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Stefan Andersson's picture

The event we call perception

For whatever it's worth, my own attempt to understand the event we call perception:

Some people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices in response to non-verbal environmental sounds are able to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" and what if each and every one of us are able to use covert speech to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" when we need to restore and better distinguish a verbal message?

Can the gestures you are about to produce during covert speech like the gestures you intend to produce during overt speech be used to determine (subliminally prime) what you expect to hear and can a top-down sensory expectation like this be used to select all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce?

People who are able to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" may hear the sensory consequence of covert speech in integration with what they were able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation and I am convinced that Alvin M. Liberman more than 50 years ago was correct in his assumption that “the articulatory movements and their sensory effects mediate between the acoustic stimulus and the event we call perception”...

Alien covert speech must somehow operate on the environment in order to generate the event we call speech perception and the lost ability to generate an act of will with which you are able to consciously control covert speech with regards to a certain goal must be as essential to our ability to restore and better distinguish a verbal message as it can be devastating to people with an integration disorder referred to as schizophrenia.

People who are trying to hear the voice they are about to produce may lose their ability to control covert speech because they are forced to monitor the production of the voice they are about to produce while a corresponding top-down sensory expectation in competition for limited attentional resources selects all features matching the voice they are trying to hear and to lose the ability to generate an act of will with which you are able to consciously control covert speech may serve the purpose of not letting an act of will interfere with the ability to select the gestures you need to use in response to a verbal message.

Incentive motivational signals ("a type of motivationally-biased attention") may shift the allocation of processing resources from what generates the ability to consciously control covert speech (a self-monitoring or corollary discharge mechanism) to what you are able to attend with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation and the gesture you need to use (the one with the most equivalent sensory consequence you are able to produce) can be selected when what you are able to attend with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation (a competing task), more than what you are able to attend with any other to a lesser extent matching top-down sensory expectation, suppress the ability to control covert speech! (Demanding indecisiveness in response to more ambiguous stimuli (a slightly distorted verbal message) may serve the purpose of sensitizing all the gestures you select between in response to bottom-up sensory signals and the context you are exposed to and experience...)

To lose the ability to generate an act of will with which you are able to consciously control covert speech is to more or less lose the ability to inhibit the gesture you are about to produce and to lose the ability to generate discharges corresponding "to nothing less than the experience of will or intention" is to lose the ability to attenuate ex- and reafference (all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce and the sensory consequence you produce)!

People may hear their own thoughts as alien voices because bottom-up sensory signals suppress their ability to generate an act of will and some people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices in response to non-verbal environmental sounds are able to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal"...

What if each and every one of us are able to use covert speech to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" when we need to restore and better distinguish a verbal message?

Can a mechanism which affects the outcome of competition between response tendencies generate the event we call perception in all of our senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell)?

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