15 Filogenesis, ontogenesis
Dingemanse Torreira Enfield 2013 Is ‘‘Huh’’ a Universal Word - Conversational infrastracture and the convergent evolution of Linguistic Items
Tomasello-Carpenter 2007 shared intentionality
http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/pdf/Publications_2007_PDF/Shared_intentionality_07.pdf
H. Clark social-actions, social commitments 06
http://www.cs.utep.edu/dynamics/clark-social-actions-06.pdf
Levinson 2006 On the human interactional engine
http://www.ilc.cnr.it/~lenci/Levinson-HumanInteractionEngine.pdf
Terrence W.Deacon. (1997). Symbolic origin. Ch. 12 in The_Symbolic_Species. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.
Bickerton, Derek. (1990). The Fossils of Language. Chapter 5, pp.105-129 in Language and Species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
“Shared intentionality” Michael Tomasello and Malinda Carpenter
RispondiEliminaWhen I first read the title of this week class, I honestly didn’t understand. I had to google it to understand first the headline of the class. phylogenetics, had number of definition in various fields. It basically meant to the study of evolutionary relationships, so for linguistic and communication it stood as a mean to explain relationships between languages. This evolution is a process whereby same group are altered over time and may split into separate branches.
As for Ontogeny, it’s defined as the history of structural change in a unity, the development of same group or unit. In sum (ontogeny) is matter of development, while (phylogeny)is the process of evolution.
So I decided to read “Shared intentionality”. It was a short reading that basically compared infants, babies, and 2 years old to chimpanzees to measure weather we and our closest primes are similar or evolved from the same point where we could share intentionality. The meant weather the subjects will decide to communicate just for the sake of communication, engamnet and sharing other than individualistic goal. And how collaboration can be activity aim is of individualistic goals or is for the sake of learning.
The reading attempted to address these point three experiments. The first experiment wa centered on “ gaze following and joint attention” was between infants and champamizes where chimpanzees do follow gaze but if it didn’t lead to anything that is of personal interest such as food, they will gaze away and they will not attempt to share attention with you. However, as the experiment describes human infants will gaze but also try to have a joint attention with another person even if no precise goal except that. The article defined joint attention when two people not only share a common view at the same time but they both know that they are experience this together.
The second experience focused on “social manipulation and cooperative communication”. Champanzies and children will try to gain your attention for manipulation attempts to get what they want, but it stops there for aps. They communicate to get individualistic goal. But in comparison to human infant of even 9 month it moves step forward where they also try to initial joint attention interactions where they could share information or experience that won’t gain them any tangible good.
Third experiment focused on “social learning and instructed learning. This was precisely interesting for me, since on modern discussion on how to motivate children to learn and build an active participatory the golden term “is to acknowledge that children learn through observing and collaboration”. On the other hand, the write share with us that chimpanzees’ social learning is actually fairly individualistic, whereas 1-year-old children often respond to instruction and imitate collaboratively, often with the motivation to communicate shared states with others.
Michael Tomasello and Malinda Carpenter
RispondiEliminaShared intentionality
Shared intentionality is the ability to engage with other in collaborative, cooperative activities with joint goals and intentions (Tomasello).
The above mentioned definition describes basically the biggest difference in behaviour between human infants and chimpanzees. Human infants collaborate and cooperate with their parents, relatives and whoever else because of the experience of sharing attention and interest, even when there is no benefit for themselves. Chimpanzees usually follows individual reasons, even if they are colleborating. They use to cooperate in order to achieve their individual goals more easily. The motives behind the communication are also different between the apes and humans. „Chimpanzees gesture in order to manipulate other.” Communication is a tool for them which offers a great instrument in order to get what they want from the others. Humans optimally use communication for helping eachother, inform the others or just for sharing experiences.
Differences in group activity
An interesting experimental study represents the differences between the forms of collaboration in the group of human infants and juvenile chimpanzees. 18 and 24 month old children and three juvenile chimpanzees were involved in the experiment. The children and the apes had to solve different tasks while an observer was coordinating their steps. After a while the observer just quitted acting. The children motivated and encouraged the observer to rejoin to the game and tried to convince him that they share the same goal. In contrary chimpanzees never tried to take an attempt in order to re-engage the observer, instead they tried to solve the tasks individually.
