5 research outputs found
Experimental semiotics: a review
No full textIn the last few years a new line of research has appeared in the literature. This line ofresearch, which may be referred to as experimental semiotics (Galantucci, 2009; Galantucci& Garrod, 2010), focuses on the experimental investigation of novel forms of humancommunication. In this review we will (a) situate experimental semiotics (henceforth ES) inits conceptual context, (b) illustrate the main varieties of studies thus far conducted byexperimental semioticians, (c) illustrate three main themes of investigation which haveemerged within this line of research, and (d) consider implications of this work for cognitiveneuroscience
The use of content and timing to predict turn transitions
No full textFor addressees to respond in a timely fashion, they cannot simply process the speaker's utterance as it occurs and wait till it finishes. Instead, they predict both when the speaker will conclude and what linguistic forms will be used. While doing this, they must also prepare their own response. To explain this, we draw on the account proposed by Pickering and Garrod (2013a), in which addressees covertly imitate the speaker's utterance and use this to determine the intention that underlies their upcoming utterance. They use this intention to predict when and how the utterance will end, and also to drive their own production mechanisms for preparing their response. Following Arnal and Giraud (2012), we distinguish between mechanisms that predict timing and content. In particular, we propose that the timing mechanism relies on entrainment of low-frequency oscillations between speech envelope and brain. This constrains the context that feeds into the determination of the speaker's intention and hence the timing and form of the upcoming utterance. This approach typically leads to well-timed contributions, but also provides a mechanism for resolving conflicts, for example when there is unintended speaker overlap
Self-, other-, and joint monitoring using forward models
No full textIn the psychology of language, most accounts of self-monitoring assume that it is based on comprehension. Here we outline and develop the alternative account proposed by Pickering and Garrod (2013), in which speakers construct forward models of their upcoming utterances and compare them with the utterance as they produce them. We propose that speakers compute inverse models derived from the discrepancy (error) between the utterance and the predicted utterance and use that to modify their production command or (occasionally) begin anew. We then propose that comprehenders monitor other people’s speech by simulating their utterances using covert imitation and forward models, and then comparing those forward models with what they hear. They use the discrepancy to compute inverse models and modify their representation of the speaker’s production command, or realize that their representation is incorrect and may develop a new production command. We then discuss monitoring in dialogue, paying attention to sequential contributions, concurrent feedback, and the relationship between monitoring and alignment
Referential and visual cues to structural choice in visually situated sentence production
No full textWe investigated how conceptually informative (referent preview) and conceptually uninformative (pointer to referent’s location) visual cues affect structural choice during production of English transitive sentences. Cueing the Agent or the Patient prior to presenting the target-event reliably predicted the likelihood of selecting this referent as the sentential Subject, triggering, correspondingly, the choice between active and passive voice. Importantly, there was no difference in the magnitude of the general Cueing effect between the informative and uninformative cueing conditions, suggesting that attentionally driven structural selection relies on a direct automatic mapping mechanism from attentional focus to the Subject’s position in a sentence. This mechanism is, therefore, independent of accessing conceptual, and possibly lexical, information about the cued referent provided by referent preview
