed and used to code the data. There were no significant findings related to interruptions in the categories of self-related activity or gestures. Women leaned away from the group significantly more often than did men and when leaning away, women were more likely to be interrupted. Women were also more likely to be interrupted when smiling than were men, and women smiled significantly more when taking the speaking turn. Finally, women were interrupted significantly more often than men when they did not look at the turn-taker. The high educational status of the subjects was examined in the discussion of the findings.

Nonlinguistic influences on lexical selection: evidence from double entendres

Contemporary models of lexical selection tend to be based upon spreading activation. Lexical units are supposedly organized such that semantic (and perhaps phonological and syntactic) associates are interconnected. During the encoding of a message lexical units are activated, and the activation reverberates with associate units. Those units which accumulate the greatest levels of activation have the greatest probability of being selected for the speech plan. The present study challenges two assumptions common to these models. One of these is the assumption that lexical activation may operate within only one semantic network at a time; the other is that lexical activation is instigated only by the linguistic parameters of the encoded message. The present experiments demonstrate that during the coding of neutral messages, sexually‐aroused respondents encode more sexual double entendres—i.e., words semantically appropriate to both the message and the arousal state—than do non‐aroused control respondents, and...

Polysemantic lexical access: Evidence from laboratory‐induced double entenders 1

The planning of a spoken message presumably includes the consideration of various potential alternatives from which an eventual output version is somehow selected. Models of speech production typically assume that this selection process is influenced by the semantic requirements of the message itself. The possibility that message planning is influenced by factors extrinsic to the intended message is generally neglected, yet the natural speech phenomenon of double entendres provides intuitive evidence that extrinsic factors may in fact influence at least our lexical selections. This study employs two experiments on the double‐entendre phenomenon to investigate the role of extrinsic influences on lexical selection. Experiment I demonstrates that sexual arousal leads to increased encoding of sexual double‐entendre outputs for multiple‐choice cloze‐type sentences, and Experiment II demonstrates the same effect for open‐ended cloze sentences. Results are discussed in terms of two contradictions to contemporary...

Formulation hypotheses revisited: A reply to Stemberger

In his article in this volume, Stemberger (1983) offers a rival explanation for the results of a couple of our studies on laboratory-induced spoonerisms. His claims are perhaps reasonable if we stay within the confines of the particular studies he selected (i.e., Motley, Baars, & Camden, 1981; Motley & Baars, 1975), but even a slightly more thorough review of our research program would require a reexamination of those claims. The studies critiqued are part of a series we have performed to examine laboratory-induced slips of the tongue--most often spoonerisms. Typically, our method has involved having subjects silently read a word-pair list on which certain stimuli are cued as targets for vocalization, and with the two or three stimuli immediately preceding those targets being specially constructed to contain biasing phonological characteristics of the potential spoonerism errors. We call this method SLIP (see Motley & Baars, 1976, for details). Many of these studies have looked at spoonerism frequency as the dependent variable, with an independent variable being the relative linguistic legitimacy (on various criteria) of the error. Consistently, we have found that linguistically legitimate, or normal, errors (e.g., darn bore ~ barn door) outnumber matched but anomalous ones (dart board ~ *bart doard). Our explana-

Communication and consciousness: Applications in marketing

The article presents a case study of the application of concepts in psycholinguistics and consciousness to applied marketing issues. A global discourse analysis technique, psycholinguistic engagement analysis, is introduced and relevant procedures discussed. A corporate image campaign for a Fortune 500 firm was pretested, with success of the campaign predicted and verified. Implications are discussed.