Is a naturalistic theory of communication possible?

This article presents a theoretical discussion of the relationship between language and communication. I discuss Chomsky’s position on this topic. Chomsky claims that if it is possible to construct a scientific theory of the language faculty, there is no possibility to construct a scientific theory of communication because in communication human intentionality is involved. This position is contrasted by philosophers of language considering that communication is to be studied as a form of rational action. I maintain that both these positions are not supported by the evidence coming from developmental research. Taking a cognitive point of view I contend that a communicative faculty can be defined that develops since infancy to adulthood, which has features independent of language and action. Different steps in the development of the communicative ability are linked to a parallel development of the theory of mind. I then argue in favor of a distinction between collective action and communication considering that while collective action is common to human and nonhuman primates, communication is typically human.     

Semantic minimalism and the “miracle of communication”

According to semantic minimalism, context-invariant minimal semantic propositions play an essential role in linguistic communication. This claim is key to minimalists’ argument against semantic contextualism: if there were no such minimal semantic propositions, and semantic content varied widely with shifts in context, then it would be “miraculous” if communication were ever to occur. This paper offers a critical examination of the minimalist account of communication, focusing on a series of examples where communication occurs without a minimal semantic proposition shared between speaker and hearer. The only way for minimalists to respond to these examples is by restricting the scope of their account to intra-lingual communication. It can then be shown (1) that the minimalist’s notion of a language shrinks to a point, such that practically no instances of communication will fall under that account, and (2) that the retreat to intra-lingual communication is in any case self-defeating, since the only way for minimalists to account for the individuation of languages is by resort to precisely the kinds of contextual considerations they abjured in the first place. In short, if, as minimalists allege, contextualism founders because it renders communication contingent on speaker and hearer sharing a context, it can now be seen that minimalism faces a parallel problem because it renders communication contingent on speaker and hearer sharing a language. I end by arguing that the possibility of communication cannot, as minimalists assume, be grounded in shared semantic conventions; rather, successful communication must precede the establishment of any particular set of semantic conventions.     

How are stereotypes maintained through communication? The influence of stereotype sharedness

Recent research has suggested that interpersonal communication may be an important source of stereotype maintenance. When communicated through a chain of people, stereotype-relevant information tends to become more stereotypical, thus confirming the stereotypes held by recipients of communication. However, the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon have yet to be fully determined. This article examines how the socially shared nature of stereotypes interacts with communication processes to maintain stereotypes in communication chains. In 3 experiments, participants communicated a stereotype-relevant story through 4-person chains using the method of serial reproduction. Manipulations included the extent to which communicators believed their audience and other community members shared and endorsed their stereotypes, and also the extent to which they actually shared the stereotypes. The shared nature of stereotypes was found to be a strong contributor to rendering the story more stereotypical in communication. This is discussed in relation to the maintenance of stereotypes through communication.     

What is interdisciplinary communication? Reflections on the very idea of disciplinary integration

In this paper I attempt to answer the question: What is interdisciplinary communication? I attempt to answer this question, rather than what some might consider the ontologically prior question—what is interdisciplinarity (ID)?—for two reasons: (1) there is no generally agreed-upon definition of ID; and (2) one’s views regarding interdisciplinary communication have a normative relationship with one’s other views of ID, including one’s views of its very essence. I support these claims with reference to the growing literature on ID, which has a marked tendency to favor the idea that interdisciplinary communication entails some kind of ‘integration’. The literature on ID does not yet include very many philosophers, but we have something valuable to offer in addressing the question of interdisciplinary communication. Playing somewhat fast-and-loose with traditional categories of the subdisciplines of philosophy, I group some philosophers—mostly from the philosophy of science, social–political philosophy, and moral theory—and some non-philosophers together to provide three different, but related, answers to the question of interdisciplinary communication. The groups are as follows: (1) Habermas–Klein, (2) Kuhn–MacIntyre, and (3) Bataille–Lyotard. These groups can also be thought of in terms of the types of answers they give to the question of interdisciplinary communication, especially in terms of the following key words (where the numbers correspond to the groups from the previous sentence): (1) consensus, (2) incommensurability, and (3) invention.     

