scholarly journals Incrementality and intention-recognition in utterance processing

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Gregoromichelaki ◽  
Ruth Kempson ◽  
Matthew Purver ◽  
Gregory J. Mills ◽  
Ronnie Cann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Predictive Model ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Intention Recognition ◽  
Dialogue Modelling ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Dynamic Syntax ◽  
Do So

Ever since dialogue modelling first developed relative to broadly Gricean assumptions about utter-ance interpretation (Clark, 1996), it has remained an open question whether the full complexity of higher-order intention computation is made use of in everyday conversation. In this paper we examine the phenomenon of split utterances, from the perspective of Dynamic Syntax, to further probe the necessity of full intention recognition/formation in communication: we do so by exploring the extent to which the interactive coordination of dialogue exchange can be seen as emergent from low-level mechanisms of language processing, without needing representation by interlocutors of each other’s mental states, or fully developed intentions as regards messages to be conveyed. We thus illustrate how many dialogue phenomena can be seen as direct consequences of the grammar architecture, as long as this is presented within an incremental, goal-directed/predictive model.

scholarly journals Feedback Relevance Spaces: Interactional Constraints on Processing Contexts in Dynamic Syntax

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Howes ◽  
Arash Eshghi
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
British English ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Integrated Or ◽  
Dynamic Syntax ◽  
Do So

AbstractFeedback such as backchannels and clarification requests often occurs subsententially, demonstrating the incremental nature of grounding in dialogue. However, although such feedback can occur at any point within an utterance, it typically does not do so, tending to occur at Feedback Relevance Spaces (FRSs). We present a corpus study of acknowledgements and clarification requests in British English, and describe how our low-level, semantic processing model in Dynamic Syntax accounts for this feedback. The model trivially accounts for the 85% of cases where feedback occurs at FRSs, but we also describe how it can be integrated or interpreted at non-FRSs using the predictive, incremental and interactive nature of the formalism. This model shows how feedback serves to continually realign processing contexts and thus manage the characteristic divergence and convergence that is key to moving dialogue forward.

Seeming to Seem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Order Theory ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
First Person ◽  
Psychological States ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Higher Order Theory ◽  
The Third Person

Dennett’s account of consciousness starts from third-person considerations. I argue this is wise, since beginning with first-person access precludes accommodating the third-person access we have to others’ mental states. But Dennett’s first-person operationalism, which seeks to save the first person in third-person, operationalist terms, denies the occurrence of folk-psychological states that one doesn’t believe oneself to be in, and so the occurrence of folk-psychological states that aren’t conscious. This conflicts with Dennett’s intentional-stance approach to the mental, on which we discern others’ mental states independently of those states’ being conscious. We can avoid this conflict with a higher-order theory of consciousness, which saves the spirit of Dennett’s approach, but enables us to distinguish conscious folk-psychological states from nonconscious ones. The intentional stance by itself can’t do this, since it can’t discern a higher-order awareness of a psychological state. But we can supplement the intentional stance with the higher-order theoretical apparatus.

scholarly journals Propositionalism and Questions that do not have Correct Answers

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Felappi
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Do So

AbstractAs the label suggests, according to propositionalism, each intentional mental state, attitude or event is or involves a relation to a proposition. In this paper, I will discuss a case that seems prima facie not to be accountable for by propositionalism. After having presented the case, I will show why it is different from others that have been discussed in the literature as able to show that propositionalism cannot be correct. I will then consider what the propositionalist can say to fix the problem and I will show that no strategy that is genuinely propositionalist seems promising. I will not conclude that propositionalism is doomed. But I will show that if propositionalism can account for our case at all, it can only do so by losing its main appeal, i.e. its elegance and simplicity. But then propositionalism seems to have lost its advantage with respect to its obvious alternative, i.e. a pluralist account according to which mental states, attitudes and events are not all homogeneously relations to propositions, but rather our mental life should be accounted for in terms of a plurality of kinds of relata.

Decidability of fourth-order matching

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
VINCENT PADOVANI
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Order ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Finite Sets ◽  
Free Variables ◽  
Open Question

Higher Order Matching consists of solving finite sets of equations of the form u =βηv, where u, v are simply typed terms of λ-calculus, and v is a closed term. Whether this problem is decidable is an open question. In this paper its decidability is proved when the free variables of all equations are of order at most 4 – we actually extend this result to a more general situation in which in addition to equations, disequations are also considered.

scholarly journals Hemispheric and executive influences on low-level language processing after traumatic brain injury

Brain Injury ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 984-995 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn C. Russell ◽  
Patricia M. Arenth ◽  
Joelle M. Scanlon ◽  
Lauren Kessler ◽  
Joseph H. Ricker
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Low Level

scholarly journals “Yay! Yuck!” Toddlers use incongruent emotions to reason about hidden objects

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexis Sierra Smith-Flores ◽  
Lisa Feigenson
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Present Experiment ◽  
Single Agent ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Single Stimulus ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Infants And Toddlers ◽  
The World ◽  
Do So