Herbert H. Clark - Social actions, social commitments
RispondiEliminaIn everyday life, all encounters with other human beings bring you in a position where social actions are undertaken. Whether it is the coordination of riding your bike through a city or sharing a meal; these activities, in which two or more actors are involved, require people to work with each other in joint action. For such actions, a joint commitment is needed in order to make it work. In this article there are several situations described, transcribed even, in order to indicate the implications of joint action and to show how there are different levels of acting (private and together like described in the first example between Ann and Burton who are putting together a TV stand).
Joint activities ordinarily can be partitioned into two activities: (1) a basic joint activity; putting together the TV stand. Adding to this first description, where only the actions are reported, there is (2) coordinating joint actions; the conversation that Ann and Burton had while performing these actions and we see that by their conversation they align their movements and synchronize their actions in order to plan their moves. In the first turn, Ann proposes that they attach the crosspiece, and in the second, Burton takes up her proposal and agrees to it. The two of them proceed this way throughout the TV stand assembly. They make agreement after agreement about which pieces to connect when, how to orient each piece, who is to hold, and who is to attach. A joint commitment is simply the sum of the participatory commitments of its participants.
No matter what the joint action, agreement must be reached, explicitly or implicitly, on at least five elements:
Participants: -> Who are to take part in the joint action?
Roles: -> In what roles?
Content: -> What actions are they to perform, or what positions are they to adopt?
Timing: -> When are the actions to take place, or the positions to be in effect?
Location: -> And where?
These five are called the joint elements and an agreement on these five must be made in order for a joint action to work out.
Most joint activities, as I noted earlier, consist of multiple layers of joint positions and actions. These layers vary in hierarchy and this hierarchy emerges bit by bit, as the actions follow each other during the action.
The author looked with these concepts of joint actions to the Milgram experiment that we have discussed a few weeks ago. Clark states that Milgram's experiment can be seen as two joint activities: the memory task (teacher vs learner in the experiment) and the psychology experiment (the overarching experimenter vs subjects). The subjects believed that the joint activity of interest was the memory task. But the real activity of interest was the psychology experiment: at what point would they opt out of it? The subject was not simply “told to carry out a series of acts.” He negotiated with the experimenter on almost every act and position he took. These negotiations were often prolonged and intense, shaping what the subject did. Moreover these negotiations were used to reduce the moral or emotional objections that the subjects might feel and voice; one subject spoke of his moral objections in a fairly stern way, but then apologized for wrecking the session and tried to negotiate a joint exit to the experiment. Despite everything, he took his joint commitments with the experimenter seriously and found a satisfactory way to discharge them.
Shared intentionality
RispondiEliminaMichael Tomasello and Malinda Carpenter
The most important aspect is that the authors note that the most basic form of human communication is mime and action point: these two simple actions differentiate us from the actions performed instinctively animals and humans served as a platform for creating more complex methods of language.
However, these two simple actions in principle, can have many meanings and not only within the context around them, because in many cases may be the exact same scenarios and mean different things.
That's when a number of tools to what might be called the "shared experience" of transmitter and receiver come into play: 1. Frames (in the context of Goffman) that each person has in their personal context 2. The background to share in your interpersonal relationship and 3. The degree of intimacy of the relationship between sender and receiver. In other words, these three aspects form the "common conceptual ground": 1. Cultural knowledge in common, 2. Joint attention and 3. Shared experience.
Now there is in this analysis, another important aspect of point and the importance of pro-social motivation: try to communicate because we are motivated by making connections, associations, relationships. We are interested in language and understand each other, because we are naturally motivated to make a connection, and it also differentiates us from animals.
Thus, communication between humans unlike animals, not by the level of intelligence, but because it is based on two fundamental premises mutually assumed: 1. Conceptual field and 2. Intention, attention and cooperative communicative motivation. This process evolved according to the authors over time, until it ceased to be an idea of utility between two to become a useful tool for group cohesion. In short, the idea of "us", the idea of sharing a common sense.