Mentalist Theories of Communication

Методика «Сюжетные картинки»

Шкалы: эмоциональное отношение к нравственным нормам

Назначение теста. Методика предназначена для изучения эмоционального отношения к нравственным нормам.

Описание теста Ребенку предъявляют картинки с изображением положительных и отрицательных поступков сверстников.

Исследование проводится индивидуально. В протоколе фиксируются эмоциональные реакции ребенка, а также его объяснения. Ребенок должен дать моральную оценку изображенным на картинке поступкам, что позволит выявить отношение детей к нравственным нормам. Особое внимание уделяется оценке адекватности эмоциональных реакций ребенка на моральные нормы: положительная эмоциональная реакция (улыбка, одобрение и т.п.) на нравственный поступок и отрицательная эмоциональная реакция (осуждение, негодование и т.п.) - на безнравственный.

Инструкция к тесту Разложи картинки так, чтобы с одной стороны лежали те, на которых нарисованы хорошие поступки, а с другой - плохие. Раскладывай и объясняй, куда ты положишь каждую картинку и почему. Обработка и интерпретация результатов теста

Обработка предложена Р.Р. Калининой.

0 баллов - ребенок неправильно раскладывает картинки (в одной стопке оказываются картинки с изображением как положительных, так и отрицательных поступков), эмоциональные реакции неадекватны или отсутствуют.

1 балл - ребенок правильно раскладывает картинки, но не может обосновать свои действия; эмоциональные реакции неадекватны.

балла - правильно раскладывая картинки, ребенок обосновывает свои действия; эмоциональные реакции адекватны, но выражены слабо.

3 балла - ребенок обосновывает свой выбор (возможно, называет моральную норму); эмоциональные реакции адекватны, ярки, проявляются в мимике, активной жестикуляции и т.д.

 

 

Методика «Время года»

Цель: изучение наглядно-образного мышления детей.

Проведение исследования: Ребенку показывают рисунок и просят, внимательно посмотрев на этот рисунок, сказать, какое время года изображено на каждой части данного рисунка. За отведенное на выполнение этого задания временя – 2 мин. – ребенок должен не только назвать соответствующее время года, но и обосновать свое мнение о нем, т.е. объяснить, почему он так думает, указать те признаки, которые по его мнению, свидетельствуют о том, что на данной части рисунка показано именно это, а не какое-либо иное время года.

Оценка результатов:

10 баллов – за отведенное время ребенок правильно назвал и связал все картинки с временами года, указав на каждой из них не менее двух признаков, свидетельствующих о том, что на картинке изображено именно данное время года (всего не менее 8 признаков по всем картинкам).

8-9 баллов – ребенок правильно назвал и связал с нужными временами года все картинки, указав при этом 5-7 признаков, подтверждающих его мнение, на всех картинках, вместе взятых.

6-7 баллов – ребенок правильно определил на всех картинках времена года, но указал только 3-4 признака, подтверждающих его мнение.

4-5 баллов – ребенок правильно определил время года только на одной - двух картинках из 4-х и указал только 1-2 признака в подтверждение своего мнения.

0-3 балла – ребенок не смог правильно определить ни одного времени года и не назвал точно ни одного признака.

Выводы об уровне развития.

10 баллов - очень высокий; 8-9 баллов – высокий; 6-7 баллов - средний

4 - 5 баллов – низкий 0-3 балла - очень низкий

 

 

Communicative Competence

Domain-General vs Domain-Specific Views of Cognition

A mental phenomenon is called a competence (e.g., Chomsky 1980) when it is conceived of as yielded by the functioning of a mental organ, that is, of an innately dedicated part of the mind/brain. Human language has been considered a prototypical example for 4 decades now, at least as far as grammar is concerned. In recent years, several theories have been proposed that posit the existence of other faculties, from face recognition to deontic reasoning and social exchange, thus giving rise to a lively debate between domain-general and domain-specific views of cognition.

The domain-general stance postulates the existence of a core, or central, cognitive system, whose functioning is characterized by general principles of cognition that are independent of whether their specific content regards communication or, say, physical causality. These princi­ples hold across the different domains where the mind operates and may be formulated, e.g., as general laws of cognition (in the fashion of Sperber & Wilson's, 1986, principle of relevance, or of Newell's, 1990, proposal of SOAR) or abstract inferential schemes (like those found in Newell & Simon's, 1972, or Johnson-Laird's, 1983, theories of human reasoning). Fodor's thesis of the language of thought (1975, 1983; Fodor & Pylyshyn 1989) is paradigmatic of this perspective.

