Unknown

Dataset Information

0

People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication.


ABSTRACT: Humans often communicate using body movements like winks, waves, and nods. However, it is unclear how we identify when someone's physical actions are communicative. Given people's propensity to interpret each other's behavior as aimed to produce changes in the world, we hypothesize that people expect communicative actions to efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal. Using computational models of goal inference, we predict that movements that are unlikely to be produced when acting towards the world and, in particular, repetitive ought to be seen as communicative. We find support for our account across a variety of paradigms, including graded acceptability tasks, forced-choice tasks, indirect prompts, and open-ended explanation tasks, in both market-integrated and non-market-integrated communities. Our work shows that the recognition of communicative action is grounded in an inferential process that stems from fundamental computations shared across different forms of action interpretation.

SUBMITTER: Royka A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9293910 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

altmetric image

Publications

People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication.

Royka Amanda A   Chen Annie A   Aboody Rosie R   Huanca Tomas T   Jara-Ettinger Julian J  

Nature communications 20220718 1


Humans often communicate using body movements like winks, waves, and nods. However, it is unclear how we identify when someone's physical actions are communicative. Given people's propensity to interpret each other's behavior as aimed to produce changes in the world, we hypothesize that people expect communicative actions to efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal. Using computational models of goal inference, we predict that movements that are unlikely to be produced when acting towa  ...[more]

Similar Datasets

| S-EPMC10473367 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC11865554 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10873161 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC11365306 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC9949884 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC11210802 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC4751524 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC10280508 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC3493486 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC7319592 | biostudies-literature