Where minds meet; Communications barriers

I mean I couldn't quite make that out. Well Don that was the one hundredth carbon copy of a man's voice. Knowledge into this page there. How did that sound. That was the 40th carbon I'd say that was sufficiently clear. A series of explorations in human communication conducted by professors John Prine and I will Nelson of the Department of English Western Michigan University where minds meet is produced and recorded by WMUR under a grant from the National Association of educational broadcasters. In a shrinking world where minds meet in words or not at all man speech is his most decisive act. These discussions explore this world of speech. Very topic for today is the obstacle course distortion. Here are professors frind and Nelson. This is John freind and this is Donald Nelson. Today we're concerned with failures in communication. What kinds of failures there are and

how we can avoid them. And that recording of a man's voice that we just heard illustrates one kind of failure that which is due to noise in the channel something like static. The effect of this noise is to distort the message sometimes to destroy it completely. Well as these are key terms John. Noise and distortion. Suppose we try to define them first. I'd say that noises anything that impairs the message that changes it into something else and static is is one example but it doesn't have to be sound. The fuzziness in a typed carbon is also noise. The snow on a TV screen that blurs the picture is another example or fog that prevents a driver from seeing the road. All of these and many more examples of noise later on in this program will give our audience a chance to take part in an experiment in which even a message can act as noise and not the other term any distortion means simply the effect of noise on a message. Noise acting on a message produces distortion. Now there's a little

experiment we started out with. We ought to explain what we were trying to show. First of all we recorded a man saying is this efficiently clear. Then we made a copy by recording that original a second copy was made from the first the third from the second and so on. One hundred fifty times. And what we played first in our opening was the one hundred thirty one hundred fifty copies. Next we played the 40th copy. Well why don't we play now the original. And the first ten copies to show the way noise in the store should gradually increase. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear.

Is this sufficiently clear. I noticed a little background noise. Typewriter I believe yes. And a click probably made when the recorder was turned on. But there isn't really much serious distortion of the message here. No the words don't become seriously distorted until much later. If we play every twenty fifth copy I'm sure the audience will see much more clearly the accumulated effects of noise. Yes the static will increase the clicks will turn into thumps and the words will become very difficult to make out. Is this sufficiently clear. Is this sufficiently clear. Just. I suppose John that if we had made a thousand carbons the last would be nothing more than it

has everything would be flatten out so that every song would be like every other song. Although our audience was probably able to make out the words of the hundred fifty a copy they were able to do so only because they had heard what had gone before and knew what to listen for. But in several experiments we conducted with this recording people who listened to the last copy first weren't even able to recognise the sound as that of the human voice. Hearing it in reverse order they weren't able to make up the words until the 90th copy from copies one hundred fifty back two hundred thirty or so. Several of them said it sounded like Tom Tom. I guess those were the clicks. It didn't sound to them like a voice until they got back to about a hundred and tenth copy. Well with those last copies they didn't know what to pay attention to. They didn't know what we considered the message and what we considered the noise. Well this leads us not directly to an experiment for our audience today. What we want to demonstrate is that noise is defined by the listener noises anything the listener doesn't want to hear.

Right because what we're going to do is read two jokes simultaneously. You read one or the other and will ask the audience to pick whichever voice they want to and try to listen. They'll have to block out the other one so that the one they listen to will be for them the intended message and the other will act as noise. We found this a little hard to get used to ourselves. Subjects that we experimented with said that they had to make their choice quickly but if they focused on one voice they found that they could separate them and follow one joke rather easily. Well hear them are our two voices traveling across one channel at the same time listen to one of them going to go out and spend all right out of our rulings a lot of evenings little wet any man in the club or getting with an elder and what I didn't know he was unable to Littlejohn had several minutes to Harker I finally they were why doesn't the ground thank you if there's any on your mind. After some were deliberate he was called upon to lay down the reason why Holden pulled until as it was he set off again. The school started today about and then it was up.

Do these belong and I suggested to my brother but how do I get on the bottom. But that mother anyhow answered Barker. In spite of all the noise you were making I could hear my joke. I didn't hear any noise at all from my point of view but of one thing we can be sure John. Nobody in our audience heard more than one of these fine jokes so we had to do it again this time. They can try focusing again. If they missed both jokes or they can tune into the one that they were listening to. One minute I'm going to go out and spend our rulings a lot of evenings little wet any man in the club or getting with an older and I didn't know he was unable to answer. Little Josh had several minutes to my family they were why doesn't the ground thank you not mine. After some were deliberate he was called upon to hold until as it was he set off again. The school starts at the bottom and it will be up. Whom do these belong very nice suggested to my brother but how do I get on the bottom. But their mother missed me.