Collaborative mother–toddler communication and theory of mind development at age 4

Focusing on social pragmatics, this longitudinal study investigated the contribution of mother–toddler collaborative communication to theory of mind (ToM) development at age 4. At age 2½, 78 toddlers (42 boys) and their mothers were observed during pretend play. At age 4, children were tested using 4 false belief understanding tasks. Both mothers and toddlers engaged in more collaborative (inform, guide/request, and support/confirm) than non-collaborative communication acts. Other-focused collaborative acts of support/confirm by mothers and toddlers predicted children's false belief understanding, even after controlling for 5 covariates. In addition, as active agents in their own ToM development, the contribution of toddlers' collaborative acts to false belief understanding was independent of their mother's. Finally, the way toddlers and their mothers co-constructed their communication mattered. Only when toddlers engaged in high levels of collaborative acts, the mothers' high levels of collaborative acts demonstrated a positive effect on children's ToM development. The applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Perception of individuality in bat vocal communication: discrimination between, or recognition of, interaction partners?

Different cognitive processes underlying voice identity perception in humans may have precursors in mammals. A perception of vocal signatures may govern individualised interactions in bats, which comprise species living in complex social structures and are nocturnal, fast-moving mammals. This paper investigates to what extent bats recognise, and discriminate between, individual voices and discusses acoustic features relevant for accomplishing these tasks. In spontaneous presentation and habituation–dishabituation experiments, we investigated how Megaderma lyra perceives and evaluates stimuli consisting of contact call series with individual-specific signatures from either social partners or unknown individuals. Spontaneous presentations of contact call stimuli from social partners or unknown individuals elicited strong, but comparable reactions. In the habituation–dishabituation experiments, bats dishabituated significantly to any new stimulus. However, reactions were less pronounced to a novel stimulus from the bat used for habituation than to stimuli from other bats, irrespective of familiarity, which provides evidence for identity discrimination. A model separately assessing the dissimilarity of stimuli in syllable frequencies, syllable durations and inter-call intervals relative to learned memory templates accounted for the behaviour of the bats. With respect to identity recognition, the spontaneous presentation experiments were not conclusive. However, the habituation–dishabituation experiments suggested that the bats recognised voices of social partners as the reaction to a re-habituation stimulus differed after a dishabituation stimulus from a social partner and an unknown bat.     

Effects of communication apprehension,familiarity of partner,and topic on selected “women's language” features

In keeping with Lakoff's (1975) notion that the use of women's language (WL) conveys uncertainty on the part of the speaker, the influence of communication apprehension, familiarity of partner, and topic on the use of selected WL forms was investigated. In dyadic conversation with a female friend or stranger, 71 female university students, who had completed the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension—Long, discussed a familiar or an unfamiliar topic. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that (1) communication apprehension was positively related to the use of question intonation, (2) familiarity of topic and partner were negatively related to the use of hedges, and (3) familiarity of topic was positively related to the use of intensifiers. There were no intercorrelations of the linguistic forms. These results challenge the notion that WL forms actually cohere to form a kind of language and suggest that the influence of social and psychological variables on the use of WL is much more complex and multifaceted than Lakoff believed.This article is based on portions of an Honour's thesis completed by the second author, and was presented at the Annual Convention of the Canadian Psychological Association held in Ottawa, Ontario, June 1990.     

On knowing one's patient inside out: The aesthetics of unconscious communication∗1

“Knowing one's patient inside out” is a metaphor that is intended to capture the paradoxical quality of the intersubjective field that we call the analytic relationship. The interface among trauma, dissociation, and regression is discussed in the context of unconscious communication as a transferential enactment of unsymbolized experience.The view is offered that for certain patients in particular, past experience is not so much unconscious as “frozen in time” and that a key element of the psychoanalytic relationship is bridging dissociated aspects of self through the creation of a dyadic experiential field that is both “inside” and “outside.” The writings of Michael Balint, D. W. Winnicott, and several other British object relational theorists are explored in the context of a contemporary interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective.     

Behavioural problems in deaf children: Theory of mind delay or communication failure?

Some authors have tried to explain the relatively frequent behavioural problems in deaf children by an impaired theory of mind development: a poor appraisal of other people's beliefs and desires. Recent studies suggest that this explanation is too simplistic. When deaf children were asked to explain other people's emotional reactions, Rieffe and Meerum Terwogt (2000 Rieffe, C and Meerum Terwogt, M. 2000. Deaf children's understanding of emotions: desires take precedence. Journal of Child Psychology, Psychiatry and allied Disciplines, 41: 601–608. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) found that they were no worse at giving mental state references than hearing controls. However, the content of these references differed between the two groups: deaf children made more desire attributions and fewer belief attributions than the hearing children. It is important to note that desires are strongly linked with the outcome of a situation, whereas beliefs are often necessary to understand the process that preceded this outcome.

