Symbolic information channel

How the symbolic channel emerged from enhancements to the behavioural and genetic channels

The development of higher cognitive abilities would initially serve to enhance the behavioural channel. The development of memory, allowing individuals to compare current environmental stimuli with past experiences, would help individuals to more reliably respond with adaptive behaviours and increase the likelihood of mastery. The development of an ability to infer causal relationships would enable organisms to anticipate environmental stimuli that were part of a repeating pattern. Similarly, the ability to use sounds and gestures to draw attention of other individuals to salient stimuli and indicate the need for particular behavioural responses coupled with the ability to interpret these signals would increase the effectiveness of transmission by mimicry.

These enhancements to the behavioural channel once again provide the raw ingredients for the emergence of a new information channel. The symbolic channel involves extracting coherent patterns of sensory information from the environment and encoding them as conceptual representations of cause and effect, and relative value. These conceptual representations are then transmitted to subsequent generations through the use of verbal and non-verbal communication mechanisms. 

Symbolic medium need - reciprocity

Reciprocity - the need for a proportional relationship between benefits received and efforts expended in collaborative communication with another 

Complex human communication could only have arisen in the context of intentional collaborative activities between individuals. Transmission of behavioural information can happen without the intention of the originator of the behaviour. However, symbolic communication requires partners to enter into a state of shared intentionality. In such a state, one has to be capable of seeing fellow communicants as intentional agents and be willing to align one’s communicative intentions to theirs. Similarly, one expects the other person to reciprocate one’s communicative actions by attempting to understand one’s own intentions. Any such collaborative activity requires cooperating partners to trust that they will get to share proportionately in the beneficial results of that joint activity. 

Although the medium of symbolic information transmission is some form of language, the successful operation of that language, like any long-term collaborative action, requires reciprocity. For you, as the recipient of communication, to put in the effort required to understand my message, you must believe that my communicative intent includes some eventual benefit for you in relation to your own goals. Similarly, for me, as the transmitter, to put in the effort required to communicate my ideas, I must believe that some benefit will eventually accrue to me if my message is received and understood. 

Reciprocity is related to concepts of fairness and justice but can equally extend into the reciprocation of negative behaviours through revenge. 

Symbolic input need - predictability

Predictability -  the need for stimuli in which one can discern patterns that facilitate the understanding and anticipation of the likelihood and nature of environmental phenomena 

For the symbolic information channel to function there need to be non-stochastic stimuli in which patterns of similarity between events can be discerned over time, resulting in habituation or learning based on an ability to anticipate future events. This predictability need may be expressed in differential attention to familiar and novel stimuli. It is likely that in the early stages of individual development more attention would be paid to exploration of unfamiliar or unexpected stimuli as an individual attempts to discern patterns in the environment and construct meaning schemas. However, this attention may switch once the other mechanisms for the symbolic information channel become operative and the focus changes to the exploitation and transmission of previously encoded schemas.

Symbolic encoding need - meaning and rest

Meaning - the need to be able to incorporate perceptual information into internal mental constructs which facilitate the selection and pursuit of adaptive goals

In order to encode this consistent information an individual needs to be able to form a meaning schema, an internal mental representation of the external world which enables it to: (a) explain the origin of an event or action, (b) predict its consequences, (c) categorise it according to its similarity and difference to other events, and (d) evaluate its relative salience in order to allocate attentional and behavioural resources. This is in line with the evolutionary-derived definition of meaning suggested by Klinger (2012, p. 28), who describes a major role of cognition being to ‘sort out the ambiguous or confusing stimuli, working them over until they can be dismissed as irrelevant (habituation, extinction of response) or channelled into one of the individual’s brain pathways that link the stimuli with emotions and goal pursuits.’ It also corresponds to the definition of situational meaning (Reker & Wong, 2012, p. 435) as the ‘attempt to understand the value and purpose of specific encounters and experiences in life that occur on a day-to-day basis’. 