Anyhow answered Barker. I Neo What would you say now that this has to do with the main point of our program today. Well of course we want to show that noise is always present in communication. If you can know in advance what kind of noise there will be as we have just shown it's possible to cancel out its harmful effects in human communication. The listener frequently has to determine for himself both what constitutes a noise and how to combat it. Noises like weeds. If you're trying to raise carrots say and you have all parsley intruding in the garden. Well the parsley is like a weed but if you're trying to raise partially then the carrots are the weeds. What you say though that knowing in advance what the noise will be helps combat it. But how does one know this in advance. Well this is shown in the experiments with the jokes. As soon as the listener perceives something about the structure of the message he's able to predict something about the rest of it. The more he listens the easier it gets the more he listens.

The more redundancy there is in the message that's right as the message proceeds. Things are repeated. Indeed would you call it structure is redundancy. That is regularity order perceivable pattern. In language we call is grammar right. It's often said that the English language is about 50 percent redundant. That means that in our grammar we repeat a piece of information approximately twice. For example in the sentence all these man are thieves. The idea of plural more than one is found in every word. If a person were listening then with 100 percent efficiency. Once would be enough. Write something like the man is thief. Yes would be more economical we might say but much more likely to suffer distortion. So the idea of plural is actually presented five times for good measure. All the men are thieves. Yes well the structure of a message is all important. If the structure that is the relationship of one part to another is not sharply defined then the message

will probably be distorted. And this is true of any message not just a sentence. Well anybody who ever came into the middle of a movie knows this and we can we can demonstrate this with our next experiment. We took a message and sent it through nine people. That is you told a story to a student and asked him to tell it to another student and so on. And thus we have nine copies a record of how much distortion occurs and what kind. Yes this of course is not a matter of mechanical noise. You know each student in this experiment delivered the message directly to the next one and each student was trying his best to get the message from the one who told it to him and also to give an accurate me to the next person. Now we want our audience to listen to this series and notice how noise increases the distortion. But first let's play the message as it was repeated by the last person in the series. This story has to do with communications communication and how noise affects communication. There's a story about two men riding on a bus.

The first man as the second man. If this station was a whippoorwill. The second man thought the first man and said Is this Thursday. And the first man thought the second man had said to him Are you thirsty. This must be very confusing for our audience I think so the structure is a blur. This means that our audience can't get the point can't tell noise from message. They're the tenth man in the series so to speak. What would they tell number 11. Well why don't we play the original as I told it to the first student. I think the original message has a very clear structure. One of the obstacles to Clear communication is noise when noise is present. The speaker must contract that by making his message louder or by making it clearer or by making it more often or even all

three. Here's an old joke about this problem. Two men were seated together on a very noisy bus. The bus was loaded with noisy children coming home from school. The men didn't say much to one another because it was too hard to talk about all this racket. One of them was looking out the window as the bus passed through a small town. Is this Wembley. He shouted. No the other one said it's Thursday. So Ahmed said the first one let's get off and have a drink. Well I mean before we play the other versions let's note some of the unusual changes that have occurred by the end of the series the proper name Wembley had turned into flipper will station or rather fantastic distortion. I think our audience will be interested in tracing how this change came about. And another obvious change concerns the tone of the joke in the original part of the humor I think lies in the surprising turn of events by which the two men suddenly change their plans right instead of proceeding to their destination they suddenly decide to go to the nearest

bar. And in the final version there's no mention of drinking at all. As our audience listens they will want to notice how drinking comes to be left out. There's one other important thing to notice the joke was just used as an illustration of a general point about communication. What happens to this general point. Well let's play these successive copies of the original and ask our audience to listen particularly to how these three changes developed first how Wembley becomes whippoorwill station how drinking disappears completely and finally how the general point is distorted. Well here's the story as repeated repeated by the student who heard it from me in communications the hardest thing to overcome is noise and to overcome noise we usually speak louder so that the person that we're speaking to can hear us. For an example of this two men were riding home on a bus or a noisy bus with noisy children. And the man didn't speak too much because of the noise. But they haven't been going through this town and one fella says is this