The other side of the controversy holds instead that the mind operates with different princi­ples in each domain because the ways of interpreting the world and acting in it that constitute adaptive cognition in one domain are unlikely to keep their utility in another so that no "adaptiv-ity-preserving" generalization is guaranteed to hold across domains. The search for general laws of cognition is therefore doomed to fail unless such laws are formulated so vaguely as to lose much of their scientific interest. The study of the architecture of cognition should consequently follow the natural decomposition of the mind/brain into specialized organs rather than an ab­stract, unwarranted decomposition into allegedly general-purpose perceptual, storing, reason­ing, and acting subsystems.

There is no room here to provide a review of the debate; suffice it to say that, in my view, theoretical considerations (Cosmides& Tooby 1994a; James 1890; Minsky 1985; Pinker 1997) as well as empirical findings in evolutionary psychology (Barkow, Cosmides & Tooby eds. 1992; Cosmides & Tooby 1994b) and in developmental psychology (Hirschfeld& Gelman eds. 1994; Karmiloff-Smith 1992; Spelke 1994) strongly suggest a decentralized, faculty-based view of cognition.

A domain-specific perspective is also in better agreement with current advancements in neu-rosciences, providing increasing evidence against the idea that vast areas of the brain may be dedicated to the sort of unspecific, equipotential processing that is definitional of a centralized architecture.

Let us define a domain as a specific type of interaction between an agent and its subjective environment, or, circularly, as the class of problems that admit of a certain class of solutions. Communication seems a natural candidate for this definition. The idea of a distinct communica­tive competence, however, has been taken into little account: implicitly or (more seldom) ex­plicitly, and with very few exceptions, most researchers view communication as just an aspect of the functioning of a general-purpose cognitive system (e.g., Cohen & Levesque 1990b; Kasher 1991a, 1991b; Sperber & Wilson 1986; Wilson & Sperber 1991).

It is the aim of the rest of this section to argue in favor of a competence view of communica­tion. Communicative competence does not have to be similar in nature to the Universal Grammar that has been hypothesized for language. Rather, the problem of whether communi­cation should be viewed as a faculty may be reframed within the metatheoretical perspective outlined in the previous sections as the problem of whether it requires a dedicated cognitive dy­namic. The issue requires a little bit of technical discussion.

Задание на составление сказки

Тема: Составление сказки с использованием серии сюжетных картинок по сказке «У страха глаза велики».

Цель: изучение уровня развития речи детей.

Оборудование: серия сюжетных картинок по сказке «У страха глаза велики».

Ход занятия:

Воспитатель сообщает детям, что сегодня дети будут составлять сказку по картинке. Просит вспомнить, как обычно начинаются сказки и как заканчиваются. Предлагает назвать известные им сказки.

Затем дети называют свои любимые сказки и воспитатель предлагает детям вспомнить известную им сказку «У страха глаза велики».

Воспитатель начинает рассказывать:

По синю морю, корабль бежит,

Серый волк на носу стоит,

А медведь паруса крепит.

Заюшка кораблик за веревку ведет,

Лисичка из-за кустика хитро глядит:

Как бы зайку украсть.

Как бы веревку сорвать.

Это еще не сказка, а присказка,

а сказка вся впереди.

Воспитатель прерывается на этом и говорит:

«Вы узнали сказку? Давайте сегодня попробуем рассказать ее сами, но изменим некоторые моменты, т.е. составим новую сказку. Картинки помогут вам в этом».

 

Беседа «Как поступить?»

Беседа «Как поступить?» является адаптированным Г.А. Урунтаевой, Ю.А. Афонькиной вариантом и представляет собой комплекс вопросов:

- Нужно ли делиться игрушками с другими детьми? Почему?

- Нужно ли принимать в свою игру других детей, если они просят об этом? Почему?

- Можно ли драться, если другой ребенок отобрал у тебя игрушку? Почему?

- Можно ли без спроса брать чужие вещи? Почему?

- Можно ли шуметь, когда другие отдыхают? Почему?

- Можно ли вертеться на занятиях, мешать заниматься другим детям? Почему?

2. Опрос детей на тему «Права ребенка»

- Знаешь ли ты, что у каждого ребенка есть свои права?

- Как ты думаешь, что такое право?

- Как ты понимаешь слова «иметь право»?

- Какие права есть у тебя и других детей?

- Кто защищает права детей?

- Можешь ли ты сам защитить свои права и права других детей?

