A Theory of Communicative Competence

An Architecture for Communication

Another account of communicative competence has been proposed by me (Tirassa 1997). This work is, as yet, rather underdeveloped in comparison with that of Airenti, Bara & Colombetti (1993); however, it explicitly takes architectural issues into account, proposing a domain-spe­cific perspective on the mind/brain.

The theory is based on the agent's rather than the understander's perspective. An agent is defined as an Intentional, conscious organism who lives in a situation (that is, a subjective, open, and changeable interpretation of the world) and strives to make it more to her liking. Although her knowledge of the situation can never be complete, she can improve it by zooming in (or out) on the environment, by reasoning from previous knowledge, and so on. The situa­tion thus evolves in accordance to the agent's knowledge and interests as well as to the changes she perceives in the world.

The agent has to be situated, that is, her mind/brain has to be coupled to the dynamics of the world. Situativity is necessary because of the impossibility for the agent to forecast and antici­pate all the possible evolutions of the current situation and is in turn made possible by the rejec­tion of the information-processing postulate on the nature of cognition in favor of a biologically based conception of the mind/brain (see "Mind/Brain Dynamics"; Searle 1983, 1992; Tirassa 1994, 1999).

3 No discussion of the architecture of the mind/brain is found in Airenti, Bara & Colombetti's (1993) paper. The responsibility for this interpretation of their work is therefore solely mine.

Communication is an overt attempt to reach a situation that be relatively satisfactory to all the participants. An agent's situativity in communication consists in a coupling between the cogni­tive dynamic she entertains and that that she ascribes to the partners. Communication thus de­pends on the agent-based subjective ontology that is typical of a socially sophisticated species like ours and can be described as mindreading plus communicative planning with no need to re­sort to the fixed set of behavior-based scripts that is instead a common feature of most theories of dialogue.4

The cognitive dynamic underlying communication is described as the interplay of several epistemic and volitional primitives. The former comprise beliefs and shared beliefs; the latter comprise desires, future-directed intentions, and present-directed intentions. Given the current interpretation of the situation, desires are involved in the generation of future-directed inten­tions; the latter control whole segments of dialogue and are involved in their turn in the genera­tion of present-directed intentions that finally control the generation of single communicative acts. A further mental state type of liking is defined that deals with the choice between the vari­ous courses of action possible at each level, thus playing the role of a highly simplified motiva­tional system.

An agent's actions in dialogue consist, within the scope of her future-directed intentions, in a turn-by-turn generation of suitable present-directed intentions to communicate along with feed­back revision of her relevant desires and future-directed intentions. The whole process depends on the interaction of this cognitive dynamic with that she ascribes to her partner: she will act so to push the interaction toward a situation that she considers relatively satisfactory.

Since the same description applies to each participant, communication may be viewed as the cooperative construction of a situation that is relatively satisfactory to all the agents involved. Each agent will keep the conversation up as long as she considers this useful and possible; that is, as long as she believes that it may bring some worthy improvement in her situation and that her partner is still willing to interact in his turn.

Задание 2. Цель: определить уровень знания характерных особенностей расти­тельного мира.

Оборудование: Карта с изображением травы, деревьев, цветов. Карточки-модели с изображением частей дерева, частей растений.

Воспитатель просил показать на карте деревья, траву, цветы. Спрашивал названия деревьев, изображенных на картине (ель, береза). Спрашивал, чем ель отличается от березы, что у них общего. Далее воспитатель предлагал карточки-модели с изображением частей дерева и просил собрать дерево, называя при этом его части. Аналогично собиралось растение. Затем воспитатель подводил ребенка к уголку природы и просил назвать части комнатного растения, затем задавал вопросы по уходу за комнатными растениями.

Оценка результатов деятельности.

Высокий уровень (3 балла). Ребенок различает траву, деревья, цветы. Называет их отличительные признаки (трава низкая, деревья – высокие, цветы разной окраски, имеют запах). Различает березу и ель. Называет их отличительные признаки (у березы – листья, ствол белый с черными пятнами; у ели – листьев нет, есть иголки). Называет соответствующим словом. Понимает необходимость ухода за комнатными растениями, рассказывает, как нужно ухаживать. Узнает некоторые овощи и фрукты, называет соответствующим словом.

Средний уровень (2 балла). Допускает незначительные ошибки в называниях отличительных признаков деревьев, травы, цветов.

Различает березу и ель, затрудняется в назывании отличительных признаков березы и ели, называет их с помощью наводящих вопросов. Затрудняется в выделении частей дерева, растения (выделяет не все части, либо не может назвать какую-то часть соответствующим словом). В различении и назывании овощей и фруктов допускает незначительные ошибки. О способах ухода за комнатными растениями рассказывает с помощью взрослого.

Низкий уровень (0-1 балл). Ребенок затрудняется называть виды растений: деревья, трава, цветы. Различает березу и ель, не может назвать отличительные признаки. Не выделяет части дерева, части растения, не может назвать соответствующим словом. Не может рассказать, как нужно ухаживать за комнатными растениями. В различении овощей и фруктов также допускает ошибки.

 

 

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.