Co‐occurrence of Ostensive Communication and Generalizable Knowledge in Forager Storytelling

Human Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Keyword(s):  
Ostensive Communication

Author Reply: Clarifying the Importance of Ostensive Communication in Life-Long, Affective Social Learning

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Dukes ◽  
Fabrice Clément
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Author Reply ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Ostensive Communication

In our attempt to distinguish two types of social appraisal, we (a) clarify the “knower–learner” relationship in affective social learning, (b) underline the important role that affective observation may have in acculturation processes, and (c) highlight some potential consequences for the recent debate on the benefits of child-directed (ostensive) learning.

Autism and ostensive communication: The relevance of metarepresentation

1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan M. Leslie ◽  
Francesca Happé
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
First Year ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Early Theory ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
Early Communication ◽  
Pathological Development ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
Single Set

AbstractRecent empirical and theoretical work on both normal and pathological development has led to the formulation of the metarepresentational conjecture for autism. This account of autistic development links the core impairments in imaginative abilities, communicative skills, and social competence to dysfunction of a single set of underlying cognitive mechanisms. In this context, Mundy and Sigman (1989) argue that the impairment of early gestural communication in autism cannot be accounted for by the metarepresentational theory. On the contrary, this early communication impairment in autism is highly consistent with a faulty theory-of-mind module. In normal development, this module is available from around the first year to handle estensive communication – shared pretense being a prime, though slightly later, example. We briefly consider the role in communication of perceptual processes that may trigger metarepresentation. This early theory-of-mind module, with its metarepresentational processes, provides the specific developmental basis for later versions of the child's theory of mind.

first case of Peter leaning back ostensively to let Mary see William approaching, it is arguable that some of the basic information is made manifest indirectly, through Peter’s intention being made manifest. Someone who engages in any kind of osten-sive behaviour intentionally draws some attention to himself and intentionally makes manifest a few assumptions about himself: for instance, that he is aware of the basic information involved, and that he is trying to be relevant. Peter’s ostension might make it manifest not just that William is approaching, but also that Peter expects Mary to be concerned, and that he is concerned too. Would we want to say, though, that Peter ‘meant something’ by his behav-iour? Like most English speakers, we would be reluctant to do so; but this is irrelevant to our pursuit, which is not to analyse ordinary language usage, but to describe and explain forms of human communication. Our argument at this stage is this: either inferential communication consists in providing evidence for what the communicator means, in the sense of ‘meaning’ which Grice calls ‘non-natural meaning’, and in that case inferential communication is not a well-defined class of phenomena at all; or else showing something should be considered a form of inferential communication, on a par with meaning something by a certain behaviour, and inferential communication and ostension should be equated. There are two questions involved here. One is substantive: which domains of facts are to be described and explained together? Our answer is that ostension is such a domain, and that inferential communication narrowly understood (i.e. under-stood as excluding cases of ostension where talk of ‘meaning’ would be awkward) is not. The second question is terminological (and hence not worth much argu-ment): can the term ‘communication’ be legitimately applied to all cases of osten-sion? Our answer is yes, and from now on we will treat ostensive communication, inferential communication, and ostensive–inferential communication as the same thing. Inferential communication and ostension are one and the same process, but seen from two different points of view: that of the communicator who is involved in ostension and that of the audience who is involved in inference. Ostensive–inferential communication consists in making manifest to an audi-ence one’s intention to make manifest a basic layer of information. It can there-fore be described in terms of an informative and a communicative intention. In the next two sections, we want to reanalyse the notions of informative and com-municative intention in terms of manifestness and mutual manifestness, and to sketch in some of the empirical implications of this reformulation.