Wembley and the other fella says no this is Thursday. He says so my let's get off and get a drink. I wonder if our audience caught any change in the plantation of that crucial word Wembley. Well that was a very slight change unlike another one that I noticed the change from have a drink to get a drink that might be slight on you but I never heard a child getting up in the middle of the night to have a drink of water right. You have an alcoholic drink you get a drink of water. Well let's hear what happened in the next two versions. The hardest thing to overcome in communication is noise. An example of this is two men were riding home on a bus and they were riding along and there was lots of noise and they didn't talk much but they came past this one station and the name of it was Wembley. So the man's yells off this Wednesday is this Wimbley and the other man says no

this is Thursday. A lot is the crowd. And so the other guy said so my let's go off and get a drink. The hardest thing to overcome in communications is noise. A good example of this is an incident that occurred the two men riding home on a bus in a bus as natural as quite noisy and they came to one station had been talking but not any great extent. They came to this one station and one gentleman asked the other. This was when police station which it really was. And I was a gentleman because it was in a fair and said no this was Thursday. And gentlemen I would ask the first question said I am too so let's get off and get a drink. The change in the pronunciation of Wembley is not quite definite. It's now Wimbley and the word station is added.

I noticed that the general point about noise is getting shorter but it's still there. Well let's listen out of the fourth version of the message. The hardest thing in community in trying to communicate to someone is nice. You know the hardest thing to overcome in communicating and a good example of this is an example of these two men who are riding on a bus and this bus is real real noisy and as they approach a station he says to the one guy. Is this Wembley station and the other fellow. Because of all the noise on the bus you know he can't really understand and he says no he says he he thought he said Thursday station. This is Thursday he says. Well I am too so let's get off the bus because he thought he said Thursday on the stand. Yeah well the chief thing I noticed was the uncertainty in the speaker. She makes an obvious attempt to be explicit and she's really not sure that she's getting her point across.

If she even asks whether he understands this doesn't help him feel more certain of his Yaz full of doubt. Well here are the next two versions. I think our listeners will see clearly the result of this cone of uncertainty the distortion at this point becomes more destructive. Well one of the most difficult things about communication is no ice. It completely distorts the entire sound and everything. And a good example of this was Woodward to a gentleman riding on a bus. And so they were riding along and the one gentleman I said gentleman if this was a Wembley station. Don't laugh it isn't funny. And so the next guy. It was real noisy everybody was talking everything. And he couldn't hear you very well because of the noise there. And so he asked him how he thought

that he meant Thursday that this is Thursday you know. And so that wasn't right either the guy the way he would have to be it would have to be that the guy probably thought that if the guy asked him if he was Thursday Thursday and saw he agreed he said yes I am. And so they both got off the bus and that's when I got out of the whole thing. Well the story I was just told was about him in reference to communication and one obstacle in communication is no it's and this often distorts a message so it's not campaign handed by the person very well. And this comes into most communications because it's always around us everywhere and it's easily comprehended and an example of noise is to men. Gentleman running on a bus and the first

gentleman said is this Whipple station. But the other one didn't quite get what he said because of all the noise on the bus and all the people talking and everything. And he thought he said Thursday is this Thursday. So the other gentleman said yes this is Thursday. And the other gentleman thought he said Are you thirsty. So the other one said yes. And they both got off the bus. And that's what I got. A lot has happened here honey. The boy obviously was quite confused and he doesn't think it's funny. He gets all tangled up with Thursday and Thursday and he leaves out the drink completely. The girl is about equally confused. She adds quite a bit to the lecture on noise and its harmful effect. Probably because she was confused about the joke. And incidentally she changes Wimbley to Whipple station. Well these are small changes like the others that we've noticed. But now I think we can see that these small changes produce greater distortion than the mere sum of their parts. Right which is saying is that noise doesn't just accumulate right. It produces

confusion and out of that confusion a totally new structure may emerge. What happened to the general point about noise is a good example. In the original the emphasis was on how to combat noise at this point the emphasis is on defining what noise is. Our subject in this experiment college communications students made a wholly new reconstruction of the point based on their knowledge of the topic. Well every listener feels that a message must have some kind of structure. If small changes blur the structure and the listener feels all freer to render it clearer. But his new structure will be based on his ideas rather than those of the speaker. Well can we generalize Arny at this point and say that all distortion is of three kinds. Either something is left out or something is added or what amounts to a combination of these two processes. Something is substituted. But before generalizing further let's listen to the rest of the versions. Here is the seventh story that posole deals with communication.

