Switch to: References
Citations of:
Referring as a collaborative process
Herbert H. Clark & Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs
Cognition 22 (1):1-39 (1986)
Add citations
You must login to add citations.
Order: Most recent First author
Export: Choose a format.. Formatted textPlain textBibTeXZoteroEndNoteReference Manager
The Flexibility of Conceptual Pacts: Referring Expressions Dynamically Shift to Accommodate New Conceptualizations.Alyssa Ibarra & Michael K. Tanenhaus - 2016 - Frontiers in Psychology 7.details
Reductionism About Understanding Why.Insa Lawler - 2016 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 116 (2):229-236.details
Paulina Sliwa (2015) argues that knowing why p is necessary and sufficient for understanding why p. She tries to rebut recent attacks against the necessity and sufficiency claims, and explains the gradability of understanding why in terms of knowledge. I argue that her attempts do not succeed, but I indicate more promising ways to defend reductionism about understanding why throughout the discussion.
Understanding in Epistemology
Toward a Computational Psycholinguistics of Reference Production.Kees van Deemter, Albert Gatt, Roger P. G. van Gompel & Emiel Krahmer - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2):166-183.details
This article introduces the topic ''Production of Referring Expressions: Bridging the Gap between Computational and Empirical Approaches to Reference'' of the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. We argue that computational and psycholinguistic approaches to reference production can benefit from closer interaction, and that this is likely to result in the construction of algorithms that differ markedly from the ones currently known in the computational literature. We focus particularly on determinism, the feature of existing algorithms that is perhaps most clearly at (...) odds with psycholinguistic results, discussing how future algorithms might include non-determinism, and how new psycholinguistic experiments could inform the development of such algorithms. (shrink)
Computational Philosophy in Metaphilosophy
Psycholinguistics in Philosophy of Language
Reference, Misc in Philosophy of Language
The structure of communicative acts.Sarah E. Murray & William B. Starr - 2021 - Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (2):425-474.details
Utterances of natural language sentences can be used to communicate not just contents, but also forces. This paper examines this topic from a cross-linguistic perspective on sentential mood. Recent work in this area focuses on conversational dynamics: the three sentence types can be associated with distinctive kinds of conversational effects called sentential forces, modeled as three kinds of updates to the discourse context. This paper has two main goals. First, it provides two arguments, on empirical and methodological grounds, for treating (...) sentential force as part of a compositional dynamic semantics, rather than a dynamic pragmatics. Second, it formulates a minimal dynamic semantic analysis that covers the data at the heart of these arguments, incorporating existing analyses of the three major moods, evidentials and conjunction. A further aim of the paper is to sharpen the distinction between sentential force and utterance force, and discuss its implications. (shrink)
Discourse in Philosophy of Language
Partner‐Specific Adaptation in Dialog.Susan E. Brennan & Joy E. Hanna - 2009 - Topics in Cognitive Science 1 (2):274-291.details
Co-Ordination of Spatial Perspectives in Response to Addressee Feedback: Effects of Perceived Addressee Understanding.Kavita E. Thomas & Elena Andonova - 2012 - Pragmatics and Cognition 20 (3):505-545.details
In this paper we investigate the effect of level of understanding revealed by feedback in the form of clarification requests from a route follower on a route giver's spatial perspective choice in their response in route instruction dialogues. In an experiment varying the level of understanding displayed by route follower clarification requests (the independent variable), route giver perspective switching in response to this feedback is investigated. Three levels of understanding displayed by feedback are investigated: (1) low-level clarification requests indicating that (...) the instruction was not processed, (2) semantic-level clarification requests indicating that the spatial direction given in the instruction could not be resolved as the speaker of the clarification request could not interpret which perspective was intended, and (3) high-level feedback which indicates that the route giver's instruction was understood but which note an obstacle to following the instruction. Results show that perspective choice, which is a conceptual feature of language use, is sensitive to perceived level of addressee understanding. We found that route givers consistently switch perspectives in responding to semantic-level clarification requests but not in response to low-level ones, and also that switching occurs more for high-level feedback than for low-level feedback. We address how dialogue systems can take advantage of these findings by modelling our results in an Information State model of dialogue, presenting update rules for response generation which account for our findings and also update rules which enable generation of the feedback themselves. (shrink)