2005 ◽  
pp. 159-159
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Basic Information ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
First Case ◽  
Basic Layer ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
Empirical Implications

scholarly journals Convergent minds: ostension, inference and Grice's third clause

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 20160107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moore
Keyword(s):  
Animal Species ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Intentional Communication ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Gricean Communication ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
Intentional Structure ◽  
Prevailing View

A prevailing view is that while human communication has an ‘ostensive-inferential’ or ‘Gricean’ intentional structure, animal communication does not. This would make the psychological states that support human and animal forms of communication fundamentally different. Against this view, I argue that there are grounds to expect ostensive communication in non-human clades. This is because it is sufficient for ostensive communication that one intentionally addresses one's utterance to one's intended interlocutor—something that is both a functional pre-requisite of successful communication and cognitively undemanding. Furthermore, while ostension is an important feature of intentional communication, the inferences required in Gricean communication may be minimal: ostension and inference may come apart. The grounds for holding that animal communication could not be Gricean are therefore weak. I finish by defending the idea that a ‘minimally Gricean’ model of communication is a valuable tool for characterizing the communicative interactions of many animal species.

scholarly journals Why is combinatorial communication rare in the natural world, and why is language an exception to this trend?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (88) ◽  
pp. 20130520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Scott-Phillips ◽  
Richard A. Blythe
Keyword(s):  
Simple Form ◽  
Communication System ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Nonlinear Dynamical ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Cognitive Difficulties ◽  
Ostensive Communication

In a combinatorial communication system, some signals consist of the combinations of other signals. Such systems are more efficient than equivalent, non-combinatorial systems, yet despite this they are rare in nature. Why? Previous explanations have focused on the adaptive limits of combinatorial communication, or on its purported cognitive difficulties, but neither of these explains the full distribution of combinatorial communication in the natural world. Here, we present a nonlinear dynamical model of the emergence of combinatorial communication that, unlike previous models, considers how initially non-communicative behaviour evolves to take on a communicative function. We derive three basic principles about the emergence of combinatorial communication. We hence show that the interdependence of signals and responses places significant constraints on the historical pathways by which combinatorial signals might emerge, to the extent that anything other than the most simple form of combinatorial communication is extremely unlikely. We also argue that these constraints can be bypassed if individuals have the socio-cognitive capacity to engage in ostensive communication. Humans, but probably no other species, have this ability. This may explain why language, which is massively combinatorial, is such an extreme exception to nature's general trend for non-combinatorial communication.

debt; or he would have failed to mend it, which would have amounted to a refusal or rejection. Mary avoids putting herself in his debt or meeting with a refusal by avoiding any modification of their mutual cognitive environment. If Peter mends the hair-drier, he is being kind on his own initiative, and she does not owe him anything. If Peter decides not to mend the hair-drier, he might reason as follows: she doesn’t know I know she intended to inform me of her wish, so if I ignore it, she will attribute this to her failure to inform me; she may find me stupid, but not unkind. As for Mary, she may have intentionally left this line of reason-ing open to Peter. If he does not mend her hair-drier, she will find him unkind, but not hostile. His failure to grant her wish will not be in the nature of a rebuff. They will stand in exactly the same social relationship to each other as before. This shows how ostensive communication may have social implications that other forms of information transmission do not. By making her informative intention mutually manifest, the communicator creates the following situation: it becomes mutually manifest that the fulfilment of her informative intention is, so to speak, in the hands of the audience. If the assumptions that she intends to make manifest to the audience become manifest, then she is successful; if the audience refuses to accept these assumptions as true or probably true, then she has failed in her informative intention. Suppose – we will soon see how this may happen – that the audience’s behaviour makes it mutu-ally manifest that the informative intention is fulfilled. Then the set of assump-tions I that the communicator intended to make manifest to the audience becomes, at least apparently, mutually manifest. We say ‘at least apparently’ because, if the communicator is not sincere and some of the assumptions in I are not manifest to her, then by our definition of mutual manifestness, these assumptions cannot be mutually manifest to her and others. A communicator is normally interested in knowing whether or not she has succeeded in fulfilling her informative intention, and this interest is mutually manifest to her and her audience. In face-to-face communication, the audience is generally expected to respond to this interest in fairly conventional ways. Often, for instance, the audience is expected to communicate its refusal to accept the information communicated, or else it becomes mutually manifest that the com-municator’s informative intention is fulfilled. Where communication is non-reciprocal, there are various possible situations to be taken into account. The communicator may be in a position of such author-ity over her audience that the success of her informative intention is mutually manifest in advance. Journalists, professors, religious or political leaders assume, alas often on good grounds, that what they communicate automatically becomes mutually manifest. When the communicator lacks that kind of authority, but still wants to establish a mutual cognitive environment with her audience, all she has to do is adapt her informative intentions to her credibility. For instance, in writ-ing this book we merely intend to make mutually manifest that we have devel-oped certain hypotheses and have done so on certain grounds. That is, we take it as mutually manifest that you will accept our authority on what we actually think. The mutual cognitive environment thus created is enough for us to go on

