Research: Personality and situational influences upon verbal slips: A laboratory test

Verbal Slips

This paper aims to dissect 2 theories on what influences verbal slips.

Theory of Sigmund Freud:

It is Freud's theory that verbal slips are semantically related to the speaker's internal cognitive state. In other words, what accidentally slips out of a person's mouth depends on his perception of what he heard, and how he understands what he heard. Freud further claims that semantic interferences come from outside the verbal context of the intended utterance. In simple terms, Freud claims a person can make a verbal slip by taking what he hears or reads out of context from what was really intended by the outside world.

In Freud's theory, there are 2 factors that influence verbal slips: stream of situations and relaxation of inhibiting attention. Given these factors, there is a greater possibility that a person will make a verbal slip that reflects what is really going on in his mind if he were placed in an environment where his defenses are down.

On a side not, he also makes mention of stream of associations, the influence of which can vary. The stronger the association a person may feel with an interference, the greater the frequency of semantically related verbal slips.

From the above points, this hypothesis was arrived at: The frequency of slip errors related to situational cognitive sets is greater for subjects with higher levels of situational related anxiety. In simple terms, a person in a stress induced state has a greater chance of making verbal slips.

The theoretical basis for the experiment conducted by Motley and Baars:

Motley and Baars conducted studies aimed at validating, if not challenging, Freud's theory. These experiments were conducted via the S.L.I.P. (Spoonerism of Laboratory Induced Predisposition) procedure, the very idea of which is about putting a group of subjects in a situation where they are deliberately influenced into making verbal slips.

One of the implications of this study is the process of pre-articulatory editing. This is where a S.L.I.P. interference is introduced (a pair of common sounding words read by the subject)

the intent of which is to create confusion. This confusion increases the available choices for phoneme sequences (combination of common sounding words). The subject will then have to decide via editing which potential phoneme he will articulate out loud. The criterion for pre-articulatory editing was phonotactic integrity. This means that verbal slips were more frequent when the error phoneme string (group of words presented before the word targeted to be misarticulated) formed real words than when they were nonsense words.

The studies showed that higher frequencies of spoonerism errors were produced when the target word is preceded by interference word pairs semantically similar to the expected error, as compared to when the same target word was preceded by phonologically similar but semantically neutral interferences.

These studies also produced the following findings:

S.L.I.P. errors are output errors and not input errors. This means that there were no signs that the subjects misread or misunderstood the words given to them. They simply made an error in reading them out loud after having been presented with words intended to confuse them. S.L.I.P. errors were automatic and came from the subconscious.

In other words, these errors were made because they were not subject to the conscious monitoring of speech.

Based on the above findings, Motley and Baars came down to this hypothesis: Frequency of S.L.I.P. spoonerisms is greater for targets yielding errors semantically congruent with the subject's situational cognitive set. In simple terms, verbal slips are influenced by a person's inability to correctly assess his or her environment.

An experiment on 36 subjects was conducted to prove the above hypotheses. The subjects, who were in different levels of sexual anxiety, were put in a sexually provocative environment. They were read a set of word pairs, some of which were control error word (words which had nothing to do with the environment) and sex error words (words that, if arranged in a different sequence, were sexually related).

Both hypotheses were confirmed. Sex error spoonerism was higher than control error spoonerism for all the subjects. But the subjects who were on a higher level of sexual anxiety made more sex error spoonerisms than the other subjects.

CONCLUSION:

If there is a point of agreement between these studies and Freud's claim, it is that one's perception can influence verbal slips and can reveal this perception which is sometimes different from what the speaker actually wanted to say.

However there are still at least 2 conflicting points:

Freud claims that linguistic factors do not play a role in verbal slips. This study believes otherwise.Freud claims that one's cognitive set (or ability to perceive things) is responsible for the stream of associations made which lead to verbal slips. This study believes that these associations are merely referred to before articulation and verbal slips are a result of a disturbance while one is figuring out the sounds to produce words.

REACTION:

I agree with the theory that linguistic inclination does play a role in verbal slips. I have worked with foreigners who tend to mispronounce English words that are spelt in the same way as words in their language. They tend to pronounce the English word the way they would in their language.

But similar to the environment induced in the studies, this was only because they were in an anxiety charged situation (like a presentation to a group or a meeting with the big boss). In other words, these slips were made only because there was no time to think of the correct pronunciation. I think what this goes to prove is that when people are put in an anxious situation, they tend to revert back to their comfort zone where old habits resurface.

I disagree with the contention that one's cognitive set plays a role in verbal slips. I think there is a more appropriate term for this - misjudgment. A situation where, due to a failure to understand or misinterpret what one sees or hears, one inadvertently says something which they would otherwise not say had they perceived the situation differently.

But verbal slips are not about misjudgments. The latter is a whole different ballgame where a person is afforded ample time to assess a situation and control his or her response. There is no verbal slip involved since the person has enough time to control what this study has called prearticulatory editing. Verbal slips occur in situations where one does not have time to judge because spontaneity is required.

References:

Baars, B., Camden, C. and Motley, M. (n.d.). Personality and situational influences upon verbal slips: A laboratory test of Freudian and prearticulatory editing hypotheses.

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