Aspects of Consciousness in Philosophy of Mind
Baptizing Meanings for Concepts.Iris Oved - 2009 - Dissertation, Rutgers Universitydetails
Most people find it obvious that concepts like APPLE, DOG, WATER, CACTUS, SWIM, CHIRP, FURRY, and SMOOTH are acquired from perceptual experiences along with some kind of inferential procedure. Models of how these concepts are inferentially acquired, however, force the acquired concepts to be representationally complex, built from, and composed by, the more primitive representations. Since at least the time of Plato, philosophers and psychologists have struggled to find complex sets of representations that have the same meanings, definitionally or probabilistically, (...) as these concepts. For example, to think about the property-kind being gold is not the same as to think about the complex property-kind being yellowish & shiny & malleable.... I call this Fodor's Challenge: Find an acquisition process that is genuinely inferential and yields a concept that genuinely is one of these lexical concepts. Rather than continue the pursuit of a complex representation that has the same meaning as our concept GOLD. I offer a model on which many lexical concepts are acquired from perception and inference, without being built up from, and composed by, the representations involved. The model, Baptizing Meanings for Concepts, is inspired in part by Saul Kripke's baptism process for assigning meanings to linguistic terms. Many lexical concepts, according to the BMC, are acquired by inferring the presence a new property-kind, picking out the property-kind in terms of those perceptible features, and then assigning a simple mental term, a concept, for that property-kind. (shrink)
Concepts in Philosophy of Mind
Cued by What We See and Hear: Spatial Reference Frame Use in Language.Kenny R. Coventry, Elena Andonova, Thora Tenbrink, Harmen B. Gudde & Paul E. Engelhardt - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.details
Jazz Improvisers' Shared Understanding: A Case Study.Michael F. Schober & Neta Spiro - 2014 - Frontiers in Psychology 5.details
Pooling the Ground: Understanding and Coordination in Collective Sense Making.Joanna Rä…Czaszek-Leonardi, Agnieszka Dä™Bska & Adam Sochanowicz - 2014 - Frontiers in Psychology 5.details
Comprehension and Engagement in Survey Interviews with Virtual Agents.Frederick G. Conrad, Michael F. Schober, Matt Jans, Rachel A. Orlowski, Daniel Nielsen & Rachel Levenstein - 2015 - Frontiers in Psychology 6.details
Production of Referring Expressions for an Unknown Audience: A Computational Model of Communal Common Ground.Roman Kutlak, Kees van Deemter & Chris Mellish - 2016 - Frontiers in Psychology 7.details
Reference as an Interactive Achievement: Sequential and Longitudinal Analyses of Labeling Interactions in Shared Book Reading and Free Play.Vivien Heller & Katharina J. Rohlfing - 2017 - Frontiers in Psychology 8.details
Compensating for an Inattentive Audience.Nicole N. Craycraft & Sarah Brown‐Schmidt - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (5):1504-1528.details
The Functions of Imitative Behaviour in Humans.Harry Farmer, Anna Ciaunica & Antonia F. De C. Hamilton - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (4):378-396.details
Category Essence or Essentially Pragmatic? Creator's Intention in Naming and What's Really What.Barbara C. Malt & Steven A. Sloman - 2007 - Cognition 105 (3):615-648.details
How to Create Shared Symbols.Nicolas Fay, Bradley Walker, Nik Swoboda & Simon Garrod - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (S1):241-269.details
Human cognition and behavior are dominated by symbol use. This paper examines the social learning strategies that give rise to symbolic communication. Experiment 1 contrasts an individual-level account, based on observational learning and cognitive bias, with an inter-individual account, based on social coordinative learning. Participants played a referential communication game in which they tried to communicate a range of recurring meanings to a partner by drawing, but without using their conventional language. Individual-level learning, via observation and cognitive bias, was sufficient (...) to produce signs that became increasingly effective, efficient, and shared over games. However, breaking a referential precedent eliminated these benefits. The most effective, most efficient, and most shared signs arose when participants could directly interact with their partner, indicating that social coordinative learning is important to the creation of shared symbols. Experiment 2 investigated the contribution of two distinct aspects of social interaction: behavior alignment and concurrent partner feedback. Each played a complementary role in the creation of shared symbols: Behavior alignment primarily drove communication effectiveness, and partner feedback primarily drove the efficiency of the evolved signs. In conclusion, inter-individual social coordinative learning is important to the evolution of effective, efficient, and shared symbols. (shrink)
Conversation and Behavior Games in the Pragmatics of Dialogue.Gabriella Airenti, Bruno G. Bara & Marco Colombetti - 1993 - Cognitive Science 17 (2):197-256.details
