Despite well-established results in survey methodology, many experimental philosophers have not asked whether and in what way conclusions about folk intuitions follow from people’s responses to their surveys. Rather, they appear to have proceeded on the assumption that intuitions can be simply read off from survey responses. Survey research, however, is fraught with difficulties. I review some of the relevant literature—particularly focusing on the conversational pragmatic aspects of survey research—and consider its application to common experimental philosophy surveys. I argue for (...) two claims. First, that experimental philosophers’ survey methodology leaves the facts about folk intuitions massively underdetermined; and second, that what has been regarded as evidence for the instability of philosophical intuitions is, at least in some cases, better accounted for in terms of subjects’ reactions to subtle pragmatic cues contained in the surveys. (shrink)

Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the (...) interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account. Key Words: common ground; dialogue; dialogue routines; language comprehension; language production; monitoring; perception-behavior link. (shrink)

Recent research indicates that interpersonal communication is noisy, and that people exhibit considerable insensitivity to problems in communication. Using a dyadic referential communication task, the goal of which is accurate information transfer, this study examined the extent to which interlocutors are sensitive to problems in communication and use other‐initiated repairs (OIRs) to address them. Participants were randomly assigned to dyads (N = 88 participants, or 44 dyads) and tried to communicate a series of recurring abstract geometric shapes to a partner (...) across a text–chat interface. Participants alternated between directing (describing shapes) and matching (interpreting shape descriptions) roles across 72 trials of the task. Replicating prior research, over repeated social interactions communication success improved and the shape descriptions became increasingly efficient. In addition, confidence in having successfully communicated the different shapes increased over trials. Importantly, matchers were less confident on trials in which communication was unsuccessful, communication success was lower on trials that contained an OIR compared to those that did not contain an OIR, and OIR trials were associated with lower Director Confidence. This pattern of results demonstrates that (a) interlocutors exhibit (a degree of) sensitivity to problems in communication, (b) they appropriately use OIRs to address problems in communication, and (c) OIRs signal problems in communication. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) mechanistic theory of dialogue attempts to detail the psychological processes involved in communication that are lacking in Clark's theory. By relying on automatic priming and alignment processes, however, the theory falters when it comes to explaining much of dialogic interaction. We argue for the inclusion of less automatic, though not completely conscious and deliberate, processes to explain such phenomena.

Perspective taking is a critical yet tangled construct that is used to describe a range of psychological processes and that is applied interchangeably with related constructs. The resulting ambiguity is particularly vexing in science education, where although perspective taking is recognized as critical to informed citizens’ ability to negotiate scientifically related societal issues, or socioscientific issues via socioscientific reasoning, the precise nature of perspective taking remains elusive. To operationalize perspective taking, a theoretical conceptual analysis was employed and used to position (...) perspective taking within the context of SSR. The resulting, more precise construct identified as socioscientific perspective taking requires engagement with others or their circumstances, an etic/emic shift in one’s viewpoint, and a moral context guided by conscience. (shrink)

The emergence of shared symbol systems is considered to be a pivotal moment in human evolution and human development. These changes are normally explained by reference to changes in people's internal cognitive processes. We present 2 experiments which provide evidence that changes in the external, collaborative processes that people use to communicate can also affect the structure and organization of symbol systems independently of cognitive change. We propose that mutual‐modifiability—opportunities for people to edit or manipulate each other's contributions—is a key (...) constraint on the emergence of complex symbol systems. We discuss the implications for models of language development and the origins of compositionality. (shrink)

When people are asked “Do you have the time?” they can answer in a variety of ways, such as “It is almost 3”, “Yeah, it is quarter past two”, or more precisely as in “It is now 1:43”. We present the results of four experiments that examined people’s real-life answers to questions about the time. Our hypothesis, following previous research findings, was that people strive to make their answers optimally relevant for the addressee, which in many cases allows people to (...) give rounded, and not exact, time responses. Moreover, analyses of the non-numeral words, hesitations, and latencies of people’s verbal responses to time questions reveal important insights into the dynamics of speaking to achieve optimal relevance. People include discourse markers, hesitation marks, like “uh” and “um”, and pauses when answering time questions to maximize the cognitive effects (e.g., a rounded answer is adequate) listeners can infer while minimizing the cognitive effort required to infer these effects. This research provides new empirical evidence on how relevance considerations shape collaborative language use. (shrink)

This study investigates interpersonal processes underlying dialog by comparing two approaches, interactive alignment and interpersonal synergy, and assesses how they predict collective performance in a joint task. While the interactive alignment approach highlights imitative patterns between interlocutors, the synergy approach points to structural organization at the level of the interaction—such as complementary patterns straddling speech turns and interlocutors. We develop a general, quantitative method to assess lexical, prosodic, and speech/pause patterns related to the two approaches and their impact on collective (...) performance in a corpus of task-oriented conversations. The results show statistical presence of patterns relevant for both approaches. However, synergetic aspects of dialog provide the best statistical predictors of collective performance and adding aspects of the alignment approach does not improve the model. This suggests that structural organization at the level of the interaction plays a crucial role in task-oriented conversations, possibly constraining and integrating processes related to alignment. (shrink)

A functional family is the basic condition for optimal social functioning of all its members. Through fulfilment of functions imposed by society, family creates a safe environment for survival and development of family members. Family functioning depends on functioning of family in different dimensions. One of the key dimensions is communication. Therefore, it is possible for a comprehensive look at the family as a social system neglected area of family communication. The aim of our study was to investigate how financial (...) income affects the communication in the family system. For assessing family communication, as one of the dimensions of family functioning was used the Family Assessment Device. The research sample consisted of 310 respondents living below the poverty line. The reference group consisted of 310 respondents living in families with income standard. The analysis of results show negative impact of low financial income on the family communication. Low-income families showed a higher degree of distortion in communication than the standard income families. Financial income of families affects the functioning of communication among its members. When working with families living below the poverty line, we need pay attention to the development of new communication patterns and promote a clear and direct communication between family members. (shrink)

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.