20,140 research outputs found
Relevance theory, pragmatic inference and cognitive architecture
Relevance Theory (RT: Sperber & Wilson, 1986) argues that human language comprehension processes tend to maximize ârelevanceâ, and postulates that there is a relevance-based procedure that a hearer follows when trying to understand an utterance. Despite being highly influential, RT has been criticized for its failure to explain how speaker-related information, either the speakerâs abilities or her/his preferences, is incorporated into the hearerâs inferential, pragmatic process. An alternative proposal is that speaker-related information gains prominence due to representation of the speaker within higher-level goal-directed schemata. Yet the goal-based account is still unable to explain clearly how cross-domain information, for example linguistic meaning and speaker-related knowledge, is integrated within a modular system. On the basis of RTâs cognitive requirements, together with contemporary cognitive theory, we argue that this integration is realized by utilizing working memory and that there exist conversational constraints with which the constructed utterance interpretation should be consistent. We illustrate our arguments with a computational implementation of the proposed processes within a general cognitive architecture
Inférences réflexives dans la publicité
Advertisements are so
ubiquitous nowadays that capturing the
addresseeâs attention and maintaining it
long enough for them to be fully
processed have become fundamental
objectives for advertisers. Employing
specific strategies in the design of the
advertisement contributes efficiently to
achieving these goals, getting the
audience not only to attend the
stimulus but also to process it in certain
ways favourable for the advertiser. We
argue that Relevance theory, an
approach to communication built on a
massively modular view of cognition,
offers the right tools to explain the
nature of the interpretative processes
in verbal comprehension. Knowledge of
the relevance-based reflexive
inferential procedures involved in
utterance interpretation allows
advertisers to foresee the addresseeâs
processing behaviour, giving them the
possibility to control it in a such a way
that the intended interpretative effects
are achieved in the desired way
Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation
Many contextual inferences in utterance interpretation are explained as following from the nature of conversation and the assumption that participants are rational. Recent psycholinguistic research has focussed on certain of these âGriceanâ inferences and have revealed that comprehenders can access them in online interpretation. However there have been mixed results as to the time-course of access. Some results show that Gricean inferences can be accessed very rapidly, as rapidly as any other contextually specified information (Sedivy, 2003; Grodner, Klein, Carbery, & Tanenhaus, 2010); while other studies looking at the same kind of inference suggest that access to Gricean inferences are delayed relative to other aspects of semantic interpretation (Huang & Snedeker, 2009; in press). While previous timecourse research has focussed on Gricean inferences that support the online assignment of reference to definite expressions, the study reported here examines the timecourse of access to scalar implicatures, which enrich the meaning of an utterance beyond the semantic interpretation. Even if access to Gricean inference in support of reference assignment may be rapid, it is still unknown whether genuinely enriching scalar implicatures are delayed. Our results indicate that scalar implicatures are accessed as rapidly as other contextual inferences. The implications of our results are discussed in reference to the architecture of language comprehension
The Problem of Mental Action
In mental action there is no motor output to be controlled and no sensory input vector that could be manipulated by bodily movement. It is therefore unclear whether this specific target phenomenon can be accommodated under the predictive processing framework at all, or if the concept of âactive inferenceâ can be adapted to this highly relevant explanatory domain. This contribution puts the phenomenon of mental action into explicit focus by introducing a set of novel conceptual instruments and developing a first positive model, concentrating on epistemic mental actions and epistemic self-control. Action initiation is a functionally adequate form of self-deception; mental actions are a specific form of predictive control of effective connectivity, accompanied and possibly even functionally mediated by a conscious âepistemic agent modelâ. The overall process is aimed at increasing the epistemic value of pre-existing states in the conscious self-model, without causally looping through sensory sheets or using the non-neural body as an instrument for active inference
Recommended from our members
Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL
Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N
The abstraction effect on logic rules application
The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between training on abstraction and the comprehension of logic rules. In order to evaluate the possibility of improvement on logic performance we have selected the particular case of the DeMorganâs laws. The dispute between the natural logic approach and the mental models theory is analyzed from the perspective of such abstraction effect. Two experiments are reported. The first one suggests that the presentation of a formal proof promotes a better comprehension of DeMorganÂŽs laws than the use of visual resources or colloquial examples. The second one offers a stronger test for the same abstraction effect. Some limitations concerned with the syntactic meaning of negation and the differences between constructive and evaluative conditions are discussed. Since the meaning of abstraction for the psychology of reasoning is pointed out as critical some suggestions for further research and possible educational applications are mentioned.Fil: Macbeth, Guillermo Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Entre RĂos. Facultad de Ciencias de la EducaciĂłn; ArgentinaFil: Razumiejczyk, Eugenia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Entre RĂos. Facultad de Ciencias de la EducaciĂłn; ArgentinaFil: Campitelli, Guillermo Jorge. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones CientĂficas y TĂ©cnicas; Argentina. Edith Cowan University; Australi
Relevance Theory
General overview of relevance theor
The brain is a prediction machine that cares about good and bad - Any implications for neuropragmatics?