In this article we present the bases for a computational theory of the cognitive processes underlying human communication. The core of the article is devoted to the analysis of the phases in which the process of comprehension of a communicative act can be logically divided: (1) literal meaning, where the reconstruction of the mental states literally expressed by the actor takes place: (2) speaker's meaning, where the partner reconstructs the communicative intentions of the actor; (3) communicative effect, where the partner (...) possibly modifies his own beliefs and intentions; (4) reaction, where the intentions for the generation of the response are produced; and (5) response, where an overt response is constructed. The model appears to be compatible with relevant facts about human behavior. Our hypothesis is that, through communication, an actor tries to exploit the motivational structures of a partner so that the desired goal is generated. A second point is that social behavior requires that cooperation be maintained at some level. In the case of communication, cooperation is, in general, pursued even when the partner does not adhere to the actor's goals, and therefore no cooperation occurs at the behavioral level. This important distinction is reflected in the two kinds of game we introduce to account for communication. The main concept implied in communication is that two agents overtly reach a situation of shared mental states. Our model deals with sharedness through two primitives: shared beliefs and communicative intentions. (shrink)
Predicting Conversational Reports of a Personal Event.Yvette J. Tenney - 1989 - Cognitive Science 13 (2):213-233.details
Navigating Joint Projects with Dialogue.Adrian Bangerter & Herbert H. Clark - 2003 - Cognitive Science 27 (2):195-225.details
The Effects of Feature-Label-Order and Their Implications for Symbolic Learning.Michael Ramscar, Daniel Yarlett, Melody Dye, Katie Denny & Kirsten Thorpe - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (6):909-957.details
Symbols enable people to organize and communicate about the world. However, the ways in which symbolic knowledge is learned and then represented in the mind are poorly understood. We present a formal analysis of symbolic learning—in particular, word learning—in terms of prediction and cue competition, and we consider two possible ways in which symbols might be learned: by learning to predict a label from the features of objects and events in the world, and by learning to predict features from a (...) label. This analysis predicts significant differences in symbolic learning depending on the sequencing of objects and labels. We report a computational simulation and two human experiments that confirm these differences, revealing the existence of Feature-Label-Ordering effects in learning. Discrimination learning is facilitated when objects predict labels, but not when labels predict objects. Our results and analysis suggest that the semantic categories people use to understand and communicate about the world can only be learned if labels are predicted from objects. We discuss the implications of this for our understanding of the nature of language and symbolic thought, and in particular, for theories of reference. (shrink)
Linguistics in Cognitive Sciences
Philosophy of Language, General Works in Philosophy of Language
Symbols and Symbol Systems in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
An Experimental Study of the Emergence of Human Communication Systems.Bruno Galantucci - 2005 - Cognitive Science 29 (5):737-767.details
Designing Meaningful Agents.Matthew Stone - 2004 - Cognitive Science 28 (5):781-809.details
Communicative Intentions and Conversational Processes in Human-Human and Human-Computer Dialogue.Matthew Stone - unknowndetails
This chapter investigates the computational consequences of a broadly Gricean view of language use as intentional activity. In this view, dialogue rests on coordinated reasoning about communicative intentions. The speaker produces each utterance by formulating a suitable communicative intention. The hearer understands it by recognizing the communicative intention behind it. When this coordination is successful, interlocutors succeed in considering the same intentions— that is, the same representations of utterance meaning—as the dialogue proceeds. In this paper, I emphasize that these intentions (...) can be formalized; we can provide abstract but systematic representations that spell out what a speaker is trying to do with an utterance. Such representations describe utterances simultaneously as the product of our knowledge of grammar and as actions chosen for a reason. In particular, they must characterize the speaker's utterance in grammatical terms, provide the links to the context that the grammar requires, and so arrive at a contribution that the speaker aims to achieve. Because I have implemented this formalism, we can regard it as a possible analysis of conversational processes at the level of computational theory. Nevertheless, this analysis leaves open what the nature of the biological computation involved in inference to intentions is, and what regularities in language use support this computation. (shrink)
Philosophy of Linguistics in Philosophy of Language