2005 ◽  
pp. 166-166
Keyword(s):  
Information Transmission ◽  
Social Relationship ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
Cognitive Environment

This takes care of the types of example which Strawson and Schiffer used to show that, in order to communicate, it is not quite enough to inform an audience of one’s informative intention. For instance, in the example in an earlier section, Mary leaves the pieces of her broken hair-drier lying around, intending thereby to inform Peter that she would like him to mend it. She wants this informative intention to be manifest to Peter, but at the same time, she does not want it to be ‘overt’. In our terms, she does not want her informative intention to be mutu-ally manifest. Intuitively, what she does is not quite communicate. Our redefinition of a communicative intention accounts for this intuition. What difference does it make whether an informative intention is merely manifest to the audience or mutually manifest to audience and communicator? Should this really be a criterion for distinguishing communication from other forms of information transmission? Is it more than a technicality designed to take care of implausible borderline cases dreamed up by philosophers? Our answer is that there is indeed an essential difference. Consider first a more general question: why should someone who has an in-formative intention bother to make it known to her audience that she has this intention? In other words, what are the reasons for engaging in ostensive com-munication? Grice discussed only one of these reasons: sometimes, making one’s informative intention known is the best way, or the only way, of fulfilling it. We have shown that people sometimes engage in ostensive communication even though the informative intention could be fulfilled without being made manifest: for exam-ple, by providing direct evidence for the information to be conveyed. However, even in these cases, ostension helps focus the attention of the audience on the rel-evant information, and thus contributes to the fulfilment of the informative inten-tion. This is still the Gricean reason for engaging in communication, just slightly extended in scope. However, we want to argue that there is another major reason for engaging in ostensive communication, apart from helping to fulfil an informative intention. Mere informing alters the cognitive environment of the audience. Communication alters the mutual cognitive environment of the audience and communicator. Mutual manifestness may be of little cognitive importance, but it is of crucial social impor-tance. A change in the mutual cognitive environment of two people is a change in their possibilities of interaction (and, in particular, in their possibilities of fur-ther communication). Recall, for instance, the case of Peter leaning back to let Mary see William coming their way. If, as a result of his behaviour, it becomes mutually manifest to them that William is coming, that they are in danger of being bored by his conversation, and so on, then they are in a position to act efficiently: i.e. promptly. All Mary may have to do is say, ‘Let’s go!’; she can feel confident that Peter will understand her reasons, and, if he shares them, will be ready to act without ques-tion or delay. In the case of the broken hair-drier, if Mary had made mutually manifest her wish that Peter would mend it, one of two things would have happened. Either he would have mended it, thus granting her wish and possibly putting her in his

2005 ◽  
pp. 165-165
Keyword(s):  
Information Transmission ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
General Question ◽  
Essential Difference ◽  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Communicative Intention ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
Cognitive Environment

Cognitive Pragmatics and Multi-layered Communication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Unger
Keyword(s):  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Figure Of Speech ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Ostensive Communication ◽  
One Act

Allegory is a figure of speech that is frequently used in Christian religious discourse, not only in the Christian Scriptures, but also in theological and homiletic literature throughout history. However, its use has also been viewed with suspicion by various schools of Christian thought. That is, allegory as a figure of speech is perceived as both being a useful tool for religious discourse and beset by limitations. This double-sided perception of the utility of allegory is rooted in the cognitive complexities that the comprehension of allegory involves, according to Unger (2017). Processing allegory involves our ability to detect and process multiple layers of communication in one act of ostensive communication. Thus, allegory has the potential for being effective for communicating complex thoughts in an elegant and effective way; at the same time, it runs the risk of inviting the audience to overinterpret the communication event.

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