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Parents scaffold the formation of conversational pacts with their children.

Ashley Leung, Robert X. D. Hawkins, Daniel Yurovsky
21 Jul 2020-Cognitive Science-
About: This article is published in Cognitive Science.The article was published on 2020-07-21 and is currently open access. It has received 1 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Scaffold.

Summary (2 min read)

Jump to: [Introduction] – [Referential Communication Experiment] – [Results] – [Analyzing the content of pacts] and [Discussion]

Introduction

  • Keywords: communication; language development; parentchild interaction Common ground is a foundational requirement for successful communication:.
  • When the meaning of an utterance is unclear, interlocutors will engage in negotiation, arriving at a conversational pact about how to think and talk about the intended referent (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986).
  • One possibility is that parents naturally adopt some of the strategies used by experimenters in training studies of conversational pact formation:.
  • Prior work has shown that parents leverage their knowledge of their children’s vocabularies to calibrate the informativeness of their referential expressions (Leung, Tunkel, & Yurovsky, 2019).

Referential Communication Experiment

  • Participants Children (ages 4, 6, and 8) and their parents were recruited from a database of families in the local community to achieve a planned sample of 60 parent-child pairs (20 per age group).
  • They were seated in front of iPads at opposite ends of a table, with a divider preventing them from seeing each other’s screens.
  • Participants were told that they would take turns playing director and matcher roles.
  • On each subsequent block, these sets were swapped such that each tangram was described by each participant exactly twice over the course of the experiment.
  • Each video was transcribed and checked by two different coders.

Results

  • The authors characterized developmental differences using three measures of communicative behavior.
  • First, the authors examined accuracy to evaluate whether children were able to succeed at the reference game in collaboration with their parents.
  • Because the total number of words produced on a trial is correlated with the number of dialogue exchanges examined above (r = 0.61), the authors constructed a normalized efficiency measure that controls for additional turns.
  • All else being equal, directors used fewer words over subsequent repetitions, children used fewer words than their parents, and pairs with older children used fewer words than pairs with younger children.
  • The authors found that this interaction was not significant (β = 0.01, t = 1.8, p = 0.076), although their sample was likely underpowered to detect this higher-order interaction.

Analyzing the content of pacts

  • Pairs of age-matched children are notoriously poor at repeated referential communication, failing to coordinate on mutually comprehensible referential expressions (Krauss & Glucksberg, 1977).
  • For each word in the final description of a tangram, the authors checked whether it had appeared in an earlier referential expression for that tangram.
  • The authors noted the first trial where it appeared, and who was director when it was produced3.
  • Younger children—appear to be the source of the words that persist in successful conceptual pacts.
  • All else being equal, pairs with older children produced more complex utterances, and parents produced more complex utterances than children.

Discussion

  • The ability to collaborate with conversational partners on intended meaning is crucial for successful communication.
  • While children often struggle to succeed in such games with their peers, the authors found that even young children were able to successfully form referential pacts with their parents:.
  • One family of explanations has suggested that children simply cannot take their partner’s perspective into account, and produce references only they understand (Krauss & Glucksberg, 1977), or cannot judge which expressions are more informative in the first place, even for themselves (Asher & Oden, 1976; Robinson & Robinson, 1977).
  • They may struggle to provide sufficient feedback to their partner or ask for clarification when it is necessary (Anderson et al., 1994).
  • Stimuli, data, and analysis code available at https://osf.io/vkug8/.

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Citations
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Journal Article•DOI•
The Division of Labor in Communication: Speakers Help Listeners Account for Asymmetries in Visual Perspective

[...]

Robert X. D. Hawkins1, Hyowon Gweon1, Noah D. Goodman1•
Stanford University1
01 Mar 2021-Cognitive Science
TL;DR: In this paper, a resource-rational model was proposed for perspective-taking in communication, where the resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective taking should depend on their expectations about the other's allocation.
Abstract: Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective-taking should depend on their expectations about the other's allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource-rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective-taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade-off between expected costs and benefits of perspective-taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director-matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for "known unknowns" in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective-taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply "mindblind"; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource-rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective-taking under processing constraints.

17 citations

References
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Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal

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Dale J. Barr1, Roger Levy2, Christoph Scheepers1, Harry Tily•
University of Glasgow1, University of California, San Diego2
01 Apr 2013-Journal of Memory and Language
TL;DR: It is argued that researchers using LMEMs for confirmatory hypothesis testing should minimally adhere to the standards that have been in place for many decades, and it is shown thatLMEMs generalize best when they include the maximal random effects structure justified by the design.
Abstract: Linear mixed-effects models (LMEMs) have become increasingly prominent in psycholinguistics and related areas. However, many researchers do not seem to appreciate how random effects structures affect the generalizability of an analysis. Here, we argue that researchers using LMEMs for confirmatory hypothesis testing should minimally adhere to the standards that have been in place for many decades. Through theoretical arguments and Monte Carlo simulation, we show that LMEMs generalize best when they include the maximal random effects structure justified by the design. The generalization performance of LMEMs including data-driven random effects structures strongly depends upon modeling criteria and sample size, yielding reasonable results on moderately-sized samples when conservative criteria are used, but with little or no power advantage over maximal models. Finally, random-intercepts-only LMEMs used on within-subjects and/or within-items data from populations where subjects and/or items vary in their sensitivity to experimental manipulations always generalize worse than separate F1 and F2 tests, and in many cases, even worse than F1 alone. Maximal LMEMs should be the ‘gold standard’ for confirmatory hypothesis testing in psycholinguistics and beyond.

