Resolving overloading in communication requires attention to context. Previous research has found that the mutual assumption of cooperation during communication can act as a powerful constraint, allowing successful resolution under ambiguity. In this study, we investigate two specific types of cooperative context used in a communicative task which arise from different sources: beliefs and actions. In belief-driven communication, signals are interpreted in context of what else a speaker could have said about the world. Here communicators assume that the speaker aims to change the listener's beliefs by providing the most straightforward signal. In action-driven communication, signals are considered in terms of what a speaker can reasonably ask others to do. Signaling can be sensitive to utility considerations of acting and interacting in the physical world. Through a communication game, we tested how listeners would interpret an ambiguous signal using belief-driven or action-driven strategies. We find that while no one strategy is dominant overall, individuals are highly consistent in which strategy they employ when forced to decide.

No Such Thing as the Average Listener: Belief-driven versus Action-driven Strategies in Signaling

Even simple, ambiguous signals can have a rich interpretation when viewed in the context of an interaction in a shared environment. We create a model called Paternalistic Communication by combining an existing model of overloaded language -- Rational Speech Acts (RSA) -- with a full agent model of Theory of Mind (ToM). This integration allows signals to be processed in conjunction with common ground in a principled manner dependent on task-dependent action utilities. This modeling perspective treats communication as a way to coordinate diverging perspectives in a cooperative setting. Under Paternalistic Communication, a speaker decides what to say by predicting their partner’s reaction based on the information in common ground and then evaluates those reactions using their own mind which may contain additional information. We demonstrate the flexibility and performance of Paternalistic Communication in a case study with ambiguous signaling through a set of simulations.

Overloaded Communication as Paternalistic Helping

The simple gesture of pointing can greatly augment one’s ability to comprehend states of the world based on observations. It triggers additional inferences relevant to one’s task at hand.We model an agent’s update to its belief of the world based on individual
observations using a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), a mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) model of how to act rationally according to beliefs formed through observation. On top of that, we model pointing as a communicative act between agents who have a mutual understanding that the pointed observation must be relevant and interpretable. Our model measures “relevance” by defining a Smithian Value of Information (SVI) as the utility improvement of the POMDP agent before and after receiving the pointing. We model that agents calculate SVI by using the cognitive
theory of Smithian helping as a principle of coordinating separate beliefs for action prediction and action evaluation. We then import SVI into rational speech act (RSA) as the utility function of an utterance. These lead us to a pragmatic model of pointing allowing for contextually flexible interpretations. We demonstrate the power of our Smithian pointing model by extending the Wumpus world, a classic AI task where a hunter hunts a monster with only partial observability of the world. We add another agent as a guide who can only help by marking an observation already perceived by the hunter with a pointing or not, without providing new observations or offering any instrumental help. Our results show that this severely limited and overloaded communication nevertheless significantly improves the hunters’ performance. The advantage of pointing is indeed due to a computation of relevance based on Smithian helping, as it disappears completely when the task is too difficult or too easy for the guide to help.

Individual vs. Joint Perception: a Pragmatic Model of Pointing as Smithian Helping

Communication is highly overloaded. Despite this, even young children are good at leveraging context to understand ambiguous signals. We propose a computational account of overloaded signaling from a shared agency perspective which we call the Imagined We for Communication. Under this framework, communication is a way for cooperators to coordinate their perspectives, allowing them to act together to achieve shared goals. We assume agents are rational, utility maximizing cooperators, which puts constraints on how signals can be sent and interpreted. We implement this model in a set of simulations which demonstrate this model’s success under increasing ambiguity as well as increasing layers of reasoning. Our model is capable of improving performance with deeper recursive reasoning; however, it outperforms comparison baselines at even the shallowest level of reasoning, highlighting how shared knowledge and cooperative logic can do much of the heavy-lifting in language.

Modeling Communication to Coordinate Perspectives in Cooperation

While human communication occurs across groups of varying sizes, current cognitive models typically focus on the dynamics between two individuals. However, generalizing to group communication is not trivial as it requires a joint inference over what a signal means and who it is intended for. Prevailing research relies on agents that recursively model each other to infer a signal's meaning which becomes incredibly complex in group settings. Here we demonstrate how a shared agency approach to communication called the Imagined We (IW) can naturally be leveraged to address challenges of group communication in simulation. In a cooperative communication task, we show that IW agents perform better and that their strategies for communicating under ambiguity are robust to the group size, unlike a baseline comparison model based on recursion. These results offer insight into how the cooperative logic of shared agency can constrain the uncertainty introduced by communicating in group settings.

Simplifying Group Communication: A Shared Agency Modeling Approach

T36: Pragmatics 2

technical paper

Join us for CogSci2022! Our 44th Annual Conference will be centered around the theme of diversity, with an accompanying range of keynotes and invited speakers who themselves highlight the diversity of our field. Our three symposia are Cognition across Diverse Populations, Cognition within Diverse Societies, and Global Challenges for Cognitive Science. The conference is being offered in a fully hybrid environment for onsite and online attendees.
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<br>[**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Cogsci-2022-PAAG-Detailed-July-12final-1.pdf)
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CogSci 2022

The 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society highlighted research on the theme Cognitive Diversity in addition to the full breadth and diversity of research topics offered by the society’s membership. 





Poster Session 5: Language processing, representation, and use

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Poster Session 2 -  A: AI, Computer Science and Computer Models

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**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

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CogSci 2021

The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education. The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.

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Virtual Posters

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference.<br>
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

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CogSci 2023

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Stephanie Stacy

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SHORT BIO

Presentations

No Such Thing as the Average Listener: Belief-driven versus Action-driven Strategies in Signaling

Overloaded Communication as Paternalistic Helping

Individual vs. Joint Perception: a Pragmatic Model of Pointing as Smithian Helping

Modeling Communication to Coordinate Perspectives in Cooperation

Simplifying Group Communication: A Shared Agency Modeling Approach

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