Iconicity

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Fay ◽  
Mark Ellison ◽  
Simon Garrod
Keyword(s):  
Communication System ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Gestural Communication ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Graphical Communication ◽  
Iconic Signs

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence for iconicity at the level of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language.

How to create a human communication system

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey J. Lister ◽  
Nicolas Fay
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Interactive Feedback ◽  
Single Modality

Following a synthesis of naturalistic and experimental studies of language creation, we propose a theoretical model that describes the process through which human communication systems might arise and evolve. Three key processes are proposed that give rise to effective, efficient and shared human communication systems: (1) motivated signs that directly resemble their meaning facilitate cognitive alignment, improving communication success; (2) behavioral alignment onto an inventory of shared sign-to-meaning mappings bolsters cognitive alignment between interacting partners; (3) sign refinement, through interactive feedback, enhances the efficiency of the evolving communication system. By integrating the findings across a range of diverse studies, we propose a theoretical model of the process through which the earliest human communication systems might have arisen and evolved. Importantly, because our model is not bound to a single modality it can describe the creation of shared sign systems across a range of contexts, informing theories of language creation and evolution.

scholarly journals The origin of human multi-modal communication

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1651) ◽  
pp. 20130302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Levinson ◽  
Judith Holler
Keyword(s):  
Layered Structure ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Evolutionary Origins

One reason for the apparent gulf between animal and human communication systems is that the focus has been on the presence or the absence of language as a complex expressive system built on speech. But language normally occurs embedded within an interactional exchange of multi-modal signals. If this larger perspective takes central focus, then it becomes apparent that human communication has a layered structure, where the layers may be plausibly assigned different phylogenetic and evolutionary origins—especially in the light of recent thoughts on the emergence of voluntary breathing and spoken language. This perspective helps us to appreciate the different roles that the different modalities play in human communication, as well as how they function as one integrated system despite their different roles and origins. It also offers possibilities for reconciling the ‘gesture-first hypothesis’ with that of gesture and speech having evolved together, hand in hand—or hand in mouth, rather—as one system.

Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Cornish
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Shared Task ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Adaptive Structure ◽  
The Way

Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single chains of learners. By removing elements of interactive communication and focusing only on the way in which language is repeatedly acquired by learners, we hope to gain a better understanding of how useful structural properties of language could have emerged without being intentionally designed or innovated.

scholarly journals The Mirroring of Symbols: An EEG Study on the Role of Mirroring in the Formation of Symbolic Communication Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanhong Li ◽  
Takashi Hashimoto ◽  
Takeshi Konno ◽  
Jiro Okuda ◽  
Kazuyuki Samejima ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Action Observation ◽  
Central Area ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Communicative Behavior ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Mu Suppression

The underlying mechanism of communicative behavior in both humans and other animals was proposed to be “mirroring”, which refers to the similar neural pattern during action production and action observation. Nevertheless, the role of mirroring in human communication remains a puzzle, since human communication systems can take a symbolic form not relying directly on body action. We hypothesized that mirroring contributes to the formation of implied meaning, i.e., connotation, in symbolic communication. We used electroencephalography to study human brain mirroring activity, indexed by mu-suppression measured in 10–12 Hz band over the left-central area, firstly in a non-communicative single-player game then in a communicative coordination game. We evaluated the effect of the mirroring activity in each game upon the performance of symbolic communication in the communicative game. We found that the participants showed significant mirroring in both games performed better on connotation-forming than those who showed significant mirroring in the communicative game only. Our results suggest that imagining signaling action in both communicative and non-communicative contexts could be a key to connotation-forming in symbolic communication.

scholarly journals The fitness and functionality of culturally evolved communication systems

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1509) ◽  
pp. 3553-3561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Fay ◽  
Simon Garrod ◽  
Leo Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Animal Communication ◽  
Global Alignment ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Detection Experiment ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Graphical Communication ◽  
Efficient Decoding

This paper assesses whether human communication systems undergo the same progressive adaptation seen in animal communication systems and concrete artefacts. Four experiments compared the fitness of ad hoc sign systems created under different conditions when participants play a graphical communication task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that when participants are organized into interacting communities, a series of signs evolve that enhance individual learning and promote efficient decoding. No such benefits are found for signs that result from the local interactions of isolated pairs of interlocutors. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the decoding benefits associated with community evolved signs cannot be attributed to superior sign encoding or detection. Experiment 4 revealed that naive overseers were better able to identify the meaning of community evolved signs when compared with isolated pair developed signs. Hence, the decoding benefits for community evolved signs arise from their greater residual iconicity. We argue that community evolved sign systems undergo a process of communicative selection and adaptation that promotes optimized sign systems. This results from the interplay between sign diversity and a global alignment constraint; pairwise interaction introduces a range of competing signs and the need to globally align on a single sign-meaning mapping for each referent applies selection pressure.