A follow-up study showed, as expected, that when both groups were offered stories about disappointing situations, deaf children reacted primarily with outcome-dependent emotions and explained these emotions accordingly. Their neglect of the preceding process implied also a neglect for the causal factors, unlike their hearing peers, who frequently referred to process-relevant elements. Nearly all deaf children in these studies had hearing parents. It is known that the conversations between hearing parents and their deaf children are impaired due to a language gap: parents often fail to explain their decisions and they only communicate the eventual outcome. Their deaf children seem to react in a similar way: they limit their focus and communication to their own wishes.

If this type of communication pattern becomes common practice, one can easily see why deaf children are frequently labelled as stubborn and obstinate. In time, as we showed in another study, our deaf participants even failed to reproduce the reasons for an undesirable decision that was explicitly explained to them. Inadequate communication, delayed emotional competence and low self-esteem (by losing their grasp on the situation) form a dangerous triad that could easily have long-term effects.     

The role of pupil size in communication. Is there room for learning?

The eyes are extremely important for communication. The muscles around the eyes express emotional states and the size of the pupil signals whether a person is aroused and alert or bored and fatigued. Pupil size is an overlooked social signal, yet is readily picked up by observers. Observers mirror their own pupil sizes in response, which can influence social impressions. In a landmark study by Hess [1975. The role of pupil size in communication. Scientific American, 233(5), 110–119] it was shown that individuals with large pupils are perceived more positively than individuals with small pupils. In that behavioral study, participants were asked to draw pupils in line drawings of faces with empty irises and they drew large pupils in the happy face, and small ones in the angry face. The current study tested 579 participants (aged 4–80 years old) and extended this work by showing that this association between large (small) pupils and a positive (negative) impression develops over age and is absent in children. Several explanations for how individuals through interactions with close others learn that large pupils mean care, interest and attention and small pupils the opposite, are discussed. To conclude, this study shows that pupil size and emotion perception are intertwined but that their relationship develops over age.     

Do dogs get the point? A review of dog–human communication ability

In recent years evidence has accumulated demonstrating that dogs are, to a degree, skilful in using human forms of communication, making them stand out in the animal kingdom. Neither man's closest relative, the chimpanzee, nor dog's closest living relative, the wolf, can use human communication as flexibly as the domestic dog. This has led to the hypothesis that dogs’ skills in this domain may be a result of selection pressures during domestication, which have shaped dogs’ skills tremendously. One hypothesis, the so-called by-product hypothesis, suggests that dogs have been selected against fear and aggression and as a by-product this paved the way for the evolution of generally more flexible social cognitive skills, which surpassed those of their ancestor, the wolf. Another hypothesis, the adaptation hypothesis, has claimed that dogs may have been specifically selected for certain tasks for which using human forms of communication was necessary. As of yet, the mechanism underlying dogs’ understanding of human forms of communication is not fully understood. We argue here that understanding the mechanism involved will also shed light on possible evolutionary scenarios. We argue that the evidence to date suggests that dogs’ understanding of human forms of communication may be more specialized than was predicted by some and may be best explained as the result of a special adaptation of dogs to the specific activities humans have used them for.     

How can studies of information consumers be used to improve the educational communication system?

What do more than, two decades of studies of education information consumers tell us that might be helpful for developing an information system that would be more responsive to consumer needs and more compatible with their information search and use behavior? The essence of the answer is that information and communication behavior, in the aggregate, is extremely complex and multiply determined. However, research suggests that the information market can be segmented into submarkets, that there are several modal “information styles” for each submarket, and that perhaps the most promising strategies for improving systemwide effectiveness would, be to focus more attention on improving the performance of information brokers and intermediaries, and the performance of the print-prone gate keepers in the various types of organizations that use educational information.     

Differences in male and female patterns of communication in groups: A methodological artifact?

This study investigated communication patterns in an all-male, all-female, and mixed-sex group. All participants were white and middle class. These groups met for longer periods of time than those in most previous studies that reported differences between men and women in task and maintenance communication patterns. Most previous research investigations were based on groups that met for an hour or less and used unacquainted undergraduates. In this study, no significant differences were found in seven categories of verbal input. While there were no significant differences, the typical pattern reported in the literature was present in the first 30–60 minutes of the groups. After that time period, no consistent patterns were noted, and stereotypic sex differences vanished. This has led the authors to tentatively conclude that the findings of previous research may be due to the limited time period used in most investigations. Men and women did not differ on task and maintenance input, or other categories of verbal input, in groups meeting for 4 1/2 hours or 6 hours.     

Does a moderate dose of alcohol reinforce feelings of pleasure, well-being, happiness and joy? A brief communication

An experiment tested whether a moderate dose of alcohol reinforces some predrinking emotional states. Subjects were assigned to an Alcohol, a Placebo, or a Control group and mood states were manipulated in a positive and a negative direction. An alcohol dose of 1.0 ml of 100% alcohol/kg body weight did not significantly affect feelings of pleasure, well-being, happiness, and joy, so it was concluded that the present dose of alcohol does not per se reinforce the predrinking emotional state and does not significantly reduce unpleasant feelings. Under the present conditions, alcohol is a weak transformer of the studied emotions. Implications with respect to factors in the setting are indicated.     

