Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants

Tibor Tauzin; György Gergely

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4

Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants

Tibor Tauzin^*, György Gergely

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Cognitive Science

Central European University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Pragmatic theories of communication assume that humans evolved a species-unique inferential capacity to express and recognize intentions via communicative actions. We show that 13-month-old non-verbal infants can interpret the turn-taking exchange of variable tone sequences between unfamiliar agents as indicative of communicative transfer of goal-relevant information from a knowledgeable to a naïve agent pursuing the goal. No such inference of information transfer was drawn by the infants, however, when a) the agents exchanged fully predictable identical signal sequences, which does not enable transmission of new information, or b) when no goal-relevant contextual change was observed that would motivate its communicative transmission. These results demonstrate that young infants can recognize communicative interactions between third-party agents and possess an evolved capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what contextually relevant information has been transmitted between the agents even without language.

Original language	English
Article number	9534
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	8
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4
State	Published - 1 Dec 2018

Access to Document

10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4License: CC BY

Cite this

@article{512710e867574d9a84bfc47a4537b501,

title = "Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants",

abstract = "Pragmatic theories of communication assume that humans evolved a species-unique inferential capacity to express and recognize intentions via communicative actions. We show that 13-month-old non-verbal infants can interpret the turn-taking exchange of variable tone sequences between unfamiliar agents as indicative of communicative transfer of goal-relevant information from a knowledgeable to a na{\"i}ve agent pursuing the goal. No such inference of information transfer was drawn by the infants, however, when a) the agents exchanged fully predictable identical signal sequences, which does not enable transmission of new information, or b) when no goal-relevant contextual change was observed that would motivate its communicative transmission. These results demonstrate that young infants can recognize communicative interactions between third-party agents and possess an evolved capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what contextually relevant information has been transmitted between the agents even without language.",

author = "Tibor Tauzin and Gy{\"o}rgy Gergely",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 The Author(s).",

year = "2018",

month = dec,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4",

language = "English",

volume = "8",

journal = "Scientific Reports",

issn = "2045-2322",

number = "1",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants

AU - Tauzin, Tibor

AU - Gergely, György

PY - 2018/12/1

Y1 - 2018/12/1

N2 - Pragmatic theories of communication assume that humans evolved a species-unique inferential capacity to express and recognize intentions via communicative actions. We show that 13-month-old non-verbal infants can interpret the turn-taking exchange of variable tone sequences between unfamiliar agents as indicative of communicative transfer of goal-relevant information from a knowledgeable to a naïve agent pursuing the goal. No such inference of information transfer was drawn by the infants, however, when a) the agents exchanged fully predictable identical signal sequences, which does not enable transmission of new information, or b) when no goal-relevant contextual change was observed that would motivate its communicative transmission. These results demonstrate that young infants can recognize communicative interactions between third-party agents and possess an evolved capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what contextually relevant information has been transmitted between the agents even without language.

AB - Pragmatic theories of communication assume that humans evolved a species-unique inferential capacity to express and recognize intentions via communicative actions. We show that 13-month-old non-verbal infants can interpret the turn-taking exchange of variable tone sequences between unfamiliar agents as indicative of communicative transfer of goal-relevant information from a knowledgeable to a naïve agent pursuing the goal. No such inference of information transfer was drawn by the infants, however, when a) the agents exchanged fully predictable identical signal sequences, which does not enable transmission of new information, or b) when no goal-relevant contextual change was observed that would motivate its communicative transmission. These results demonstrate that young infants can recognize communicative interactions between third-party agents and possess an evolved capacity for communicative mind-reading that enables them to infer what contextually relevant information has been transmitted between the agents even without language.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048956915&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4

DO - 10.1038/s41598-018-27804-4

M3 - Article

C2 - 29934630

AN - SCOPUS:85048956915

SN - 2045-2322

VL - 8

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

IS - 1

M1 - 9534

ER -

Communicative mind-reading in preverbal infants

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this