Normativity in Language and Law.Alex Silk - forthcoming - In David Plunkett, Kevin Toh & Scott Shapiro (eds.), Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press.details
This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called 'Discourse Contextualism' (Silk 2016). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. (...) Though the semantics is descriptivist, it avoids Dworkin's influential criticism of so-called "semantic theories of law," and elucidates the nature of "theoretical disagreements" about the criteria of legal validity. The account sheds light on the social, interpersonal function of normative uses of language in legal discourse. It also gives precise expression to Hart's and Raz's intuitive distinctions among types of legal claims (internal/external, committed/detached), while giving them a uniform type of analysis. The proposed semantics and pragmatics of legal claims provides a fruitful framework for further theorizing about the nature and metaphysics of law, the relation between law and morality, and the apparent practical character of legal language and judgment. Discourse Contextualism provides a solid linguistic basis for a broader account of legal discourse and practice. (shrink)
Context and Context-Dependence, Misc in Philosophy of Language
Deontic Modals in Philosophy of Language
Law and Language, Misc in Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Language, Misc in Philosophy of Language
Semantics of Legal Language in Philosophy of Law
Minds and Language: Social Cognition, Social Interaction and the Acquisition of Language.Kevin Durkin - 1987 - Mind and Language 2 (2):105-140.details
Embodiment and Situated Cognition in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
The Interplay Between Gesture and Speech in the Production of Referring Expressions: Investigating the Tradeoff Hypothesis.Jan P. de Ruiter, Adrian Bangerter & Paula Dings - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2):232-248.details
The tradeoff hypothesis in the speech–gesture relationship claims that (a) when gesturing gets harder, speakers will rely relatively more on speech, and (b) when speaking gets harder, speakers will rely relatively more on gestures. We tested the second part of this hypothesis in an experimental collaborative referring paradigm where pairs of participants (directors and matchers) identified targets to each other from an array visible to both of them. We manipulated two factors known to affect the difficulty of speaking to assess (...) their effects on the gesture rate per 100 words. The first factor, codability, is the ease with which targets can be described. The second factor, repetition, is whether the targets are old or new (having been already described once or twice). We also manipulated a third factor, mutual visibility, because it is known to affect the rate and type of gesture produced. None of the manipulations systematically affected the gesture rate. Our data are thus mostly inconsistent with the tradeoff hypothesis. However, the gesture rate was sensitive to concurrent features of referring expressions, suggesting that gesture parallels aspects of speech. We argue that the redundancy between speech and gesture is communicatively motivated. (shrink)
Contributing to Discourse.Herbert H. Clark & Edward F. Schaefer - 1989 - Cognitive Science 13 (2):259-294.details
Interface of Linguistic and Visual Information During Audience Design.Kumiko Fukumura - 2015 - Cognitive Science 39 (6):1419-1433.details
Evidence suggests that speakers can take account of the addressee's needs when referring. However, what representations drive the speaker's audience design has been less clear. This study aims to go beyond previous studies by investigating the interplay between the visual and linguistic context during audience design. Speakers repeated subordinate descriptions given in the prior linguistic context less and used basic-level descriptions more when the addressee did not hear the linguistic context than when s/he did. But crucially, this effect happened only (...) when the referent lacked the visual attributes associated with the expressions, so there was no other contextual cue available for the identification of the referent. This suggests that speakers flexibly use different contextual cues to help their addressee map the referring expression onto the intended referent. In addition, speakers used fewer pronouns when the addressee did not hear the linguistic antecedent than when s/he did. This suggests that although speakers may be egocentric during anaphoric reference, they can cooperatively avoid pronouns when the linguistic antecedents were not shared with their addressee during initial reference. (shrink)
Universal Principles of Human Communication: Preliminary Evidence From a Cross‐Cultural Communication Game.Nicolas Fay, Bradley Walker, Nik Swoboda, Ichiro Umata, Takugo Fukaya, Yasuhiro Katagiri & Simon Garrod - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (7):2397-2413.details
When Do Speakers Take Into Account Common Ground?William S. Horton & Boaz Keysar - 1996 - Cognition 59 (1):91-117.details
The Dialogically Extended Mind: Language as Skilful Intersubjective Engagement.Riccardo Fusaroli, Nivedita Gangopadhyay & Kristian Tylén - 2013 - Cognitive Systems Research.details
