The Art of Conversation - Catherine Blyth [8]
Conversation has been the engine of intelligence since Homo became sapiens. The species evolution rewarded those with conversational skills—social and political skills—and these continue to select social leaders and spur cultural development. But as those schoolchildren and grammar-mangling academics prove, this tradition means diddlysquat unless each of us incorporates conversation into our personal evolution.
After exhaustive exploration of the everyday conversations around and with babies in a cross section of American homes, researchers Todd Risley and Betty Hart found that:
The large differences in the language experience that had accumulated before the children were three years old accounted for most of the equally large differences in vocabulary growth and verbal intellectual outcomes by age three—and many years later.
How does conversation exercise the intellect? Knowledge is defined by neuroscientist Ira Black as a “pattern of connectivity” between neurons, and learning as modifications of this pattern. Similarly, communication follows social grammar, as we make connections by guile and guesswork, extracting signals from face, tone, and gesture as much as words. As psychologist Nicholas Humphrey described, it’s unbelievably artful; a dance, close to telepathy:
Like chess, a social interaction is typically a transaction between partners. One animal may, for instance, wish by his own behaviour to change the behaviour of another; but since the second animal is himself reactive and intelligent the interaction soon becomes a two-way argument where each “player” must be ready to change his tactics—and maybe his goals—as the game proceeds.
Conversation doesn’t feel this hard, not if you practice it. But if you don’t, as Stefano Guazzo wrote four and a half centuries ago:
He that useth not company hath no experience, he that hath no experience, hath no judgment, and he that hath no judgment is no better than a beast . . . so the common saying is, that there is no other name meete for a solitarie person, but either of a beast, or a tyrant.
The word Guazzo used was “humanitas”—communal conversation. For anyone still unconvinced it can be learned or improved, I’m afraid it is how we all learn to learn. If we don’t learn well, we limp through life.
“Goo-goo” is the most important word in the world, because when parents coo at babies, they’re educating them in what behaviorists call “musical companionship.” As babies goo-goo back, they absorb timing, taking turns, tone, coordination, gestures, facial expressions, storytelling—the orchestra of instruments by which emotions are transmitted and relationships formed.
No synthetic alternative will do, witnessed in a cruel experiment that showed an infant a video of its burbling mum (distressed, it withdrew). And babies who aren’t talked to, or who are talked at abusively, grow into disruptive kids who can’t express themselves. As do too many South Korean children, despite loving parents and the world’s best education system. With little free time, some become socially malnourished, seeking solitary solace online, trading interaction’s challenges for virtual games—short-circuit gratifications that foster ingrown personalities and make their lives hell.
Dr. Kim Hyun-soo, chair of the Association of Internet Addiction, explained: “These people are very frustrated inside and full of anger.”
Any parent too busy to sit down for tea and ask about school should hear what teachers have to say about fading listening and learning abilities, or perhaps read the UNICEF report rating British kids’ well-being the lowest in twenty developed countries, not least because Mum and Dad scarcely speak to them. Then have a weep, then think again.
Conversation can heal us. Children of talkative parents have higher IQs and know how to make connections, and friends. While we pay therapists to listen, in talking cultures depression remains a dictionary