The intended recipient of a solicitation for attention is made aware of the situation, and of their role in it, through means other than just the solicitor-spoken words.

Consider five people standing in a semi-circle formation, equidistant from, and with backs facing, a sixth person who shouts “Hey, you!” For ease of communicating the point, give the five semi-circulars different color shirts, and let the sixth person’s exclamation be an address to the semi-circular wearing the green upper. Even though the outburst contains no words specifying which of the five it is directed towards, the green shirt wearer will have a stronger sense than the others that s/he is being spoken to.

This means that information is being encoded and transferred in more ways than by spoken language alone. On the surface, this conclusion should come as no surprise, as the sizable niche carved into common awareness for the notion of nonverbal communication can attest. Still, for all that the term could encompass based on a by definition perspective, in popular usage it refers singly to visible communication information.

But the green shirt wearer’s strong sense that they’re being spoken to can’t be chalked up to visually captured information because they, like the other semi-circulars, have their back to the speaker. There’s something else happening, neither auditory nor visual. It’s akin to telekinesis’ 2nd cousin.