The Influence of Shared Visual Context on the Successful Emergence of Conventions in a Referential Communication Task.
Artificial language
Convention
Language emergence
Language evolution
Referential communication
Shared context
Journal
Cognitive science
ISSN: 1551-6709
Titre abrégé: Cogn Sci
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 7708195
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
09 2019
09 2019
Historique:
received:
08
11
2018
revised:
27
06
2019
accepted:
01
08
2019
entrez:
19
9
2019
pubmed:
19
9
2019
medline:
2
10
2020
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Human communication is thoroughly context bound. We present two experiments investigating the importance of the shared context, that is, the amount of knowledge two interlocutors have in common, for the successful emergence and use of novel conventions. Using a referential communication task where black-and-white pictorial symbols are used to convey colors, pairs of participants build shared conventions peculiar to their dyad without experimenter feedback, relying purely on ostensive-inferential communication. Both experiments demonstrate that access to the visual context promotes more successful communication. Importantly, success improves cumulatively, supporting the view that pairs establish conventional ways of using the symbols to communicate. Furthermore, Experiment 2 suggests that dyads with access to the visual context successfully adapt the conventions built for one color space to another color space, unlike dyads lacking it. In linking experimental pragmatics with language evolution, the study illustrates the benefits of exploring the emergence of linguistic conventions using an ostensive-inferential model of communication.
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e12783Informations de copyright
© 2019 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society.
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