 Thoroughly describe your own experiences and the responses of your partners to the experiment. Did you find this assignment easy or difficult and why? Did your partners alter the way they communicated with you because of your absence of communication? Describe. (5 pts)

This assignment was difficult as I wasn't able to start the conversation or contribute much to it as I couldn't speak. I found I could only shake my head to indicate yes or no, but other than that it was difficult to express my own thought opinions. I did these with my boyfriend and he'd alter the conversation by doing the majority of the talking and asking me yes or no questions. He said after that he felt like he was talking to himself and just saying stories mostly, and wished I could have communicated and interacted more. He also said that he missed the sound of my voice and got a feeling of being lonely without hearing me respond back and wished I could have talked to him. I also wished I could have spoken to be able to communicate my thoughts and initiated new topics.



  Who was in control of the conversation, you or your partner? Who initiated or changed topics? Who asked and who answered questions? If you conducted this experiment with more than one person, were you ever excluded from the conversation? If you think of a conversation as a balance of power between two (or more) individuals, who had the power in this conversation, you or your partner? Explain your answer. (5 pts)

My boyfriend was in charge of the conversation and he was the one to change the topics. He would ask me yes or no questions to which I would shake my head yes or no. I tried to ask him a question using my hand movements but he had no idea what I was trying to say ("how was your day?"). He mostly just talked about his day and told me stories about his new job and I just listened and nodded so he knew I was listening. He had the power in the conversation and it was up to him what the topics were.



 Imagine that you and your partners in the conversation represent two different cultures, one that uses spoken language and one that doesn’t. Which culture has the advantage in communicating complex ideas within their population? What attitudes might the speaking culture have toward the culture that does not use symbolic language? Can you identify any modern situations that mirror or resemble this relationship between a culture that can speak and culture that can’t? (10 pts)


The culture that can communicate by speaking has the advantage of expressing their complex ideas and beliefs. I feel that the speaking culture would be confused as to what the non symbolic speaking culture thinks and believes, and that miscommunication could happen with that language barrier. This immediately reminded me of when I interact with my dogs, and how heavily I rely on their body language and eye contact to tell how they are feeling and what they want. I have a close connection with my dogs and they are good at showing me what they need (such as going outside to use the restroom, grabbing my hand to pet them, or pointing towards a ball to throw it), however I wish they could speak English so I could really know what they were thinking and how they're really feeling. Sometimes my littlest dog will bark but it sounds like hes trying to speak, and it's always because he wants to play fetch. However, once he poked himself in the eye but didn't act any different and still played like normal, and we only realized something was wrong when it got infected. He almost lost his eye from that and I wished he could have told us something was wrong.



Part 2: You were asked to spend 15 minutes communicating without any physical embellishments, i.e., no hand signals, not vocal intonation, not head, facial, or body movements.




 Thoroughly describe your own experiences and the responses of your partners to the experiment. Did you find this assignment easy or difficult and why? How did your partner(s) respond to your lack of body language? Did they have any difficulty understanding you? Describe. (5 pts)


I did this with my boyfriend as well, and since he knew it was for an experiment it wasn't as hard for him, though it was hard to keep a straight face for me. He said if he didn't know it was an experiment he would have thought I was mad at him as he's observed that's what I've done in past when I was upset with him. I thought that was funny and I suppose I do become pretty straight forward and monotone when I get upset. Since he knew I wasn't upset we just talked like normal and I looked at the ground, we just talked about what we're going to do tomorrow and regular things. I think it was easier because he knows me more than anyone and knew I wasn't mad, so he was able to tell how I actually felt though I couldn't express it through my physical language. If I did it with a stranger they probably wouldn't be able to tell how I felt and thought I was uninterested in the conversation.





 What does this experiment say about our use of “signs” in our language, i.e., how important is nonspeech language techniques in our ability to communicate effectively? What type of information do humans receive about the words a person is speaking when they “read” a person’s body language? (5 pts)

We both found that body language is very important as it helps show the context of the words a person is saying and what the meaning is. Without it, it's easy to feel like the person is uninterested in the conversation or perhaps upset. Body language and facial movements help show emotion, and it can be hard to differentiate sarcasm with sincerity.




  Describe the adaptive benefit to possessing the ability to read body language. How might the ability to read body language help a person survive, obtain resources, and reproduce successfully? (5 pts)

It helps to be able to identify a situation and communicate to people who can provide them resources so they can obtain help when they need it. For humans it helps with reproduction as we create some sort of connection through verbal or physical communication to do so. For survival it's important because a person can read another person's body language to assess if a person is dangerous or aggressive.


 Are there people who have difficulty reading body language and can you identify them? Can you describe a situation where there might be a benefit to not reading someone’s body language, i.e., a situation where perhaps body language does not give you reliable information? (5 pts)

A person who is blind cannot see body language and relies on tone of voice to decipher what the person is saying, or anyone talking on the phone. A situation where there is a benefit to not being able to read a person's body language could perhaps be talking on the phone to someone who normally seems pretty open and confident with their body language, but perhaps doesn't actually feel confident and talk to them to communicate more about their feelings rather than observe their body language. I'm actually not sure if that's a benefit or if that would be helpful, it's hard to think of an instance where that's a benefit.