Скачать или смотреть Robert Hawkins: Language in social interaction: Weaving together cognition and culture

Abstract
Why do we talk differently with different people? How does our language reflect and shape our social knowledge? In this talk, I will present a computational framework that aims to explain the collective behavior of social groups via mechanisms of individual social cognition and communication. First, I will present evidence for three basic components of the framework: structured uncertainty about what language will mean to different people, social inference to quickly learn about people from talking with them, and generalization to abstract away these meanings to broader "communal lexicons" that signal social identity. Next I will demonstrate the consequences of these mechanisms for the emergence of linguistic conventions in groups. Finally, I will discuss ongoing work exploring broader implications of this framework across three areas of cognitive science: (1) the neural basis for interactive communication, using fMRI data collected in a hyperscanning setup, (2) the developmental trajectories of communicative flexibility, and (3) scaling up our models to build artificial agents that can flexibly construct meaning with human partners on the fly. Together, this line of work highlights language as a critical bridge between cognition and culture, contributing to a more mechanistic theory of social interaction across scales.

About the speaker
Robert Hawkins, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

IMC Tuesday Seminar held July 30th, 2024.

Note: Talk is trimmed to ensure anonymity of informants.