A growing conceptual and empirical literature is advancing the idea that language extends our cognitive skills. One of the most influential positions holds that language – qua material symbols – facilitates individual thought processes by virtue of its material properties (Clark, 2006a). Extending upon this model, we argue that language enhances our cognitive capabilities in a much more radical way: the skilful engagement of public material symbols facilitates evolutionarily unprecedented modes of collective perception, action and reasoning (interpersonal synergies) creating dialogically (...) extended minds. We relate our approach to other ideas about collective minds ( Gallagher, 2011, Theiner et al., 2010 and Tollefsen, 2006) and review a number of empirical studies to identify the mechanisms enabling the constitution of interpersonal cognitive systems. (shrink)
Philosophy of Language, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Language
The Role of Language in Thought in Philosophy of Language
Running Repairs: Coordinating Meaning in Dialogue.Patrick G. T. Healey, Gregory J. Mills, Arash Eshghi & Christine Howes - 2018 - Topics in Cognitive Science 10 (2):367-388.details
Real‐Time Investigation of Referential Domains in Unscripted Conversation: A Targeted Language Game Approach.Sarah Brown-Schmidt & Michael K. Tanenhaus - 2008 - Cognitive Science 32 (4):643-684.details
Generation of Referring Expressions: Assessing the Incremental Algorithm.Kees van Deemter, Albert Gatt, Ielka van der Sluis & Richard Power - 2012 - Cognitive Science 36 (5):799-836.details
A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the generation of ''one-shot'' referring expressions whose only aim is to identify a target referent. Dale and Reiter's Incremental Algorithm (IA) is often thought to be the best algorithm for maximizing the similarity to referring expressions produced by people. We test this hypothesis by eliciting referring expressions from human subjects and computing the similarity between the expressions elicited and the ones generated by algorithms. It turns out that (...) the success of the IA depends substantially on the ''preference order'' (PO) employed by the IA, particularly in complex domains. While some POs cause the IA to produce referring expressions that are very similar to expressions produced by human subjects, others cause the IA to perform worse than its main competitors; moreover, it turns out to be difficult to predict the success of a PO on the basis of existing psycholinguistic findings or frequencies in corpora. We also examine the computational complexity of the algorithms in question and argue that there are no compelling reasons for preferring the IA over some of its main competitors on these grounds. We conclude that future research on the generation of referring expressions should explore alternatives to the IA, focusing on algorithms, inspired by the Greedy Algorithm, which do not work with a fixed PO. (shrink)
Aspects of Reference in Philosophy of Language
Direct download (10 more)
Utility-Based Generation of Referring Expressions.Markus Guhe - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2):306-329.details
This paper presents two cognitive models that simulate the production of referring expressions in the iMAP task—a task-oriented dialog. One general model is based on Dale and Reiter's (1995)incremental algorithm, and the other is a simple template model that has a higher correlation with the data but is specifically geared toward the properties of the iMAP task. The property of the iMAP task environment that is modeled here is that the color feature is unreliable for identifying referents while other features (...) are reliable. The low computational cost of the incremental algorithm for generating referring expressions makes it an interesting starting point for a cognitive model. However, its explanatory power is limited, because it generates uniquely distinguishing referring expressions and because it considers features for inclusion in the referring expression in a fixed order. The first model extends the original incremental algorithm by an ability to adapt to feedback of whether a referring expression was used successfully, but it seems to overpredict the frequency with which distinguishing expressions are made and underpredict the frequency of overspecified referring expressions. The second model produces features for referring expressions purely based on its current estimate of a feature's utility. Both models predict the observed human behavior of decreasing use of color terms and increasing use of useful feature terms. (shrink)
Anchoring Utterances.Herbert H. Clark - 2021 - Topics in Cognitive Science 13 (2):329-350.details
The Emergence of the Physical World From Information Processing.Brian Whitworth - 2010 - Quantum Biosystems 2 (1):221-249.details