- Что такое обязанность? Какие обязанности есть у тебя?

 

 

Mind/Brain Dynamics

An agent's mind at any slice of time can now be described as a set of mental states with their contents, like Ann is bored with staying at home or Bob believes that Ann believes that it is about to rain. Since an adaptive mind/brain has to keep tightly coupled to a world that is dy­namic, however, it is better described as whole sequences of mental states across time than as isolated, instantaneous states. Let us call such sequences cognitive dynamics (Tirassa 1997).

Once unfolded, the umbrella episode of "Mentalist Theories of Communication" reports two such dynamics that, taken together, provide the set of events that a theory of communication is expected to describe and explain. One dynamics is Ann's: she looks out of the window, notices that there are clouds in the sky, forms the expectations that it will rain and that Bob will get wet, decides to suggest to him to take an umbrella, and finally plans and executes a suitable communicative act. As for Bob, he is dressing and probably minding his own business, but immedi­ately shifts his attention toward Ann, reads her behavior as communicative, comprehends it, re­flects upon its meaning, makes up his mind in accordance, and finally decides to take an um­brella and maybe to thank Ann for her kindness. Clearly, these events are intimately tied to each other: each is caused by the one that immediately precedes and causes in its turn the one that will immediately follow. Where does this causality come from?

Unless one is willing to be a dualist and to accept the problems that then follow conscious­ness and Intentionality have to be conceived as material properties of an agent's functioning brain — hence talk of mind/brain, rather than mind (or brain) alone, throughout this article. Like all the material properties of a physical object, the state of an agent's mind/brain at any slice of time will therefore play a causal role in the state of her mind/brain at the following slice of time, together with cooccurring factors that may affect this functioning, like the activity of sensory receptors or of a drug.

An agent's cognitive dynamics across time thus results from the interaction of her mind/brain with the surrounding (mental, bodily, physical, and social) environment. The specific pattern of this interaction is rooted in turn in the phylogenetic and ontogenetic events that have shaped the agent's mind/brain.

Cognitive Architecture

We can now define the architecture of an agent's mind as the set of cognitive dynamics she may entertain; communication, as we will see in the next section, is one such dynamic.

It can clearly not be the goal of cognitive science to describe each and every particular mental state or cognitive dynamic an agent may entertain, that is, to list the whole set of her possible thoughts; nor can it be the goal of a theory in pragmatics to describe each and every possible instance of communicative interaction. That would correspond to conceiving of the goal of, say, linguistics as the list of all the possible sentences in all the possible languages, an idea that has been repeatedly proved absurd.

Something more general is needed. The solution, in pragmatics as in linguistics or in cogni­tive science at large, is to describe the system under study as the engine that is capable of gen­erating all and only the relevant mental phenomena, be they instances of communicative interac­tion, sentences, or whatever. As far as mentalist theories of pragmatics are concerned, this cor­responds to describing what I have called the Intentional primitives of a communicating mind. In this interpretation, it is the aim of such theories to provide an abstract (that is, not exten-sional, or conceptually dependent on specific examples) definition of communication as the type of cognitive dynamic that a certain agent (or species of agents) will entertain in a certain type of situation.

Each mentalist theory of pragmatics can therefore be distinguished according to what cogni­tive dynamic it defines as communication; that is, to precisely what Intentional primitives it takes to underlie communication and in what type of situation it takes those primitives to partici­pate. This will, by necessity, build on some specific view of human cognition: each theory can thus be located within the various debates on the nature and the architecture of the mind/brain. In this perspective, the issue that is most crucial to the relationships between pragmatics and cognitive science at large (and therefore the one that will be discussed here) is the view of com­munication as competence or performance.

Задание 3. Цель: определить уровень знания характерных особенностей

времен года.

Оборудование: Дидактическая игра «Времена года».

Проведение: Ребенку предлагались картинки с изображением времен года и предлагалось подобрать к ним соответствующие картинки (картинки, подходящие по содержанию к каждому времени года, на которых изображены явления живой природы, деятельность людей в определенное время года) (Приложение 3). Воспитатель по ходу выполнения задавал вопросы по каждому времени года.

Оценка результатов деятельности.

Высокий уровень (3 балла). Ребенок знает времена года, правильно называет их. Знает характерные признаки каждого времени года. Замечает и называет состояние погоды, явления природы (тепло, холодно, идет дождь, снег, светит солнце, дует ветер), их взаимосвязь (солнце – светло, тепло; нет солнца – пасмурно, и т.д.