scholarly journals Cultural selection drives the evolution of human communication systems

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1788) ◽  
pp. 20140488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Tamariz ◽  
T. Mark Ellison ◽  
Dale J. Barr ◽  
Nicolas Fay
Keyword(s):  
Communication Systems ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Parameter Setting ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Selection ◽  
Egocentric Bias ◽  
Best Fitting ◽  
Drift Models

Human communication systems evolve culturally, but the evolutionary mechanisms that drive this evolution are not well understood. Against a baseline that communication variants spread in a population following neutral evolutionary dynamics (also known as drift models), we tested the role of two cultural selection models: coordination- and content-biased. We constructed a parametrized mixed probabilistic model of the spread of communicative variants in four 8-person laboratory micro-societies engaged in a simple communication game. We found that selectionist models, working in combination, explain the majority of the empirical data. The best-fitting parameter setting includes an egocentric bias and a content bias, suggesting that participants retained their own previously used communicative variants unless they encountered a superior (content-biased) variant, in which case it was adopted. This novel pattern of results suggests that (i) a theory of the cultural evolution of human communication systems must integrate selectionist models and (ii) human communication systems are functionally adaptive complex systems.

scholarly journals A behavioral task for exploring dynamics of communication system in dilemma situations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoki Inoue ◽  
Junya Morita
Keyword(s):  
Communication System ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Behavioral Task ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Language Functions ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Linguistic Ability ◽  
Machiavellian Intelligence

AbstractThis research proposes a behavioral task to demonstrate the process of evolution of human communication systems based on the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, claiming that human sophisticated social intelligence such as linguistic ability has been formed through behaviors that maximize self-interest in a competitive social situation. The proposed task was designed as a dilemma game involving messaging to establish Machiavellian communication. The game was developed based on experimental semiotics, a method that generates novel artificial language and examines language functions. Through the proposed task, pairs of participants attach meanings to arbitral graphic symbols forming novel communication systems. In case studies using this task, participants modified or ambiguated the communication system by means of a dilemma between sharing and monopolizing rewards. The result suggests that the proposed game causes ambiguation of the communication system that functions equivocally.

Origins and complexities of infant communication and social cognition

2018 ◽  
pp. 660-684
Author(s):  
Ulf Liszkowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
Gestural Communication ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Ape Communication ◽  
Pointing Gesture ◽  
Human Pointing

This chapter investigates how infants communicate before they have acquired a language; the underlying social cognition and motivation; and the evolutionary and ontogenetic origins of human communication. Evidence is reviewed that by 12 months of age, infants’ production and comprehension of the human pointing gesture involves several interwoven layers of communicative intentions, and pertains in complexity to unique forms of human communication. Limits of infant communication pertain to representational gesture use, particularly the spontaneous creation of pantomimic iconic gestures, and to the expression of referential intentions in early infancy. Commonalities and differences to ape communication are identified at different developmental ages regarding the use of reaching gestures and communication about distal and absent referents. Recent evidence is presented for the role of social interaction in the early ontogenetic emergence of uniquely human forms of gestural communication.

How to create a human communication system: A theoretical model

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey J Lister ◽  
Nicolas Fay
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Communication System ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
System A ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Interactive Feedback ◽  
Single Modality

Following a synthesis of naturalistic and experimental studies of language creation, we propose a theoretical model that describes the process through which human communication systems might arise and evolve. Three key processes are proposed that give rise to effective, efficient and shared human communication systems: 1) motivated signs that directly resemble their meaning facilitate cognitive alignment, improving communication success; 2) behavioral alignment onto an inventory of shared sign-to-meaning mappings bolsters cognitive alignment between interacting partners; 3) sign refinement, through interactive feedback, enhances the efficiency of the evolving communication system. By integrating the findings across a range of diverse studies, we propose a theoretical model of the process through which the earliest human communication systems might have arisen and evolved. Importantly, because our model is not bound to a single modality it can describe the creation of shared sign systems across a range of contexts, informing theories of language creation and evolution.

scholarly journals The categorical role of structurally iconic signs

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent Strickland ◽  
Valentina Aristodemo ◽  
Jeremy Kuhn ◽  
Carlo Geraci
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Linguistic Sign ◽  
Iconic Signs ◽  
Distinguishing Sign

AbstractGoldin-Meadow & Brentari (G-M&B) argue that, for sign language users, gesture – in contrast to linguistic sign – is iconic, highly variable, and similar to spoken language co-speech gesture. We discuss two examples (telicity and absolute gradable adjectives) that challenge the use of these criteria for distinguishing sign from gesture.

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