Adults are more efficient in creating and transmitting novel signalling systems than children

Iterated language learning experiments have shown that meaningful and structured signalling systems emerge when there is pressure for signals to be both learnable and expressive. Yet such experiments have mainly been conducted with adults using language-like signals. Here we explore whether structured signalling systems can also emerge when signalling domains are unfamiliar and when the learners are children with their well-attested cognitive and pragmatic limitations. In Experiment 1, we compared iterated learning of binary auditory sequences denoting small sets of meanings in chains of adults and 5-7-year old children. Signalling systems became more learnable even though iconicity and structure did not emerge despite applying a homonymy filter designed to keep the systems expressive. When the same types of signals were used in referential communication by adult and child dyads in Experiment 2, only the adults, but not the children, were able to negotiate shared iconic and structured signals. Referential communication using their native language by 4-5-year old children in Experiment 3 showed that only interaction with adults, but not with peers resulted in informative expressions. These findings suggest that emergence and transmission of communication systems is unlikely to be driven by children, and point to the importance of cognitive maturity and pragmatic expertise of learners as well as feedback-based scaffolding of communicative effectiveness by experts during language evolution

Lived Experiences during International Service Learning: A Semiotic Analysis of Photo Journals

International service learning (ISL) is a pedagogical approach used to prepare students to be global citizens and has emerged as a popular short-term program model for international experiences. Few studies of ISL have integrated semiotic photo analysis into their evaluations. Combining students’ photographs with text encourages reflection on knowledge and experiences as well as how they are related. The current study used semiotic analysis to understand the lived experiences of students on an ISL to Guatemala. The participatory nature of the research process was critical to the semiotic analysis, as the researchers had an understanding of the cultural perspectives and traditions that emerged in the images which could have been overlooked by a researcher without knowledge of the specific cultural context. Participants kept a photo journal of 10 images and associated narratives to depict their experiences on the ISL. Both semiotic and content analysis were conducted on each journal entry. Coding yielded nine themes: new perspectives, personal connections, impact of coffee, intercultural comparisons, reality of life in Guatemala, cultural values, impact of ISL, connection to photograph, and sense of place. Combining the semiotic and content analysis yielded concurrent meanings through narrative and visual reflections, which, when combined with the researchers’ participatory knowledge of the experience, informed future ISL projects for the research and teaching team. The combination of visual and narrative methods required students to think about what story they will tell about their experience, and brings new layers of meaning to the reflection process

Analysis of the co-design activity: influence of a mixed artifact and contribution of the gestural function in a spatial augmented reality environment

International audienceAugmented reality provides new possibilities to propose environments where the designers can take advantage of the physicality of the artifacts while keeping the versatility of digital environments. Mixed objects can therefore provide new media in the interactions between stakeholders. Besides, the increasing interest in user participation in early design phases is limited by the poor representations or the expensive mock ups to be provided in design meetings. Therefore, understanding the role of these mixed artifacts by analyzing and characterizing the interactions is crucial to the development of both design methods and environments. By focusing on multimodal interactions, we aim at providing new results in terms of the design process, in particular by studying the contribution of the gesture in collaborative product co-creativity sessions but also by understanding the role of these multiple interactions in an augmented reality environment

Great ape communication as contextual social inference: a computational modelling perspective

Human communication has been described as a contextual social inference process. Research into great ape communication has been inspired by this view to look for the evolutionary roots of the social, cognitive and interactional processes involved in human communication. This approach has been highly productive, yet it is partly compromised by the widespread focus on how great apes use and understand individual signals. This paper introduces a computational model that formalizes great ape communication as a multi-faceted social inference process that integrates (a) information contained in the signals that make up an utterance, (b) the relationship between communicative partners and (c) the social context. This model makes accurate qualitative and quantitative predictions about real-world communicative interactions between semi-wild-living chimpanzees. When enriched with a pragmatic reasoning process, the model explains repeatedly reported differences between humans and great apes in the interpretation of ambiguous signals (e.g. pointing or iconic gestures). This approach has direct implications for observational and experimental studies of great ape communication and provides a new tool for theorizing about the evolution of uniquely human communication. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Revisiting the human ‘interaction engine’: comparative approaches to social action coordination’

A Semiotic Framework to Understand How Signs in a Collective Design Task Convey Information: A Pilot Study of Design in an Open Crowd Context

A leading factor in reshaping boundaries between participatory design and co-creation is the power of crowd-sourcing; however crowd sourced design often produces less innovative results than smaller expert design teams. In design, representation plays a fundamental role whilst in crowd sourced design the collective interaction with representations is restricted. We propose more effective design in collective intelligence lies in the crowd’s ability to generate meaningful contributions via the content of shared representations. In order to investigate this, the current paper examines how meanings are generated through the use of visual representations. We introduce a semiotic framework to understand the mechanisms of how signs convey con-textual information in a collective design task, and illustrate the framework by applying it in an analysis of the signs used by the crowd engaging in an openly shared design task

Communicating content: development and evaluation of icons for academic document triage through visualisation and perception

This work seeks to identify key features and characteristics for the design of icons that can support the tasks of information seekers in academic document triage interfaces. Such icons are meant to act as visual links to the specific elements or sections in an academic document. We suggest that icons in triage interfaces are better able to communicate information, provide feedback and enable faster user interactions than text, particularly in mobile-based interfaces. Through investigation of visualisation and perception processes, we are able to propose five primary icon categories, the two most dominant being iconic and symbolic: iconic representations mostly apply to graphically and spatially distinct document elements (i.e. Title, Abstract, Tables and Figures), externalising the elements’ surface propositions. Symbolic representations are largely associated with elements of greater semantic value (Introduction, Conclusion, Full text and Author), drawing upon the elements’ deep propositions