Средний уровень (2 балла). Ребенок правильно называет времена года. В назывании явлений природы допускает незначительные ошибки. В основном знает характерные признаки каждого времени года, но иногда допускает незначительные ошибки.

Низкий уровень (1 балл). Ребенок не всегда правильно называет времена года. Затрудняется в определении явлений природы, состояния погоды. Не знает характерных признаков разных времен года.

 

 

Neuropragmatics

So far, this discussion has been mostly analytical. To be sure, this is partly due to my scientific concerns, that are, admittedly, primarily theoretical. But another, more general reason is that lit­tle evidence can as yet be reported in favor of or against the general framework I have outlined — and even less in favor of or against specific (classes of) theories within it.

Theoretical pragmatics is far from reaching a consensus on even its own fundamentals; fur­thermore, much research takes place in areas that, like philosophy or artificial intelligence, have a limited interest, if any, in the actual functioning of the human mind/brain. On the other hand, empirical research has often not been guided by clear, well-expressed theories; what is worse, even when such theories are available, the generation and evaluation of precise predictions is an intricate and debatable matter.

In this section I submit a few considerations about how cognitive pragmatics and neuropsy-chology may bear on each other. In this perspective, there are at least four related main assump­tions of my theoretical framework that may lend themselves to empirical scrutiny: (1) communi­cation is independent of the expressive means that are employed in its service; (2) communica­tion may be dealt with in Intentional terms; (3) communication requires specific Intentional primitives; and (4) communication is a faculty, or domain.

These four assumptions are discussed in their turn in the rest of this section. My readings of the evidence currently available are hardly compelling; what I want to show, however, is not so much that one theory fares better than another, but that some evidence is available and that more can be collected with an adequate scientific effort.

Communication Is Independent of the Expressive Means Employed

Of the four issues mentioned, this is the less problematic from an empirical point of view, given the double dissociability of language and communication.

Aphasia is a selective damage to (part of) an individual's linguistic skills that, however, often affects only mildly the effectiveness of her communication: the array of expressive means em­ployed undergoes restructuring based on a creative use of the remaining linguistic and paralin-guistic abilities as well as of gestures, drawings, and so on (de Bleser & Weisman 1986; Feyereisen& Seron 1982; Guilford & O'Connor 1982; Holland 1982; Joanette & Brownell eds. 1991; Penn 1987; Penn & Cleary 1988; Wilcox, Albyn & Leonard 1978). The impairment is so specific to language that even the overall organization of discourse is often substantially spared (Caplan 1992). These observations have made the focus of rehabilitation shift from the attempt to simply restore linguistic functions to new approaches aimed at enhancing the overall effectiveness of the individual's communication via the mastery of all the expressive channels available (Davis & Wilcox 1981, 1985; Howard & Hatfield 1987).

Conversely, nonaphasic impairments in communication are often observed after certain types of brain damage, like strokes to the right hemisphere in a left-handed individual or head trauma. As regards the latter, for example, Bruno Bara, Marina Zettin, and I investigated the commu­nicative abilities of a group of closed-head injured subjects from which individuals showing any symptom of aphasia had been excluded (Bara, Tirassa& Zettin 1997). The protocol we devised investigated the subjects' understanding of simple linguistic interactions taking place between couple of characters in a series of brief videotaped scenes.

The subjects scored significantly lower than the controls on each scene but the simplest. Even more interestingly, the theory we used for reference (Airenti, Bara & Colombetti, 1993) allowed us to draw principled predictions of which types of interactions the subjects would find more and less difficult to understand and therefore to order them in a trend of difficulty going from direct speech acts, to simple indirect speech acts, to complex indirect speech acts, to ironies, and finally to deceits. These predictions were confirmed by the data.

Also, the results we obtained on direct and indirect speech acts (see "Communication Requires Specific Intentional Primitives" below) showed that mere language comprehension is not sufficient, even in the simplest situation, for the understanding of pragmatic meaning — that is, that there always is more to communication than just language.

All these different bodies of empirical evidence are easily explained if communication as a cognitive process is taken to be independent of superficial means of expression. This position also fits well with the basic tenets of Chomskyan linguistics (that views language as a distinct, modular faculty) as well as with data from developmental pragmatics (Airenti 1998; Bara, Bosco & Bucciarelli 1999; Trevarthen & Hubley 1978) and cognitive ethology (Burling 1993; Premack 1986) to the effect that infants and possibly, in their own way, nonhuman primates are capable of Intentional communication in spite of their lack of properly linguistic abilities.

