When is ostensive communication used for joint action?

Joint actions typically require that information relevant for performing a task together is available to the interaction partners. In some situations, such information is perceptually retrievable and salient enough for co-actors to simply use it. In other situations, the relevant information needs to be actively shared among co-actors, e.g., by making it more perceptually salient or indicating it by means of a conventional signal. Here we consider a third case, where the information is not perceptually available and cannot be communicated by conventional means. How do joint action partners coordinate in such situations? We propose that co-actors resort to ostensive communication, that is, they draw attention to the fact that they intend to communicate some specific information. Two experiments tested the proposed role of ostensive communication for joint action. In a non-verbal joint building task, the category membership of different objects was known to only one person in a dyad, who needed to inform the partner which object type to use. In line with our hypothesis, most participants highlighted a particular object category with an ostensive gesture (characterized by containing more submovements than a natural placing movement) to resolve perceptual ambiguity. We conclude that ostensive communication is especially useful for joint action in situations where task-relevant information is not available to all co-actors and where it cannot be perceptually highlighted or conventionally communicated.

Experimental evidence for the gaze-signaling hypothesis: White sclera enhances the visibility of eye gaze direction in humans and chimpanzees

Hallmark social activities of humans, such as cooperation and cultural learning, involve eye-gaze signaling through joint attentional interaction and ostensive communication. The gaze-signaling and related cooperative-eye hypotheses posit that humans evolved unique external eye morphology, including exposed white sclera (the white of the eye), to enhance the visibility of eye-gaze for conspecifics. However, experimental evidence is still lacking. This study tested the ability of human and chimpanzee participants to detect the eye-gaze directions of human and chimpanzee images in computerized tasks. We varied the level of brightness and size in the stimulus images to examine the robustness of the eye-gaze directional signal against visually challenging conditions. We found that both humans and chimpanzees detected gaze directions of the human eye better than that of the chimpanzee eye, particularly when eye stimuli were darker and smaller. Also, participants of both species detected gaze direction of the chimpanzee eye better when its color was inverted compared to when its color was normal; namely, when the chimpanzee eye has artificial white sclera. White sclera thus enhances the visibility of eye-gaze direction even across species, particularly in visually challenging conditions. Our findings supported but also critically updated the central premises of the gaze-signaling hypothesis.

From social contingency to verbal reference: a constructivist hypothesis.

In the first year of life, infants’ word learning is slow, laborious, and requires long, repeated exposure to word-referent co-occurrences. In contrast, by 14-18 months, infants learn words from just a few labeling events, use joint attention and eye-gaze to decipher word meaning, and begin to use speech to communicate about absent things. We propose that this remarkable advancement in word learning results from attaining verbal reference–a property of words (or other signals) that are linked to mental representations and used intentionally to communicate about real-world referents. We argue that verbal reference is supported by co-developing conceptual, social, representational, and statistical learning capacities. We also propose that infants’ recognition of this tri-directional link between words, referents, and mental representations is fueled by their experience participating in and observing socially contingent interactions. Verbal reference signals a qualitative shift in infants’ word learning. This shift enables infants to bootstrap word meanings from syntax and semantics, learn novel words and facts from non-ostensive communication, and even make inferences about speakers’ epistemic competence based on their language production. In this paper, we review empirical findings across multiple facets of infant cognition, propose a novel developmental theory of verbal reference, and reconcile a long-standing debate on the mechanisms of early word learning. Finally, we propose new directions of empirical research that may provide stronger and more direct evidence for our theory and contribute to our understanding of the development of verbal reference and language-mediated learning in infancy and beyond.

Intention and Goal-Conciliation

I analyze in this study potentialities of modeling communicative interactions assuming one can conceive processes of ostensive communication as converting practical intentions into informative and communicative intentions. So, one can only achieve collaboratively a practical intention through the recognition the speaker intends to make mutually manifest or more manifest certain set of assumptions by overtly or communicative ostensible stimuli. Firstly, I present the goal-conciliation abductive-deductive architecture in the case of self-conciliation, then I discuss a case of collaborative heteroconciliation, and finally, I draw some considerations about intention in the light of an approach to communication as a proactive agency.

Chinua Achebe’s Girls at War and other Stories: A Relevance-Theoretical Interpretation

Relevance Theory (RT), which is a theory that takes the Gricean approach to communication as a starting point of linguistic or literary analysis, is an influential theory in Pragmatics that was developed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson (1986, 1995). As a cognitive theory of meaning (which claims that semantic meaning is the result of linguistic decoding processes, whereas pragmatic meaning is the result of inferential processes constrained by one single principle, Principle of Relevance), its main assumption is that human beings are endowed with a biologically rooted ability to maximize the relevance of incoming stimuli. RT unifies the Gricean cooperative principle and his maxims into a single principle of relevance that motivates the hearer’s inferential strategy. Based on the classic code model of communication and Grice’s inferential model, RT holds that ‘every act of ostensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance’. Literary texts which present us with a useful depth of written data that serve as repositions of language in use can be analyzed linguistically. This is because writers use language in a particular way in their works to reveal their concerns. A literary work, just like the spoken language, contains information that enables the reader or hearer to get the intended message. The use of language is therefore not mode specific. It can be in a text or can be spoken, and either mode can portray the practices, values and aspirations of a particular speech community. With the analysis of Achebe’s Girls at War and Other Stories in the frame of RT, this paper shows that literary text communication ‘communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance’. The deployment of the relevance theory in the interpretation of Achebe’s Girls at War and Other Stories will certainly yield new insights in the understanding of the language and literary elements of the works. Chinua Achebe is regarded as the father of African modern literature.His works are being read in many schools and universities. It is therefore important to open new doors of interpretation for a better understanding of these works.

Introduction

After initial remarks on the relations between literature, language, and communication, the Introduction outlines the main assumptions of relevance theory, explaining the distinctions between coded and ‘ostensive’ communication, between ‘meaning’ and ‘import’, and between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’. It considers the role of relevance and inference in comprehension; discusses how implicatures are derived in context and why words are not always used to convey their literal meanings; reflects on the nature of metaphor and irony, and examines the relation between processing effort, rhetoric, and style. It then turns to ways in which a relevance theory approach might question the tenets of modern literary theory (the ‘death of the author’, scepticism about intentions), to issues of historical and contextual interpretation, and to the notion of ‘intertextuality’. Finally, it reviews a range of evidence widely taken to support an ‘embodied’ conception of cognition, language, and communication which seems particularly well-adapted to literary studies.

Cognitive Pragmatics and Multi-layered Communication

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.