63,380 research outputs found
Propagation of social representations
Based on a minimal formalism of social representations as a set of associated cognems, a simple model of propagation of representations is presented. Assuming that subjects share the constitutive cognems, the model proposes that mere focused attention on the set of cognems in the field of common conscience may replicate the pattern of representation from context into subjects, or, from subject to subject, through actualization by language, where cognems are represented by verbal signs. Limits of the model are discussed, and evolutionist perspectives are presented with the support of field data
Dynamics of organizational culture: Individual beliefs vs. social conformity
The complex nature of organizational culture challenges our ability to infers
its underlying dynamics from observational studies. Recent computational
studies have adopted a distinct different view, where plausible mechanisms are
proposed to describe a wide range of social phenomena, including the onset and
evolution of organizational culture. In this spirit, this work introduces an
empirically-grounded, agent-based model which relaxes a set of assumptions that
describes past work - (a) omittance of an individual's strive for achieving
cognitive coherence, (b) limited integration of important contextual factors -
by utilizing networks of beliefs and incorporating social rank into the
dynamics. As a result, we illustrate that: (i) an organization may appear to be
increasingly coherent in terms of organizational culture, yet be composed of
individuals with reduced levels of coherence, (ii) the components of social
conformity - peer-pressure and social rank - are influential at different
aggregation levels.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figure
Cultural selection drives the evolution of human communication systems
Human communication systems evolve culturally, but the evolutionary mechanisms that drive this evolution are not well understood. Against a baseline that communication variants spread in a population following neutral evolutionary dynamics (also known as drift models), we tested the role of two cultural selection models: coordination- and content-biased. We constructed a parametrized mixed probabilistic model of the spread of communicative variants in four 8-person laboratory micro-societies engaged in a simple communication game. We found that selectionist models, working in combination, explain the majority of the empirical data. The best-fitting parameter setting includes an egocentric bias and a content bias, suggesting that participants retained their own previously used communicative variants unless they encountered a superior (content-biased) variant, in which case it was adopted. This novel pattern of results suggests that (i) a theory of the cultural evolution of human communication systems must integrate selectionist models and (ii) human communication systems are functionally adaptive complex systems
Scaffolding Cognition with Words
We describe a set of experiments investigating the role
of natural language symbols in scaffolding situated
action. Agents are evolved to respond appropriately to
commands in order to perform simple tasks. We
explore three different conditions, which show a
significant advantage to the re-use of a public symbol
system, through self-cueing leading to qualitative
changes in performance. This is modelled by looping
spoken output via environment back to heard input.
We argue this work can be linked to, and sheds new
light on, the account of self-directed speech advanced
by the developmental psychologist Vygotsky in his
model of the development of higher cognitive function
The Biosemiotic Approach in Biology : Theoretical Bases and Applied Models
Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as â signals, â â codes, âand â information processing âin biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as biology interpreted as a study of living sign systems â which also means that semiosis or sign process can be seen as the very nature of life itself. In other words, biosemiotics is a field of research investigating semiotic processes (meaning, signification, communication, and habit formation in living systems) and the physicochemical preconditions for sign action and interpretation.
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Futures Studies in the Interactive Society
This book consists of papers which were prepared within the framework of the research project (No. T 048539) entitled Futures Studies in the Interactive Society (project leader: Ăva Hideg) and funded by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA) between 2005 and 2009. Some discuss the theoretical and methodological questions of futures studies and foresight; others present new approaches to or
procedures of certain questions which are very important and topical from the perspective of forecast and foresight practice. Each study was conducted in pursuit of improvement in futures fields
Symbiotic modeling: Linguistic Anthropology and the promise of chiasmus
Reflexive observations and observations of reflexivity: such agendas are by now standard practice in anthropology. Dynamic feedback loops between self and other, cause and effect, represented and representamen may no longer seem surprising; but, in spite of our enhanced awareness, little deliberate attention is devoted to modeling or grounding such phenomena. Attending to both linguistic and extra-linguistic modalities of chiasmus (the X figure), a group of anthropologists has recently embraced this challenge. Applied to contemporary problems in linguistic anthropology, chiasmus functions to highlight and enhance relationships of interdependence or symbiosis between contraries, including anthropologyâs four fields, the nature of human being and facets of being human
Is the semiosphere post-modernist?
This paper provides arguments for and against M.Lotmanâs (2002) contention that Y.Lotmanâs
seminal concept of semiosphere is of post-modernist (post-structuralist; Posner 2011)
orientation. A comparative reading of the definitional components of the semiosphere, their
hierarchical relationship and their interactions is undertaken against the two principal axes of
space and subjectivity in the light of Kantian transcendental idealism, as inaugural and
authoritative figure of modernity, the Foucauldian discursive turn and the Deleuzian (post)
radical empiricism (sic), as representative authors of the highly versatile post-modernvernacular.
This comparative reading aims at highlighting not only similarities and differences between the
Lotmanian conceptualization of the semiosphere and the concerned modernist and postmodernist
authors, but the constructâs operational relevance in a post-metanarratives cultural
predicament that has been coupled with the so-called spatial turn in cultural studies (Hess-
Luttich 2012)
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