Gabriella Airenti

Conversation and Behavior Games in the Pragmatics of Dialogue

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) speakers 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 actors 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.

The development of joke and irony understanding: a study with 3- to 6-year-old children.

Previous research suggests that comprehending ironic utterances is a relatively late-developing skill, emerging around 5-6 years of age. This study investigated whether younger children might show an earlier understanding when ironic utterances are performed in familiar communicative situations, and investigated the relationships among irony comprehension, language, and theory of mind (ToM) abilities. A group of 100 children aged 3.0-6.5 years was presented with 4 types of puppet scenarios depicting different communicative interactions: control, joke, contingent irony and background irony stories. Results suggested that (a) even younger children easily understand jokes, and may sometimes understand ironies; (b) childrens comprehension of irony continues to develop across early childhood; and (c) receptive vocabulary scores had simultaneous effects on irony comprehension and ToM performance.

The Cognitive Bases of Anthropomorphism: From Relatedness to Empathy

Humans may react very differently with respect to mechanical devices, including robots. They can interact with them with delight or retreat in aversion or fear. According to the famous model of the uncanny valley these opposite reactions depend on the degree of familiarity that different artifacts engender in humans. The aim of my work is trying to find out the cognitive bases of familiarity, analyzing the origin of anthropomorphic projection, namely human disposition to attribute anthropomorphic features - like intentions or feelings—to artifacts. I shall discuss two concepts: relatedness and empathy, and argue that relatedness is the precondition for empathy. The fact that it is possible to attribute anthropomorphic features virtually to any object shows that resemblance is not the point. Anthropomorphism is a kind of relation that humans establish with an artifact, and in order to comprehend this phenomenon we have to focus on the relational aspect. I shall argue that what we call anthropomorphism is an extension to nonhumans of forms of interactions typical of human communication, i.e. the attribution to an artifact of the position of interlocutor in a possible dialogue. It can be shown that attributing to an artifact the position of interlocutor in a dialogue implies dealing with it as if it were endowed of the features characterizing human mind, i.e. mental states and emotions.

Is a naturalistic theory of communication possible

This article presents a theoretical discussion of the relationship between language and communication. I discuss Chomskys position on this topic. Chomsky claims that if it is possible to construct a scientific theory of the language faculty, there is no possibility to construct a scientific theory of communication because in communication human intentionality is involved. This position is contrasted by philosophers of language considering that communication is to be studied as a form of rational action. I maintain that both these positions are not supported by the evidence coming from developmental research. Taking a cognitive point of view I contend that a communicative faculty can be defined that develops since infancy to adulthood, which has features independent of language and action. Different steps in the development of the communicative ability are linked to a parallel development of the theory of mind. I then argue in favor of a distinction between collective action and communication considering that while collective action is common to human and nonhuman primates, communication is typically human.

Situation‐sensitive use of insincerity: Pathways to communication in young children

The present research focused on the development of childrens ability to spontaneously suspend sincerity or tell a lie according to different communicative contexts. The issue of sincerity in communication is rather complex since in everyday interactions sincerity is expected, while there are specific communicative acts where sincerity is not prescribed or even banished. This study investigated how children (N= 80, ranging in age from 3 to 6.5 years) handled communications involving insincerity: fantasy stories, lies, and politeness situations. The results showed that the ability to deal with insincerity emerges gradually during the preschool years with an increasing trend of difficulty, from fantasy to politeness situations, and a notable amount of variability not equally distributed among the tasks.

Theory of mind: a new perspective on the puzzle of belief ascription

The concept of theory of mind (ToM) has considerably changed since its first proposal. The aim of first human studies was to understand how young children acquire the representation of others’ mental states, in particular beliefs, and how they distinguish them from their own and from reality. The False Belief Task was designed to prove the acquisition of this capacity. According to children’s performance in this test the acquisition of ToM has been attested at around 4 years of age. In last years it has been shown that using spontaneous response tasks also 15-month-old-children could attribute to an agent a false belief about the location of an object. These results have generated the puzzle of belief-ascription: Why do 3-year-old children fail the classical false belief tasks whereas much younger children show the correct expectation in the spontaneous response tasks? In this paper I shall argue that (i) infants and young children, when confronted with the two forms of false belief tasks do not face the same problem and (ii) behind the two testing situations there are different ways to understand theory of mind. I shall propose that what appears in infants is the natural human disposition to intersubjectivity.

Editorial Context in Communication: a Cognitive view

Context is a controversial concept. Research in philosophy of language, linguistics and cognitive science has shown that the communicative content of an utterance is not limited to the conventional content of what is said. The notion of context has been introduced in semantics and has assumed a central role in language studies with the pragmatic turn that has shifted the focus from meaning to speakers meaning, a change of paradigm that can be traced back to Wittgensteins conception of In this framework pragmatics deals with the intentional aspects of language use. The notion of context is then no more restricted to the interpretation of indexicals and demonstratives (Kaplan, 1989). More generally, it applies to what is presupposed as common ground among the participants in a conversation (Stalnaker, 2002, 2014). From a cognitive perspective communication is an inferential process based on mental states and shared knowledge (Clark, 1996). What contributes to interpret a communicative act beyond the spoken words may, broadly speaking, be included. Intuitively, context is the background for comprehension, what makes communication possible. This is a critical point. In fact, context both is an inescapable concept in the study of communication and eludes univocal definition. There is no one context but many. In launching this Research Topic we did not expect to find a final definition or to have the last say. We were interested in singling out the present lines of research in this field. The papers we have collected attack the problem from different perspectives and using different research methodologies. The paper by Faber and León-Araúz is aimed at, if not final, a comprehensive and detailed definition of context. They propose a taxonomy based on scope: local, spanning typically five items before or after the term occurrence; and global, such as a whole text or all that goes beyond the text such as the communicative situation. They apply this distinction to syntax, semantics, and pragmatics even if, as they note, at this level the boundaries are fuzzy. The challenging enterprise of detailing what context is, becomes mandatory in formalizing specialized knowledge resources, but the results shed light on the structure of context in general language. On the way of clarifying what context constitutively is, García-Carpintero addresses Stalnakers notion of context as common ground, mentioned above, showing certain weaknesses. The Stalnakerian view of common ground as sets of propositions reveals unsatisfying in cases of expressions with rich illocutionary …

Playing with Expectations: A Contextual View of Humor Development.

In the developmental literature, the idea has been proposed that young children do not understand the specificity of non-literal communicative acts. In this article, I focus on young children’s ability to produce and understand different forms of humor. I explore the acquisition of the communicative contexts that enable children to engage in humorous interactions before they possess the capacity to analyze them in the terms afforded by a full-fledged theory of mind. I suggest that different forms of humor share several basic features and that we can construct a continuum from simple to sophisticated forms. In particular, I focus on teasing, a form of humor already present in preverbal infants that is also considered a typical feature of irony. I argue that all forms of humor can be regarded as a type of interaction that I propose to call “playing with expectations.”