The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Giovanni Pezzulo
Date: Wednesday, Jan 30, 2013 - 17:00 - 18:30
Location: Department of Cognitive Science, CEU, Frankel Leó út 30-34., Room G15
Sensorimotor communication: a theory of signaling in online social interactions
Giovanni Pezzulo, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome
Abstract:
The study of human communication has principally focused on
language use, gesture, and deictics. In online social interactions
these forms of communication are complemented by another kind of
(sensorimotor) communication: signaling. For example, while we are
together a table together, I can push it in a certain direction to
signal you where I want it to be placed. Other examples of signaling
are over-articulating words in noisy environments and over-emphasizing
vowels in child-directed speech. In all these examples, humans
intentionally modify their action kinematics to make their goals
easier to recognize. We present a formal theory that describes
signaling as a combination of a pragmatic and a communicative action
(say, push table to move it and push table to inform you), and
explains how it simplifies coordination in online social interactions.
According to the theory, signaling requires solving a trade-off
between the costs of modifying one's behavior and the benets in terms
of interaction success. Signaling is thus an intentional strategy; it
acts in concert with automatic mechanisms of resonance, prediction,
and imitation, especially when the context makes actions and
intentions ambiguous and difficult to read. The study of signaling
provides an excellent opportunity to understand the adaptive (and
evolutionary) value of communication in terms of coordination and
interaction success.
We're looking forward to see you there (Frankel Leo u. 30-34) !