This paper links the conjecture that the physical world is a virtual reality to the findings of modern physics. What is usually the subject of science fiction is here proposed as a scientific theory open to empirical evaluation. We know from physics how the world behaves, and from computing how information behaves, so whether the physical world arises from ongoing information processing is a question science can evaluate. A prima facie case for the virtual reality conjecture is presented. If a (...) photon is a pixel on a multi-dimensional grid that gives rise to space, the speed of light could reflect its refresh rate. If mass, charge and energy all arise from processing, the many conservation laws of physics could reduce to a single law of dynamic information conservation. If the universe is a virtual reality, then its big bang creation could be simply when the system was booted up. Deriving core physics from information processing could reconcile relativity and quantum theory, with the former how processing creates the space-time operating system and the latter how it creates energy and matter applications. (shrink)
Digital Physics in Philosophy of Physical Science
Simulation Hypothesis in Philosophy of Computing and Information
A World Unto Itself: Human Communication as Active Inference.Jared Vasil, Paul B. Badcock, Axel Constant, Karl Friston & Maxwell J. D. Ramstead - 2020 - Frontiers in Psychology 11.details
Memory and Common Ground Processes in Language Use.Sarah Brown‐Schmidt & Melissa C. Duff - 2016 - Topics in Cognitive Science 8 (4):722-736.details
During communication, we form assumptions about what our communication partners know and believe. Information that is mutually known between the discourse partners—their common ground—serves as a backdrop for successful communication. Here we present an introduction to the focus of this topic, which is the role of memory in common ground and language use. Two types of questions emerge as central to understanding the relationship between memory and common ground, specifically questions having to do with the representation of common ground in (...) memory, and the use of common ground during language processing. (shrink)
The Effect of Information Overlap on Communication Effectiveness.Shali Wu & Boaz Keysar - 2007 - Cognitive Science 31 (1):169-181.details
Intersubjectivity: Towards a Dialogical Analysis.Alex Gillespie & Flora Cornish - 2010 - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 40 (1):19-46.details
Intersubjectivity refers to the variety of possible relations between perspectives. It is indispensable for understanding human social behaviour. While theoretical work on intersubjectivity is relatively sophisticated, methodological approaches to studying intersubjectivity lag behind. Most methodologies assume that individuals are the unit of analysis. In order to research intersubjectivity, however, methodologies are needed that take relationships as the unit of analysis. The first aim of this article is to review existing methodologies for studying intersubjectivity. Four methodological approaches are reviewed: comparative self-report, (...) observing behaviour, analysing talk and ethnographic engagement. The second aim of the article is to introduce and contribute to the development of a dialogical method of analysis. The dialogical approach enables the study of intersubjectivity at different levels, as both implicit and explicit, and both within and between individuals and groups. The article concludes with suggestions for using the proposed method for researching intersubjectivity both within individuals and between individuals and groups. (shrink)
Collective Contexts in Conversation: Grounding by Proxy.Arash Eshghi & Patrick G. T. Healey - 2016 - Cognitive Science 40 (2):299-324.details
Anecdotal evidence suggests that participants in conversation can sometimes act as a coalition. This implies a level of conversational organization in which groups of individuals form a coherent unit. This paper investigates the implications of this phenomenon for psycholinguistic and semantic models of shared context in dialog. We present a corpus study of multiparty dialog which shows that, in certain circumstances, people with different levels of overt involvement in a conversation, that is, one responding and one not, can nonetheless access (...) the same shared context. We argue that contemporary models of shared context need to be adapted to capture this situation. To address this, we propose "grounding by proxy," in which one person can respond on behalf of another, as a simple mechanism by which shared context can accumulate for a coalition as a whole. We explore this hypothesis experimentally by investigating how people in a task-oriented coalition respond when their shared context appears to be weakened. The results provide evidence that, by default, coalition members act on each other's behalf, and when this fails they work to compensate. We conclude that this points to the need for a new concept of collective grounding acts and a corresponding concept of collective contexts in psycholinguistic and semantic models of dialog. (shrink)
Generating References in Naturalistic Face‐to‐Face and Phone‐Mediated Dialog Settings.Dominique Knutsen, Christine Ros & Ludovic Le Bigot - 2016 - Topics in Cognitive Science 8 (4):796-818.details
