Recipient Design in Communicative Pointing

Abstract

A long‐standing debate in the study of human communication centers on the degree to which communicators tune their communicative signals (e.g., speech, gestures) for specific addressees, as opposed to taking a neutral or egocentric perspective. This tuning, called recipient design , is known to occur under special conditions (e.g., when errors in communication need to be corrected), but several researchers have argued that it is not an intrinsic feature of human communication, because that would be computationally too demanding. In this study, we contribute to this debate by studying a simple communicative behavior, communicative pointing, under conditions of successful (error‐free) communication. Using an information‐theoretic measure, called legibility , we present evidence of recipient design in communicative pointing. The legibility effect is present early in the movement, suggesting that it is an intrinsic part of the communicative plan. Moreover, it is reliable only from the viewpoint of the addressee, suggesting that the motor plan is tuned to the addressee. These findings suggest that recipient design is an intrinsic feature of human communication.

Hierarchical Integration of Communicative and Spatial Perspective‐Taking Demands in Sensorimotor Control of Referential Pointing

“…The CPT task effectively modulated the communicative demands experienced by the communicators; they held their pointing finger near the end-position for longer when they thought the addressee had to identify the correct referent by means of their pointing movements. This observation is consistent with findings from other referential pointing studies (Cleret de Langavant et al, 2011;Murillo Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Peeters et al, 2015;Winner et al, 2019), as well as naturalistic communicative interactions (Clark & Murphy, 1982;Hilbrink, Gattis, & Levinson, 2015;Levinson, 2016;Richardson, Dale, & Kirkham, 2007). A longer holding time allows the addressee to accumulate more sensory evidence about the end location of the pointing finger (Bangerter, 2004;Sacheli, Tidoni, Pavone, Aglioti, & Candidi, 2013;Sartori, Becchio, Bara, & Castiello, 2009;Vesper, Schmitz, & Knoblich, 2017).…”

Hierarchical integration of communicative and visuospatial perspective-taking demands in sensorimotor control of referential pointing

“…Furthermore, a longer holding time allows the addressee to accumulate more sensory evidence about the spatial location of the pointing finger (Sartori et al, 2009;Sacheli et al, 2013;Vesper et al, 2017). This study also confirms that increasing communicative demand led participants to generate longer movement trajectories, starting shortly after movement onset (Murillo Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Winner et al, 2019). The effect was not a by-product of increased trial-by-trial variability in the movement trajectories, or systematic variations in the end location of the pointing finger.…”

“…to produce a communicative signal that needs to be correctly interpreted by an addressee. Over-lengthened trajectories, determined by a linear summation of the factors shaping the main effects of perspective-taking and communicative demands, could reduce the legibility of the movement and increase the ambiguity experienced by the addressee when interpreting the observed movement (Winner et al, 2019). A motor controller privileging the communicative demands of the movement would imply a reduction of the weight allocated to visuospatial parameters estimated during PT2, i.e.…”

“…Referential pointing therefore provides an ecologically valid testing ground for understanding the integration of sociocognitive information with sensorimotor processing (Cleret de Langavant et al, 2011;Murillo Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Winner et al, 2019). Previous work has shown how communicators organize their movements with consideration of the physical location of addressees (Özyürek, 2002;Cleret de Langavant et al, 2011;Pezzulo et al, 2013;Murillo Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Winner et al, 2019). However, it remains unclear, besides the physical location of addressees, whether and how communicators' inferences about addressees' mental representation of the interaction space influence planning and execution of referential pointing.…”

A conceptual framework for the study of demonstrative reference

“…These factors relate not to an entity's objective relative physical location or visibility, but to the cognitive status of the referent in the mind of the speaker and/or the addressee as assumed by the speaker. It is well established that language users typically take into account the presumed cognitive status of a referent in the addressee's situation model when using a referring expression in general (e.g., Chafe, 1976;Evans, Bergqvist, & San Roque, 2018;Gundel et al, 1993;Prince, 1981b) and when producing a communicative pointing gesture (Cleret de Langavant et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2019;Oosterwijk et al, 2017;Peeters et al, 2013;Winner et al, 2019). Important considerations for the speaker when selecting a demonstrative form may be whether the referent is in joint attention between speaker and addressee or not (Brown & Levinson, 2018;Burenhult, 2003;Evans et al, 2018;Herrmann, 2018;Knuchel, 2019;Küntay & Özyürek, 2006;Meira, 2018;Peeters, Azar, & Özyürek, 2014;Skarabela, Allen, & Scott-Phillips, 2013;Stevens & Zhang, 2013), whether it is considered perceptually, socially, and/or cognitively accessible to the addressee (Burenhult, 2008;Hanks, 2009;Jarbou, 2010;Piwek et al, 2008), and whether it can be considered in the psychologically construed shared space, the current interactional space, or within or outside the interlocutors' conceptually defined 'here-space' (Cutfield, 2018;Enfield, 2003Enfield, , 2018Jungbluth, 2003;Levinson, 2018;Meira & Guirardello-Damian, 2018;Opalka, 1982;.…”