Classroom goal structures and communication style: the role of teacher immediacy and relevance-making in students’ perceptions of the classroom

Social Psychology of Education - We examined the relationships between teachers’ communication styles and students’ perceptions of the classroom goal structure. Within the context of...     

Attributing the sources of accuracy in unequal-power dyadic communication: Who is better and why?

A study was conducted to assess accuracy of deliberate nonverbal communication of affective messages between individuals assigned to different power roles within dyads. In phase 1, participants (N = 158) were assigned to unequal- or to equal-power roles and asked to send positive, negative, and neutral messages to their partner using nonverbal cues while the partner guessed which kind of message it was. In phase 2, naïve decoders (N = 294) made judgments of the videotapes from phase 1 to resolve the confounding of sender and decoder factors in the within-dyad communication paradigm. Results showed that subordinates were more accurate at decoding superiors than vice versa, and that this difference was due to subordinates sending less clear messages to superiors than superiors sent to subordinates. Comparison with the equal-power group’s expressions revealed that the subordinates’ expressions were also less clear than those sent by the equal-power group.     

The noosphere vision of pierre teilhard de chardin and Vladimir I. Vernadsky in the perspective of information and of world‐wide communication 1

The noosphere vision of the two great natural scientists and thinkers Teilhard de Chardin and V. 1. Vernadsky is presented critically. Their basic ideas are discussed from the viewpoint of present‐day insights in natural science and of the world‐wide information and communication technology. To date very little has become known about their mutual influence on each other. It is advocated that the development of a noosphere can be supported by the networking and globalization of information and communication techniques. The noosphere is a sphere of human mind and of work, but it must not be identified with the modern technological trend that is changing all sectors of our life. A reference is made to Teilhard de Chardin's warnings against individualism, nationalism and racism, as well as fascism and Stalinism as seductive erroneous developments. The fundamentally teleological vision of T. de Chardin is contrasted in this paper with the idea of creativity in nature and in man. Delimiting conditions, such as structure, information, and at the level of society, the free will of man who has become aware of himself—humanistic values, are considered. All of them operate to limit the number of possibilities for development that are derived from the creativity of nature and man. Thus, new possibilities for development emerge at a higher level. The utilization of technology must be really oriented to human beings among human beings. Only with a strong internal determination of the social processes by understanding the genuine existence of man as man will it be possible to master the ambivalence of the technological effects and to come closer towards a society with deepened human information and communication.

Klaus Fuchs‐Kittowski, born in 1934, is Professor of Informationprocessing. He was head of the Division of Systems Design and Automated Information Processing at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. He was associated with the research at the International Institute for Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. At present he works as Visiting Professor at the Department of Informatics of the University of Hamburg, and at the Beriin College of Technology and Economics he has a teaching assignment in Economy Informatics. He is also an associated member of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A.

Peter Krüger, born in 1934, Dr. rer nat, Dipl. Mineraloge worked at the Bergakademie Freiberg/Sachsen from 1958 to 1961 and from 1961 to 1985 in the Central Geological Institute Berlin. From 1985 to 1992 he worked as historian of science at the Division of History of Science at the Department of Theory and Organization of Science of Humboldt University Berlin. His special fields are history of geology, Russian‐German scientific connections in the 19th and 20th century and unpublished studies of Marx about geology, mineralogy and agrochemistry.     

Day-level transformational leadership and followers’ daily level of stress: a moderated mediation model of team cooperation,role conflict,and type of communication

This study contributes to the literature on leadership by linking day-level transformational leadership behaviour with employees’ daily level of stress. A first-stage moderated mediation framework consisting of team cooperation, role conflict, and type of daily communication is introduced to specify how and when leaders’ transformational behaviour is related to followers’ daily stress. Two hundred five participants took part in a diary study over five consecutive working days and provided information on their leaders’ transformational behaviour, team cooperation, role conflict, type of communication with supervisors, as well as information on their daily level of stress. Results show that transformational leader behaviour is significantly related to followers’ level of stress on a day-to-day basis. This relationship is mediated by team cooperation, but not by role conflict. The type of communication moderates this mediation framework. If only indirect means of communication are used, the negative indirect relation between transformational leader behaviour via team cooperation on daily stress is strengthened. The results are discussed in the context of leadership literature, and the implications for future research as well as practice are presented.