During dialog, references are presented, accepted, and potentially reused. Two experiments were conducted to examine reuse in a naturalistic setting. In Experiment 1, where the participants interacted face to face, self-presented references and references accepted through verbatim repetition were reused more. Such biases persisted after the end of the interaction. In Experiment 2, where the participants interacted over the phone, reference reuse mainly depended on whether the participant could see the landmarks being referred to, although this bias seemed to be (...) only transient. Consistent with the memory-based approach to dialog, these results shed light on how differences in accessibility in memory affect the unfolding of the interaction. (shrink)
Imposing Cognitive Constraints on Reference Production: The Interplay Between Speech and Gesture During Grounding.Ingrid Masson‐Carro, Martijn Goudbeek & Emiel Krahmer - 2016 - Topics in Cognitive Science 8 (4):819-836.details
Past research has sought to elucidate how speakers and addressees establish common ground in conversation, yet few studies have focused on how visual cues such as co-speech gestures contribute to this process. Likewise, the effect of cognitive constraints on multimodal grounding remains to be established. This study addresses the relationship between the verbal and gestural modalities during grounding in referential communication. We report data from a collaborative task where repeated references were elicited, and a time constraint was imposed to increase (...) cognitive load. Our results reveal no differential effects of repetition or cognitive load on the semantic-based gesture rate, suggesting that representational gestures and speech are closely coordinated during grounding. However, gestures and speech differed in their execution, especially under time pressure. We argue that speech and gesture are two complementary streams that might be planned in conjunction but that unfold independently in later stages of language production, with speakers emphasizing the form of their gestures, but not of their words, to better meet the goals of the collaborative task. (shrink)
Language Acquisition Meets Language Evolution.Nick Chater & Morten H. Christiansen - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (7):1131-1157.details
Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the (...) natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the "logical" problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology. (shrink)
Evolution of Language in Philosophy of Language
Linguistic Universals in Philosophy of Language
Two- and Four-Year-Olds Learn to Adapt Referring Expressions to Context: Effects of Distracters and Feedback on Referential Communication.Danielle Matthews, Jessica Butcher, Elena Lieven & Michael Tomasello - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (2):184-210.details
Children often refer to things ambiguously but learn not to from responding to clarification requests. We review and explore this learning process here. In Study 1, eighty-four 2- and 4-year-olds were tested for their ability to request stickers from either (a) a small array with one dissimilar distracter or (b) a large array containing similar distracters. When children made ambiguous requests, they received either general feedback or specific questions about which of two options they wanted. With training, children learned to (...) produce more complex object descriptions and did so faster in the specific feedback condition. They also tended to provide more information when requesting stickers from large arrays. In Study 2, we varied only distracter similarity during training and then varied array size in a generalization test. Children found it harder to learn in this case. In the generalization test, 4-year-olds were more likely to provide information (a) when it was needed because distracters were similar to the target and (b) when the array size was greater (regardless of need for information). We discuss how clear cues to potential ambiguity are needed for children to learn to tailor their referring expression to context and how several cues of heuristic value (e.g., more distracters > say more) can promote the efficiency of communication while language is developing. Finally, we consider whether it would be worthwhile drawing on the human learning process when developing algorithms for the production of referring expressions. (shrink)
Philosophy of Linguistics, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Language
Effects of Ambiguous Gestures and Language on the Time Course of Reference Resolution.Max M. Louwerse & Adrian Bangerter - 2010 - Cognitive Science 34 (8):1517-1529.details
Two eye-tracking experiments investigated how and when pointing gestures and location descriptions affect target identification. The experiments investigated the effect of gestures and referring expressions on the time course of fixations to the target, using videos of human gestures and human voice, and animated gestures and synthesized speech. Ambiguous, yet informative pointing gestures elicited attention and facilitated target identification, akin to verbal location descriptions. Moreover, target identification was superior when both pointing gestures and verbal location descriptions were used. These findings (...) suggest that gesture not only operates as a context to verbal descriptions, or that verbal descriptions operate as a context to gesture, but that they complement one another in reference resolution. (shrink)
Convention and Common Ground.Bart Geurts - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (2):115-129.details