Date & Time: March 11th (Tue) 13:30-15:00
Place : 1FW-B
Speaker : Dr. Takashi Hashimoto
          School of Knowledge Science
          Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

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Title:
On formation of symbolic communication systems: Consideration with language evolution experiment and its cognitive simulations

Abstract:
From the viewpoint of complex systems, communication is not just a process of mutual understanding but a daily creative activity to produce novel information, knowledge, and meanings. In this talk, we illustrate that shared communication systems can be formed from scratch through interactions by designing a language evolution experiment utilizing a coordination game with symbolic message exchange. In the experiment, a pair of participants is placed randomly in one of four rooms which are arranged as a 2x2 configuration and are interconnected. The participants are unaware of partner's place, and try to meet at a room by one step movement horizontally or vertically or staying in the initial room. Symbolic messages composed of two meaningless figures are sent each other before movements, and other communication channel is prohibited. Thisprocedure is repeated certain period. Through the analysis of the participants' behaviors and performances of the game in the experiment, we show that three scaffolding stages exist in the process of formation of symbolic communication systems in which connotations (intentional meanings of messages) are communicated as well as denotations (referential meanings of symbols). The three stages are 1) building common ground (sub-symbolic pragmatics), 2) sharing a symbol system (semantics and syntax), and 3) forming a role division (pragmatics). At the third stage, communicating connotations is realized by arranging an appropriate turn-taking. This experiment was simulated using ACT-R, a cognitive architecture for simulating and understanding human cognition. The comparison among two models with different uses of memories and the results of human experiments suggests that role-reversal imitation is important for achieving shared communication systems.

Language: English
Host: Kawanabe (DBI)
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