Part 1:
A.This part of the experiment was actually easier than I expected it to be. Obviously it was more difficult than just speaking with each other, but it is surprisingly easy to communicate using your body.
B. The other people did have to change the way that they talked, but only to make it easier for me to answer them. It was hard to reply to an answer that didn't have a simple answer. It ended up being a lot of yes or no questions when they were directed towards me, or at least rephrasing of questions.
C. I think that the culture with a symbolic or spoken language can more easily communicate complex ideas as long as the other culture could understand what they were saying. If they couldn't, and the speaking culture couldn't communicate with their body, then there would be almost no way for them to relay information to the other culture. So if this were the case and the non speaking culture couldn't understand the speaking one, then the non speaking culture would have an advantage because body language is more or less the same in any culture. The speaking culture might find the other one primitive and maybe stupid because they would feel like they have to simplify everything to get easy responses from them. Obviously deaf people can't communicate with others the way most people do by talking, so in order to communicate with them we use sign language or write what we want to say. Blind people are the opposite. They can't see our sign language or read what we write, so we can talk to them, and they have braille that they can feel to read. One very special example of somebody who has special needs when communicating would be Helen Keller. She could not see or hear so she had to learn to communicate in a very special way. She would feel something and then have somebody move their hand into the sign that it represented with her hand.
Part 2:
A. I was sort of able to last the full 15 minutes of this part of the experiment. I say sort of because everybody kept laughing at me and then I would start to laugh, so that made it difficult, but we continued to try after we calmed down every time.
B. The people that I had my conversation with were affected quite a bit. Not that it was overly difficult to communicate (unless I was being sarcastic, then they had no idea), but it was just hard not to use body language or facial expressions or even different tones. Not speaking isn't that hard because you have to think in order to speak, but we move our hands and make faces and change our tone out of instinct when we talk, so you have to really focus on doing that when trying to talk and it can be distracting.
C. This experiment shows that non speech communication is very important because things can be completely misunderstood when you don't notice how a person acts when they talk. If somebody rolls their eyes when they say something, then you can assume that they are probably being sarcastic, but if they have no facial expression or intonation changes you would probably think that they are being serious.
D. Obviously, blind people can't read body language, although they can still hear changes in people's voice, so they may have some trouble understanding people all of the time, but not as much as if they couldn't hear the voice changes either. Reading body language can be useful in many situations. As an adaptation, it could help people and animals to survive. If we are in a situation where somebody is planning to attack you, they are likely angry and will usually show this through body language. They will have a menacing posture and may talk to you with an angry tone. If you notice these things then you could have a better chance of diffusing the situation or leaving before anything happens. The same goes for animals, if an animal sees a predator, it should be able to tell by the predator's body language if it is about to attack or not. If it notices body language that would suggest that it is about to attack, then the animal could run or use its natural defense.I can't think of any situation where it would be advantageous not to be able to read body language. It is an important tool that we all use if we can.