One set of stimuli that humans have a strong interest in paying attention to is the behaviour of other individuals. Being able to identify predictable patterns in other people’s behaviours and to ascribe meaningful intention to those behaviours would confer considerable advantage. By observing what other people do we can build social representations of other people in our own minds through our interaction with them. In addition, the human capacity for introspection and meta-cognition allows us to turn this facility on ourselves. We are able to use our awareness of our own thoughts as an input to the symbolic channel. We are able to perceive patterns in the various situational meaning representations contained within our own heads and to develop more comprehensive global meaning representations linked to life purpose. In addition, we are also able to encode observed patterns in our own actions and choices, thus allowing us to form consistent self-representations which enable us to explain, predict, categorise and evaluate our own behaviours and attitudes (self-schemas). The common human desires for both global meaning and a sense of identity can be seen as subsequent elaborations of the fundamental need for situational meaning.

The search for meaning has long been a human preoccupation. However, difficulties arise in this area because many researchers do not adequately distinguish between predictability (the existence of coherent stimuli in the environment) and meaning (the linking of predictable stimuli to an organism’s goal pursuits through mental representations). A stimulus can be predictable, in that one can anticipate patterns in its occurrence. However, it does not become meaningful until one can link it mentally to behaviours that bring about adaptive advantages. Predictability is also often linked to perceptions of control, making it hard to distinguish the impact of predictability need from that of self-governance need. 

Rest - the need for regular temporary cessation of goal-directed physical, social and mental activities (see Genetic information channel)

Symbolic output need - authenticity

Authenticity -  the need to ensure that symbolic expressions are likely to be interpreted by others in a way that matches as closely as possible the internal representations held by the individual

The ability to represent symbolic information through sounds, facial expressions, gestures and visual depictions provides a mechanism by which internally encoded representations can be transmitted from one individual to another, whether that is through cave paintings, literature, popular music, scientific articles or social media. Information encoded in the symbolic channel has low information entropy; this means, for example, that a number of distinct but similar events could be distilled down to a generalised internal representation, or that a simple metaphor can convey a vast number of complex relationships between different entities. This high compression ratio would have advantages in terms of a reduced number of synaptic connections needed to store the information and increased speed in transmitting the information. However, there is an increased risk of information loss during transmission. Internal representations cannot easily be copied directly as behaviours can, they must be accurately articulated by the sender and correctly interpreted by the receiver. This indicates a need for an individual to be able to accurately express their internal representations to others. 

This definition of authenticity makes no mention of the specific content of the representations being expressed. This is in contrast to the definition of authenticity used in much psychological literature which usually emphasises the need for correspondence between people’s behaviours and their sense of their ‘true selves’. In other words, the commonly used concept of authenticity focuses almost exclusively on the transmission of self-schemas even though these are only a subset of the various encoded meaning schemas that can be transmitted through the symbolic channel. In fact, the definition of authenticity derived in the current model bears a closer resemblance to that articulated by Barrett-Lennard (1998; cited in Pinto, 2014, p. 23) in which authenticity involves ‘consistency between a person’s true experiences, cognitive representation of those experiences and outward behaviour and communication.’

Fully authentic expression requires one to be able to anticipate how one’s symbolic communications are likely to be perceived and interpreted by others. Thus, rather than being entirely self-focused, authenticity depends on the ability to develop a theory of mind in relation to other individuals.

Symbolic input-filtering need - confirmation

Confirmation - the need for accuracy in our perceptions and judgments 

If one’s mental representations of the world are adaptive, they should enable one to make reliable predictions about what will happen and to choose behavioural responses that are more likely to lead to successful outcomes. Therefore, input-oriented filtering within the symbolic channel consists of testing the predictive validity of one’s meaning schemas by seeking confirmation through hypothesis testing and through assessing the level of adaptive success achieved. Fulfilling a confirmation need would also involve comparing any potential new schemas with existing schemas that have previously been deemed as adaptive by an individual in order to avoid conflicting interpretations.

Symbolic output-filtering need - affirmation

Affirmation - the need to receive indications that one’s explanations, predictions and valuations are accepted by others

It is harder to determine whether one’s symbolic interpretations of events have been adopted by others than it is to observe that one’s behaviours are being replicated. This leads to an output-oriented filtering need for affirmation. Although this could be considered as a feedback need, it becomes a filtering need when the desire for affirmation begins to determine which representations are selected by an individual for transmission based on their predictions of what is likely to be accepted by one’s social group. 

Both confirmation and affirmation represent attempts to ensure that only adaptive representations of the world are encoded in the memory and transmitted to subsequent generations. In this way they constitute a striving for judgmental accuracy. 

Next: Framework of human needs