Experimental pragmatics asks how people construct contextualized meaning in communication. So what does it mean for this field to add neuroas a prefix to its name? After analyzing the options for any subfield of cognitive science, I argue that neuropragmatics can and occasionally should go beyond the instrumental use of EEG or fMRI and beyond mapping classic theoretical distinctions onto Brodmann areas. In particular, if experimental pragmatics âgoes neuroâ, it should take into account that the brain evolved as a control system that helps its bearer negotiate a highly complex, rapidly changing and often not so friendly environment. In this context, the ability to predict current unknowns, and to rapidly tell good from bad, are essential ingredients of processing. Using insights from non-linguistic areas of cognitive neuroscience as well as from EEG research on utterance comprehension, I argue that for a balanced development of experimental pragmatics, these two characteristics of the brain cannot be ignored
Hearing meanings: the revenge of context
According to the perceptual view of language comprehension, listeners typically recover high-level linguistic properties such as utterance meaning without inferential work. The perceptual view is subject to the Objection from Context: since utterance meaning is massively context-sensitive, and context-sensitivity requires cognitive inference, the perceptual view is false. In recent work, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging reply to this objection. She argues that in language comprehension context-sensitivity is typically exercised not through inferences, but rather through top-down perceptual modulations or perceptual learning. This paper provides a complete formulation of the Objection from Context and evaluates Brogaards reply to it. Drawing on conceptual considerations and empirical examples, we argue that the exercise of context-sensitivity in language comprehension does, in fact, typically involve inference
Fitting Pragmatics into the Human Mind: A philosophical investigation of the Pragmatics Module Hypothesis
This thesis focuses on the hypothesis that pragmatic understanding is underpinned by a mental module closely related to the ability to interpret othersâ behaviors by inferring underlying mental states, also called âmindreadingâ. First, it aims at evaluating the plausibility of this hypothesis in light of the available data in the empirical literature by drawing on the argumentative toolbox of the philosophy of mind and language. Second, it aims at developing this hypothesis by addressing its main theoretical and empirical challenges.
In Chapter One, I outline a historical overview of the different declinations of the modularity hypothesis in cognitive science, with a focus on early works in cognitive pragmatics and Theory of Mind research.
In Chapter Two, I provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the Pragmatics Module Hypothesis by focusing on the central tenets of Relevance Theory.
In Chapter Three, I explore the idea of pragmatics as a âsub-moduleâ of Theory of Mind from an empirical perspective by surveying the current state of the art in experimental and clinical pragmatics, thus âclearing upâ the recent controversy on the modularity of pragmatics from some misconceptions and empirical predictions which do not follow from the Pragmatics Module Hypothesis.
In Chapter Four, I provide a novel cognitive framework for the modular view of pragmatics by evaluating the significance of research on ostensive communication in infancy with respect to the hypothesis of an early-developing modular heuristic for interpreting communicative behaviors.
Chapters Five and Six both focus on the several âdevelopmental dilemmasâ that must be confronted by intentional-inferential accounts of infant communication like the one endorsed in the present thesis, which will be disentangled, analyzed, and addressed by evaluating several possible solutions. In these two chapters, I show how the cognitive framework offered in Chapter Four can be employed and further extended to deal with such developmental dilemmas from a renewed modular perspective
- âŠ