It's about noise and how noise is what I don't like noise I don't noise affects us and our communication our communicating and it's around us all the time. In our subset every every bit of our communication pattern and we can't get away from noise. An example of this would be two men are on a bus and one man says to the other man he says just whippoorwill there's whippoorwill station. I sort of thought oh gee I don't know if he said that he said he thought he said he said he thought he said it was just Thursday. Like I said yes this is Thursday and the first man said is this whippoorwill station that he said Are you thirsty. And he says no I'm not there is thirsty.

That's all. I noticed a couple things in this version I noticed first that the telling of the message takes more time. And here of course too is where Webber will station comes out. But let's listen to the last two versions. We out this episode has to do with communication and and noise that has to do with communication and how noise affects us every day and how how it makes things different. An example of this would be about two men who are on a on a boss and one man is the other one. If they were at a station named whippoorwill and the first man he thought that that he had said is this Thursday and he said yes this if there is they are in the second man thought

the first man with thinking about you know are you thirsty and he said no I'm not. Thursday saw. This story has to do with communications communication and how noise affects communication. There's a story about two men riding on a bus. The first man as the second man if this station was a whippoorwill. The second man but the first man and said Is this Thursday. And the first man thought the second man had said to him Are you thirsty. Now we can see. Hearing this the second time that the last speaker when faced with an extremely tangled mass of details has made a deliberate attempt to organize the message he is subjected to some severe logic and has manufactured a clear and rigid

pattern. But we must say a pointless one. Yes he collapsed the general statement into a logical phrase showing that communication and noise are connected somehow. But of course the story as he told it doesn't really almost rate us well on the basis of the many experiments we've done of this kind anyway. Would you be able to predict what would happen to this message going through say nine more speakers and listeners. Well eventually I think the message would be reduced to one. Remember a BL sentence or maybe something like this. A man on a noisy bus was thirsty and he asked another man if he heard a whippoorwill. And here are John R. experiments have proved to us that there is always going to be distortion but not what can be done about it. Well first of all I mean you mentioned that three ways of combating it in that story make the message louder clearer and more often. In other words the speaker should provide a wide margin of redundancy. But of course if we're not just talking about a laboratory experiment we should say that in real life situations people make use of feedback from one another to correct errors. But I suppose that one of the most

important remedies is for both the speaker and the listener to feel a responsibility to each other not to the mere words of the message. If they're truly in communication with each other then they will be engaged in a creative process. In effective communication then you're saying that the speaker plays the role of the listener and the listener in the role of the speaker or to put it simply they try to make allowances for human error in another. If you're trying to eliminate human error they're bound to fail. And I'm afraid this is what our students probably trying to do. Well in contrast Dani I've noticed that successful writers editors speakers teachers those people whose livelihood depends upon clear communication have learned this lesson. One of the most striking recent examples is Colonel John Glenn when he described his first sensations in space his audience had had no experiences in common with him. Well I like to have our audience here an excerpt from his first press conference to show how he naturally assumes that accurate communication is difficult.

How he accepts the responsibility and strives to avoid distortion in this passage he's trying to convey his sensations of speed in our middle flight and I've been at the bearded lady since the flight about what sensation of the speed of course is relative if you're in a comp.. Again nothing to refer to you can be going almost any speed and you wouldn't have any sensation of it. I think the nearest I can come to it is most of you have flown on jet airliners are flown in jet airplanes at 30000 feet or so and I think the feeling of speed is about the same as flying an airliner. Such as that and looking down at that cloud. They maybe hide the ten thousand feet below you hear it. 30 day I think the speed with which the ground goes out the money you spend has been you have from orbital altitude would be pretty close to that same speed

it's difficult to describe the speed and base when you have nothing to say related to that I think Dan Brown did it. Well this is a fitting climax for a discussion of noise and distortion as obstacles in the course of communication but even obstacles serve a purpose and we should say before we close that if there were no noise or distortion in human communication it would be a dull and static world we live in a world without novelty or creative progress. The changes in perception caused by noise are sometimes after all for the better. The legend of Robin Hood and the tales of King Arthur for example are undoubtedly distortions of some ordinary and much less appealing material. And these are not unique. I suppose the joke about the men on the bus is a distortion of some prosaic incident shaped by many hands in terms of the Chivas satisfying form. Well we could probably find that the process of distortion has created or

shaped many great human achievements from recipes for crepe suzette to say Gothic architecture. Maybe the best example of all is language. The English language itself has reached its present form because of the countless tiny additions subtractions and substitutions made by purposeful and fallible human beings. You have been listening to where minds meet a discussion of human communication by Professor John Prine and Arnold Nelson where minds meet is produced and recorded by W-M UK. I'm the reg rant from the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end of E.B. Radio Network.