i use the language of behaviorism sometimes, but I am not a behaviorist. applied behaviorism is about trying to manipulate outcomes. i am interested in communicating. what I am really doing is using the concept of "behavior" as a component of a language called 'nonverbal communication'
a dog is often or even always communicating things to you with its behavior. you can use the information gleaned from observing the behavior to communicate things back to them. you were already communicating things back at them with your behavior, and usually it isn't what you wanted to say to them. so if you learn how to say it to them better, they can understand better. does this make sense. ultimately I think it's about communication. like, domesticated animals are people, to a degree. many animals are people. some you can have two way conversations with and some you can't! you can't talk to an ant. you can communicate some things but what they are varies. when you teach a chicken to poke something with its beak, what you're actually doing is saying "hey so if I give you this food every time you do it, would you please poke this thing with your beak?" and the bird is like "fuck yeah that's a great deal and you have given me no reason to think you might renege on it, I'll definitely do that no problem" and then sometimes after a while you ask the chicken "hey so we've done this together a whole bunch and had fun right? like its kind of fun now to have this interaction, right? do you wanna do it but without the food just like, some of the time? you know that I will always still give you food sometimes for other things" the chicken might say "you know what year we have done this thing together a whole bunch and it was fun. yeah sure let's just do it without food because I think it's fun enough on its own. i know I'll get food again at other times for other stuff" and now you can point to a thing and the chicken will point to it because you made a deal. you have an agreement. later on the chicken might say "hey man you know this was fun on its own for a while but I'm really feeling like I'd like to do the food part again" and then you go "sure that's fair we'll do it like that"
its conversation! its not training it's conversation. you're making deals and bargains with your friends.
Social signaling behaviors should be taught as part of language studies and it's a shame they aren't, honestly, because people who are going to pick up on it usually do so at, rough estimate, around 3-4 years old when they're gaining voluntary control of their fine and gross motor functions and typically developing toddlers will do a whole lot of imitating how their parents do things, right down to nasal "hhmphs" or ways of standing or pointing or looking. Toddlers attempting to use their parents "I am your parent and I need you to listen to me" Look can be absolutely hilarious (but laughing isn't helpful, we gotta save that for later, serious face means serious business!). That social cue learning does continue indefinitely, and starts before someone has the dexterity to mimic what they see, but before anyone gets the idea that "it's too late", this entire thing, from my perspective, is about what we can learn via comparison, and I am distinctly against "the developmental window for this CLOSES at this age/brain stops developing at 25" kinds of nonsense. For the most part, deliberate skill gain or re-training can be self-enacted at any age, the understanding of *how* people learn in a typical developmental path and *when* they do so might contain tools for how to develop such skills later in life if we choose, as well as how to help people who are still in those initial periods, but are for whatever reason having difficulties communicating with their age-mates.
For example, the fact that I preferred interacting with people much older or younger than me as a child over interacting with people my own age might have been a hint that I was experiencing social difficulties that people younger than me didn't notice and people older than me subconsciously compensated for on my behalf. Which, on further consideration, is something I remember my mom noticing, but she didn't have the extraordinarily specific knowledge to connect it to any sort of solution other than "give the kid social opportunities with a broad band of ages so there's always going to be someone they can bear having a conversation with" (props to my mom, memory loss ate those experiences for a long time but now that my brain is willing and able to index anything other than threat-avoidance topics, that bank of positive social experiences is in fact helping me immensely.)
Anyway! Because a typically developing person learns their culture's social cues so early, they don't remember that it was something they had to learn at all, and might never learn it's not innate unless they get really immersed in learning a second language/culture that's very different from their first.
This means that a typically developing person also directly benefits from actively being taught their own culture's nonverbal and/or subconscious social cues; much like socializing a dog or a horse, it makes for a more adaptable, more deliberate, less anxious and xenophobic person.
griping ahead, not especially serious but also not as structured and hopefully informative as previous content
Every time I'm reminded that subconscious social cues exist and that I can be using them without being aware of them, it feels a little bit like other people can read my mind. Which overlaps with the experience of genuinely *not* using social cues and then the lack of cue being also encoded as a communication, which just... feels so frustrating. It's my face, bud. It's doing whatever it's gonna do.
On good days I'm like "Wow I am so good at communicating I have successfully portrayed 'I am kind and comfortable and want to help" so well today, I'm getting a good grade in human!" and on bad days I'm like "it should be... rude. To look at someone. Feels invasive. Why must other people be able to know what I am looking at? That's not their business... I should be able to hide in the rafters like the Phantom of The Opera with no social consequences..."
And then I go home to my feline and I say "You, though, you get me. We are parkouring this language barrier so hard, mutual respect is present here. Please remove your feather-duster tail from my entire face. Thank you."
all of this is incredibly relatable to me very much including the social RELIEF of interacting with another social animal vs other humans. I think this is also why in middle school the most ... uncomplicatedly GOOD friendships I had were with exchange students or ESL students. bc we were both willing to give each other a Lot of benefit of the doubt and rush in to compensate for trip ups/try to bridge misunderstandings. on both sides we were very aware of the verbal communication barriers, which meant we gave nonverbal cuesuch more "loudly;" the equivalent of speaking very slowly and deliberately to each other but with our bodies. and verbal misunderstandings were attributed to a language barrier *between* us, rather than being ascribed to them for Not Knowing English Well Enough (bullshit) or me for Being Too Autistic (also bullshit)
positive social connections were also things that both the exchange/ESL students and myself as an autistic kid valued a lot more than the other kids around us, I think, bc it was a very scarce resource for us. and we were both able to sort of... show that desperation to connect without it being judged by the other party. of course you'd be desperate to connect, you're 12 and in a whole new country and hardly anyone speaks your first language and you're still learning English; of course I would be desperate to connect, im 12 and autistic and my usamerican peers don't like me bc of my Vibes, but when one is including things like cultural or language barriers in one's assessment of social and communication success or failure, it really erases a lot of those Little Tiny cues that my usamerican peers would have made issues out of. if that makes sense? the most important trait I had was a willingness to engage with them and take responsibility for my part in the interaction. it was OK that I was autistic bc it didn't have an impact on those things.
Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on some methods to learn more about this in practice? Other than working with dogs! Which sounds like a great way to learn but not available to everyone.
It's something I could look up but I'd rather hear personal insights than generic advice that may not be as applicable to situations like you've described above.
