Sunday, April 03, 2011

Galantucci & Garrod - Experimental semiotics: a review

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Interesting geeky stuff from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience - Experimental Semiotics (ES) looks at literature for novel forms of communication, often in the absence of pre-determined communicative conventions.

Experimental semiotics: a review

In the last few years a new line of research has appeared in the literature. This line of research, which may be referred to as experimental semiotics (ES; Galantucci, 2009; Galantucci and Garrod, 2010), focuses on the experimental investigation of novel forms of human communication. In this review we will (a) situate ES in its conceptual context, (b) illustrate the main varieties of studies thus far conducted by experimental semioticians, (c) illustrate three main themes of investigation which have emerged within this line of research, and (d) consider implications of this work for cognitive neuroscience.

Citation:
Galantucci, B. & Garrod, S. (2011, Feb. 17). Experimental semiotics: a review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5:11. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00011
Here is a little background on the idea of ES:
Conceptual Context of ES

Given its focus, experimental semiotics (ES) is in close relation with three well-established lines of research. The first of these is the experimental investigation of spoken dialog (e.g., Krauss and Weinheimer, 1966; Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986; Garrod and Anderson, 1987; Horton and Keysar, 1996) which for convenience we refer to as experimental pragmatics1 (Noveck and Sperber, 2006). Experimental pragmatics has produced a wealth of knowledge about language use (e.g., Clark, 1996) and continues today to provide important insights into human communication (e.g., Brennan and Hanna, 2009; Garrod and Pickering, 2009; Shintel and Keysar, 2009). ES is similar to experimental pragmatics in at least two regards. First, both approaches aim at uncovering the causal relations behind the phenomena they observe by using methods that afford experimental manipulation and control. Secondly, they both share the assumption that, in order to understand human communication, researchers must investigate human social interactions as well as individual cognitive processes. Despite these similarities, however, ES differs in a fundamental way from experimental pragmatics because it focuses on interactions that occur in the absence of pre-established communicative conventions2. In other words, experimental semioticians study novel forms of communication which people develop when they cannot use pre-established communication systems. As we shall see in Section “Main Themes of Investigation in ES,” this is a difference which makes a difference.

The focus of experimental semioticians on novel forms of communication leads us to the other two lines of research which are in close relation with ES: natural experiments with human languages and computer simulations. As for the former, the emergence of novel forms of human communication has been extensively investigated through sign languages that emerged in relatively isolated populations (e.g., Kegl, 1994; Sandler et al., 2005) as well as through home sign systems spontaneously developed by deaf children raised by non-signing parents (e.g., Goldin-Meadow and Feldman, 1977; Goldin-Meadow and Mylander, 1998). These lines of research have produced a wealth of knowledge about the origins of novel languages (Kegl et al., 1999; Goldin-Meadow, 2003). However, because experimental semioticians observe the emergence of communication in the laboratory, they gain access to new opportunities for scientific inquiry. One such opportunity is having access to the complete history of the development of a communication system. The details of this history can help us understand the processes that lead humans to communicate successfully. For example, four studies in ES (Galantucci, 2005; Garrod et al., 2007; Healey et al., 2007; De Ruiter et al., 2010) reported that signs established later on during the development of a novel communication system often incorporated parts of previously established signs. This occurred with communication systems which comprised only a handful of signs, suggesting the hypothesis that linguistic structures may emerge in the very early stages of a communication system. As we shall see in Section “Early Emergence of Linguistic Structure,” further studies by experimental semioticians tested this hypothesis at different linguistic levels and found supporting evidence for it (Selten and Warglien, 2007; Kirby et al., 2008; Galantucci et al., 2010; Theisen et al., 2010). Without the complete record of the development of a communication system, the hypothesis would have been difficult to test. In addition, experimental semioticians can carry out manipulations that would be difficult to realize outside the laboratory. For example, Fay et al. (2010) systematically manipulated the composition of the communities of people in their study, Galantucci et al. (2010) manipulated the rapidity of fading of the medium people used to communicate, and Selten and Warglien (2007) manipulated the number of symbols people could use in their game. Outside the laboratory, such manipulations would pose insurmountable ethical and practical challenges. Of course the move from the natural context to the laboratory is not without costs as it entails a loss in ecological validity with respect to natural experiments. This loss and its implication for the scientific relevance of ES are discussed in Section “Conclusion.” Here we argue that, in spite of the loss, ES might still aspire to capture essential properties of the communication systems which develop in natural contexts. We see two obvious differences between natural experiments and current ES studies. First, the two operate over vastly different timescales. Second, ES studies focus on communication systems developed by adults, while natural experiments focus on communication systems developed primarily by children. At the present we do not know the extent to which these differences limit ES. Should the limitations turn out to be substantial, experimental semioticians can address them by increasing the timescale of their studies or, as we suggest in Section “Conclusion,” by realizing them with children.

Because of the opportunities it offers for experimental manipulation, ES also relates to research on computer simulation of the emergence of communication among artificial agents (Steels, 1997). This line of research has offered important insights into how novel communication systems might emerge (e.g., Hurford, 1989; Quinn, 2001; Cangelosi and Parisi, 2002; Kirby, 2002; Skyrms, 2002; Steels, 2003) and how they might evolve over time (e.g., Clark and Roberts, 1993; Hare and Elman, 1995; Briscoe, 2000; Smith et al., 2003). However, although current simulations are designed to model ever richer aspects of human behavior (e.g., Steels and Wellens, 2006; Vogt and Divina, 2007) there remains a wide gulf in behavioral complexity between artificial agents and humans. In other words, drawing inferences from simulations to natural human phenomena is often problematic. ES provides an ideal source of complementary knowledge to that provided by simulations.

In the next section we introduce ES in more detail, illustrating the main varieties of studies that contributed to its recent growth.

Read the whole article.

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