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Larry Fenson1, Philip S. Dale, J S Reznick, Elizabeth Bates, Donna J. Thal, Steve Pethick •
San Diego State University1
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: Data from parent reports are used to describe the typical course and the extent of variability in major features of communicative development between 8 and 30 months of age, and unusually detailed information is offered on the course of development of individual lexical, gestural, and grammatical items and features.
Abstract: Data from parent reports on 1,803 children--derived from a normative study of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs)--are used to describe the typical course and the extent of variability in major features of communicative development between 8 and 30 months of age. The two instruments, one designed for 8-16-month-old infants, the other for 16-30-month-old toddlers, are both reliable and valid, confirming the value of parent reports that are based on contemporary behavior and a recognition format. Growth trends are described for children scoring at the 10th-, 25th-, 50th-, 75th-, and 90th-percentile levels on receptive and expressive vocabulary, actions and gestures, and a number of aspects of morphology and syntax. Extensive variability exists in the rate of lexical, gestural, and grammatical development. The wide variability across children in the time of onset and course of acquisition of these skills challenges the meaningfulness of the concept of the modal child. At the same time, moderate to high intercorrelations are found among the different skills both concurrently and predictively (across a 6-month period). Sex differences consistently favor females; however, these are very small, typically accounting for 1%-2% of the variance. The effects of SES and birth order are even smaller within this age range. The inventories offer objective criteria for defining typicality and exceptionality, and their cost effectiveness facilitates the aggregation of large data sets needed to address many issues of contemporary theoretical interest. The present data also offer unusually detailed information on the course of development of individual lexical, gestural, and grammatical items and features. Adaptations of the CDIs to other languages have opened new possibilities for cross-linguistic explorations of sequence, rate, and variability of communicative development.

2,467 citations

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Jerome S. Bruner
01 Jan 1983
TL;DR: Bruner as mentioned in this paper proposes a language acquisition support system that frames the interactions between adult and child in such a way as to allow the child to proceed from learning how to refer to objects to learning to make a request of another human being.
Abstract: To carry out his investigations, Bruner went to "the clutter of life at home," the child's own setting for learning, rather than observing children in a "contrived video laboratory." For Bruner, language is learned by using it. An central to its use are what he calls "formats," scriptlike interactions between mother and child in short, play and games. What goes on in games as rudimentary as peekaboo or hide-and-seek can tell us much about language acquisition.But what aids the aspirant speaker in his attempt to use language? To answer this, the author postulates the existence of a Language Acquisition Support System that frames the interactions between adult and child in such a way as to allow the child to proceed from learning how to refer to objects to learning to make a request of another human being. And, according to Bruner, the Language Acquisition Support System not only helps the child learn "how to say it" but also helps him to learn "what is canonical, obligatory, and valued among those to whom he says it." In short, it is a vehicle for the transmission of our culture."

2,087 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Referring as a collaborative process.

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Herbert H. Clark1, Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs1•
Stanford University1
01 Feb 1986-Cognition
TL;DR: A communication task in which pairs of people conversed about arranging complex figures is described and how the proposed model accounts for many features of the references they produced is shown.
Abstract: In conversation, speakers and addressees work together in the making of a definite reference. In the model we propose, the speaker initiates the process by presenting or inviting a noun phrase. Before going on to the next contribution, the participants, if necessary, repair, expand on, or replace the noun phrase in an iterative process until they reach a version they mutually accept. In doing so they try to minimize their joint effort. The preferred procedure is for the speaker to present a simple noun phrase and for the addressee to accept it by allowing the next contribution to begin. We describe a communication task in which pairs of people conversed about arranging complex figures and show how the proposed model accounts for many features of the references they produced. The model follows, we suggest, from the mutual responsibility that participants in conversation bear toward the understanding of each utterance.

1,977 citations

Journal Article•DOI•
Text Mining Infrastructure in R

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Ingo Feinerer, Kurt Hornik, David Meyer
31 Mar 2008-Journal of Statistical Software
TL;DR: The tm package is presented which provides a framework for text mining applications within R and techniques for count-based analysis methods, text clustering, text classification and string kernels are presented.
Abstract: During the last decade text mining has become a widely used discipline utilizing statistical and machine learning methods. We present the tm package which provides a framework for text mining applications within R. We give a survey on text mining facilities in R and explain how typical application tasks can be carried out using our framework. We present techniques for count-based analysis methods, text clustering, text classification and string kernels.

1,057 citations

Frequently Asked Questions (1)
Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Parents scaffold the formation of conversational pacts with their children" ?

Using a director-matcher paradigm, the authors first show that parents and children ( ages 4, 6, 8 ) converge on increasingly accurate and efficient conversational pacts. Finally, the authors analyze asymmetries in parents ’ and children ’ s contributions, finding that pacts tend to originate with the parent, but are simplified by younger children. Further, parents of younger children provide more interactive feedback.