Infants show impressive sensitivity to others’ emotions from early on, attending to and discriminating different facial emotions, using emotions to decide what to approach or avoid, and recognizing that certain objects and events are likely to produce certain emotional responses. But do infants and toddlers also recognize more abstract features of emotions—features that are not tied to any one emotion in particular? Here we examined the development of the higher order expectation that emotions are more or less mutually exclusive, asking whether young children recognize that people generally do not express two conflicting emotions towards a single stimulus. We first asked whether 26-month old toddlers can use an agent’s incongruent versus congruent emotional responses (“Yay! Yuck!” versus “Yay! Wow!”) to reason about how many objects were hidden in a box. We found that toddlers inferred that incongruent emotions signaled the presence of two numerically distinct objects (Experiment 1). This inference relied on the incongruent emotions being produced by a single agent; when two different agents gave two incongruent emotional responses, toddlers did not assume that two objects must be present (Experiment 2). Finally, we examined the developmental trajectory of this ability. We found that younger, 20-month olds failed to use incongruent emotions to individuate objects (Experiment 3), although they readily used incongruent novel labels to do so (Experiment 4). Our results suggest that by 2-years of age, children use higher order knowledge of emotions to make inferences about the world around them, and that this ability undergoes early development.

scholarly journals If, Why, and When Subjective Well-Being Influences Health, and Future Needed Research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Francis Diener
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Do So

We review evidence on whether subjective well-being (SWB) can influence health, why it might do so, and what we know about the conditions where this is more or less likely to occur. This review also explores how various methodological approaches inform the study of the connections between subjective well-being and health and longevity outcomes. Our review of this growing literature indicates areas where data are substantial and where much more research is needed. We conclude that SWB can sometimes influence health, and review a number of reasons why it does so. A key open question is when it does and does not do so – in terms of populations likely to be affected, types of SWB that are most influential (including which might be harmful), and types of health and illnesses that are most likely to be affected. We also describe additional types of research that are now much needed in this burgeoning area of interest, for example, cross-cultural studies, animal research, and experimental interventions designed to raise long-term SWB and assess the effects on physical health. This research area is characterized both by potentially extremely important findings, and also by pivotal research issues and questions.

scholarly journals Strong conceptual ability reduces the effect of lexical impairments on verb retrieval in aphasia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haley C. Dresang ◽  
William D. Hula ◽  
Tessa Warren ◽  
Michael Walsh Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Brain Injuries ◽  
Conceptual Processing ◽  
Action Processing ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Conceptual Ability ◽  
Chronic Aphasia ◽  
Left Hemisphere Stroke ◽  
Open Question

Verb-retrieval impairments are pervasive deficits that can negatively impact communicative function for individuals living with aphasia. Unfortunately, the neurocognitive basis of these deficits remains poorly understood. One open question is the degree to which verb-retrieval impairments might be rooted in lexical- versus conceptual-processing deficits. These deficits can be co-present and correlated in people with aphasia, but they have also been found to be dissociated in patients with a variety of acquired brain injuries. This study examined the degree to which conceptual versus lexical action-processing abilities are impaired and may contribute to verb-retrieval impairments in adults with chronic aphasia due to left-hemisphere stroke. The results indicate that conceptual action processing can be impaired in aphasia and may contribute to verb-retrieval impairments. Furthermore, relatively unimpaired conceptual processing can ameliorate the influence of lexical impairments on verb-retrieval impairments. These findings are consistent with models in which conceptual representations play a key role in language processing and may be leveraged to improve verb retrieval in adults with chronic aphasia.

scholarly journals Talking About the Non-Literal: Internal States and Explanations in Child-Constructed Narratives

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edy Veneziano
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Narrative Skills ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
Internal States ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Children's Attention ◽  
Evaluative Instrument ◽  
Children's Stories

Abstract Non-literal language most often permeates interesting and informative narratives. These are the non-perceptible, inferential aspects of a story, such as the explanation of events, the attribution of internal, particularly mental, states to the characters of the story, or the evaluation of events by the participants and/or the narrator. The main aim of this paper is to examine whether non-literal uses can be promoted in 7-year-old French-speaking children’s narratives through the use of a short conversational intervention (SCI) which focuses the children’s attention on the causes of events. The results show that, after the SCI, the expression of non-literal aspects, even higher-order ones, may make their appearance or significantly increase in children’s stories. The reasons for the effectiveness of the SCI in the promotion of non-literal uses of language and narrative skills in general, as well as the importance of using the SCI as an evaluative instrument, are discussed.

Hypocrisy and Consequentialism

Utilitas ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eldon Soifer ◽  
Béla Szabados
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Long Term Consequences ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Do So

Consequentialism has trouble explaining why hypocrisy is a term of moral condem-nation, largely because hypocrites often try to deceive others about their own selfishness through the useof words or deeds which themselves have good consequences. We argue that consequentialist attempts to deal with the problem by separating the evaluation of agent and action, or by the directevaluation of dispositions, or by focusing on long-term consequences such as reliability and erosion of trust, all prove inadequate to the challenge. We go on to argue, however, that a version of consequentialism which values the fulfilment of desires, rather than mental states, is able to explain why hypocrisy is generally wrong, and indeed can do so better than its Kantian rivals.

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