Задание 5. Цель: выявление практических навыков бережного отношения к объ­ектам природы.

Инструкция к проведению: животных уголка природы на короткое время оставляли без еды, за­грязнили их воду невредными добавками, поставили в живой уголок горшок с цветком с сухой землей. Каждому ребенку индивидуально предлагалось поухаживать за обитателями уголка природы.

Оценка практических навыков бережного отношения к объ­ектам природы (задание № 5) проводилась по следующим показателям: а) знание признаков «ухоженности» животного / растения (0-1 балл); б) знание способов ухода за животными / растениями (0-1 балл); в) владение практическими навыками ухода за животными / растениями (0-1 балл).

Оценка результатов деятельности.

Высокий уровень (3 балла). Ребенок правильно оценивал ситуацию и самостоятельно решал её.

Средний уровень (2 балла). Ребенок правильно оценивал ситуацию, но принимал не совсем вер­ное решение.

Низкий уровень (1 балл) - ребенок не справился с поставленной задачей.

 

Mentalist Theories of Communication

Grice (1957) defines communication as an overt interaction between two (or more) agents, one meaning something by a certain action in a certain context and the other inferring from the ob­servation of that action to its presumed communicative meaning. Communicative meaning is in turn conceived of as the effect that the first agent overtly intends to achieve on the partner's mental processes.

Suppose that, while Bob is dressing to go to work, Ann looks out of the window and says "I think it's about to rain" and that Bob then decides to take an umbrella with him.1 In Grice's account, as spelled out by Strawson (1964), this is a case of (successful) communication if Ann, by her utterance: (1) intends to induce Bob to take an umbrella; (2) intends Bob to recog­nize intention (1); (3) intends such recognition to be (part of) Bob's reason for taking an um­brella; and if Bob recognizes Ann's intentions [1 — 3] in his turn.

This analysis is rightfully regarded as the starting point of contemporary theories of com­munication. Let us now consider the kind of explanatory framework it offers, postponing to a later section a discussion of a technical drawback it presents.

The key feature of Grice's account is that it is cast in mentalist terms: from the viewpoints both of the external observer and of the agents described, communication is conceived of as a

1 Individual agents are referred to in the feminine; in the case of communication, the feminine is used for the first agent involved and the masculine for the other(s).

mental phenomenon rather than as mere behavior. The analysis is concerned with Ann's and Bob's respective thoughts, to which their perceivable behaviors only provide a hint.

To take this perspective brings to several interesting consequences. The first is that if com­munication is to be regarded as a type of action aimed at affecting a partner's mental states, then the specific means used to that end are hardly relevant as long as they are appropriate, that is, as long as the partner may still use them as clues to the reconstruction of the agent's intentions. From the standpoint of a theory of communicative agency, language in the human species is but one of a vast panoply of expressive means, on a par with various kinds of gestures, drawings, and other external codes (which is not to deny that each code has unique features): Ann could have opted for many other possible utterances or nonlinguistic actions, such as simply handing Bob the umbrella with a smile.

Second, to understand a communicative act becomes a matter of abduction rather than de­duction. Bob's problem is, given Ann's behavior, should I consider it as communicative, for a start? And why has she acted like that? What stance should I take toward what she has meant? His interpretation of Ann's action as a suggestion to take an umbrella will, by necessity, be un­certain: for what he knows, she could have meant something very different like, say, "you don't need to water the flowers today."

Third, mere comprehension is but the first step to successful communication: Ann does not utter her sentence for the sake of it, but with the aim of modifying Bob's mental states, and it is this final outcome that will provide the measure of her success. What counts as success, fur­thermore, is not obvious: Ann's goal is probably that Bob avoids gets drenched with rain rather than specifically that he takes an umbrella so that other reactions on his part (e.g., to call for a taxi, to wear a raincoat, or to simply give up to get out) might as well satisfy her.

These considerations explain the intricacies of doing empirical research in this area. Since pragmatic inferences can never be safe, the concept of a correct answer (or, in general, of a good performance) can only be defined very loosely; to evaluate the communicative skills of an individual is accordingly difficult.

However, what is most important to our current discussion is that, on a mentalist account, communication and language are decoupled from each other. The study of communication falls no more in the domain of linguistics: far from being concerned with "language use," it becomes part of the study of agency and social agency. This opens the way in turn to the idea (that is de­fended in a later section) of a communicative competence, conceptually distinct from other cognitive faculties as well as from language and the other means of expression — though obvi­ously related to them when performance is considered.