a b s t r a c tWhat is the proper unit of analysis in the psycholinguistics of dialog? While classical approaches are largely based on models of individual linguistic processing, recent advances stress the social coordinative nature of dialog. In the influential interactive alignment model, dialogue is thus approached as the progressive entrainment of interlocutors' linguistic behaviors toward the alignment of situation models. Still, the driving mechanisms are attributed to individual cognition in the form of automatic structural priming. Challenging these ideas, we outline a dynamical framework for studying dialog based on the notion of interpersonal synergy. Crucial to this synergetic model is the emphasis on dialog as an emergent, self-organizing, interpersonal system capable of functional coordination. A consequence of this model is that linguistic processes cannot be reduced to the workings of individual cognitive systems but must be approached also at the interpersonal level. From the synergy model follows a number of new predictions: beyond simple synchrony, good dialog affords complementary dynamics, constrained by contextual sensitivity and functional specificity. We substantiate our arguments by reference to recent empirical studies supporting the idea of dialog as interpersonal synergy.

Are higher-level cognitive processes the only way that purposefulness can be introduced into the human interaction? In this paper, we provide a microanalysis of early mother-child interactions and argue that the beginnings of joint intentionality can be traced to the practice of embedding the child's actions into culturally shaped episodes. As action becomes coaction, an infant's perception becomes tuned to interaction affordances.Index Terms-Cognitive development, intentions, intersubjectivity, social interaction.

The present paper examines natural language as a dynamical system. The oft-expressed view of language as ''a static system of symbols'' is here seen as an element of a larger system that embraces the mutuality of symbols and dynamics. Following along the lines of the theoretical biologist H.H. Pattee, the relation between symbolic and dynamic aspects of language is expressed within a more general framework that deals with the role of information in biological systems. In this framework, symbols are seen as information-bearing entities that emerge under pressures of communicative needs and that serve as concrete constraints on development and communication. In an attempt to identify relevant dynamic aspects of such a system, one has to take into account events that happen on different time scales: evolutionary language change (i.e., a diachronic aspect), processes of communication (language use) and language acquisition. Acknowledging the role of dynamic processes in shaping and sustaining the structures of natural language calls for a change in methodology. In particular, a purely synchronic analysis of a system of symbols as ''meaning-containing entities'' is not sufficient to obtain answers to certain recurring problems in linguistics and the philosophy of language. A more encompassing research framework may be the one designed specifically for studying informationally based coupled dynamical systems (coordination dynamics) in which processes of self-organization take place over different time scales. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Keywords: Symbol; Information; Semantics; Psycholinguistics; Dynamical systems Language disguises thought. So much so, that from outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body.

Gaze is one of the first and most important means of communication and coordination in parent-infant dyads. In the present paper we used a novel method, designed to discover patterns in time-series, to investigate the dynamics of gaze in dyads and its developmental change. Using a longitudinal corpus of natural interactions, mutual mother-infant gaze was coded when the infants were 3, 6, and 8 months old and subjected to recurrence analysis. The cross-recurrence profiles obtained for the three time points show systematic differences: While the engagement in mutual gaze decreases with age, the behaviour becomes more tightly coupled as a more regular temporal structure emerges. We suggest that this stronger interdependency of gaze behaviour may indicate the development of a social feedback loop enabling engagement in interaction.

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Continuous interaction of mother and infant in the first weeks and months of an infant's life entrains the infant on many crucial aspects of how to do things together. Contingencies of gaze, vocalizations, and other movements are slowly routinized; this scaffolds directing of attention to each other and the world and gives to such multimodal interactions meaning. It is within these continuous interactions with caregivers that language emerges, starting from the first nonreflexive vocalizations that infants produce. The response that caregivers promptly give to these vocalizations informs infants of their relevance and helps shape them. We explored this systematicity by observing the coupling of infants' and mothers' vocalizations in unconstrained interactions longitudinally. While at three months, mothers seem to answer consistently to any speech related vocalization within the first two seconds, this pattern fades away at six and eight months. What remains stable across age is a structure in which overlapping vocalizations are rare and give way to a sequential pattern of vocal reciprocity-an embryonic turn-taking behavior. Discussion relates this finding to early coordination in other modalities in an attempt to sketch a more holistic account of emerging co-action.

Common ground is most often understood as the sum of mutually known beliefs, knowledge, and suppositions among the participants in a conversation. It explains why participants do not mention things that should be obvious to both. In some accounts of communication, reaching a mutual understanding, i.e., broadening the common ground, is posed as the ultimate goal of linguistic interactions. Yet, congruent with the more pragmatic views of linguistic behavior, in which language is treated as social coordination, understanding each other is not the purpose (or not the sole purpose) of linguistic interactions. This purpose is seen as at least twofold (e.g., Fusaroli et al., 2014): to maintain the systemic character of a conversing dyad and to organize it into a functional synergy in the face of tasks posed for a dyadic system as a whole. It seems that the notion of common ground is not sufficient to address the latter character of interaction. In situated communication, in which meaning is created in a distributed way in the very process of interaction, both common (sameness) and privileged (diversity) information must be pooled task-dependently across participants. In this paper, we analyze the definitions of common and privileged ground and propose a conceptual extension that may facilitate a theoretical account of agents that coordinate via linguistic communication. To illustrate the usefulness of this augmented framework, we apply it to one of the recurrent issues in psycholinguistic research, namely the problem of perspective-taking in dialog, and draw conclusions for the broader problem of audience design.