Royka A, Chen A, Aboody R, Huanca T, Jara-Ettinger J. People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication.
Nat Commun 2022;
13:4160. [PMID:
35851397 PMCID:
PMC9293910 DOI:
10.1038/s41467-022-31716-3]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2021] [Accepted: 06/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans often communicate using body movements like winks, waves, and nods. However, it is unclear how we identify when someone’s physical actions are communicative. Given people’s propensity to interpret each other’s behavior as aimed to produce changes in the world, we hypothesize that people expect communicative actions to efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal. Using computational models of goal inference, we predict that movements that are unlikely to be produced when acting towards the world and, in particular, repetitive ought to be seen as communicative. We find support for our account across a variety of paradigms, including graded acceptability tasks, forced-choice tasks, indirect prompts, and open-ended explanation tasks, in both market-integrated and non-market-integrated communities. Our work shows that the recognition of communicative action is grounded in an inferential process that stems from fundamental computations shared across different forms of action interpretation.
Humans can quickly infer when someone’s body movements are meant to be communicative. Here, the authors show that this capacity is underpinned by an expectation that communicative actions will efficiently reveal that they lack an external goal.
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