Supplemental Material for The Social Basis of Referential Communication: Speakers Construct Physical Reference Based on Listeners’ Expected Visual Search

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers should say as much as necessary, but no more. In referential communication, the pressure to be efficient is typically formalized as an egocentric bias where speakers aim to minimize production costs. While intuitive, this view has failed to explain why people routinely produce redundant adjectives, particularly color words, or why this phenomenon varies cross-linguistically. Here we propose an alternative view of referential efficiency, whereby speakers create referential expressions designed to facilitate the listener's visual search for the referent as they process words in real time. We present a computational model of our account, the Incremental Communicative Efficiency (ICE) model, which generates referential expressions by considering listeners' expected visual search during online language processing. Our model captures a number of known effects in the literature, including cross-linguistic differences in speakers' propensity to over-specify. Moreover, our model predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming an alternative, brevity-based model. Our findings suggest that reference production is best understood as driven by a cooperative goal to help the listener identify the intended referent, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length.

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Speakers construct reference based on listeners’ expected visual search

10.31234/osf.io/89r72 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Julian Jara-Ettinger ◽

Paula Rubio-Fernandez

Keyword(s):

Visual Search ◽

Computational Model ◽

Referential Communication ◽

Human Communication ◽

Quantitative Accuracy ◽

Utterance Length ◽

Acceptability Judgments

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers ought to say as much as necessary, but no more. How speakers determine what is necessary in a given context, however, is unclear. In studies of referential communication, this expectation is often formalized as the idea that speakers should construct reference by selecting the shortest, sufficiently informative, description. Here we propose that reference production is, instead, a process whereby speakers adopt listeners’ perspectives to facilitate their visual search, without concern for utterance length. We show that a computational model of our proposal predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming brevity models. Our model also explains crosslinguistic differences in speakers’ propensity to over-specify in different visual contexts. Our findings suggest that reference production is best understood as driven by a cooperative goal to help the listener understand the intended message, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length.

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The Physiology of Social Pain

The Oxford Handbook of the Physiology of Interpersonal Communication ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190679446.013.5 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 47-68

Author(s):

Anita L. Vangelisti ◽

Nicholas Brody

Keyword(s):

Physiological Responses ◽

Cognitive Behavioral ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Physical Pain ◽

Social Pain ◽

Physiological Basis ◽

Future Directions ◽

Social Basis ◽

The Social

Social pain and physical pain have historically been conceptualized as distinct phenomena. Recent research, however, has noted several similarities between the two. The present chapter establishes the physiological basis of social pain. Further, the chapter explores the relational precedents and correlates of social pain. By synthesizing research that explores definitional elements of social pain, the reviewed literature explores the social basis of hurt. The chapter also reviews the extant research that posits similarities in the neural processing of social and physical pain. These similarities are further explained by examining findings that have emphasized parallels between cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses to both social and physical pain. Shortcomings in the current research are reviewed, and several future directions are offered for researchers interested in the physiology of social pain.

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Transforming Labour: From the Workers’ State to the Post-Socialist Re-Organization of Industry and Workplace Communities

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook ◽

10.1515/jbwg-2017-0015 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 58 (2) ◽

pp. 413-438

Author(s):

Eszter Bartha

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Historical Context ◽

Symbolic Capital ◽

Left Wing ◽

Ruling Class ◽

Social Basis ◽

Standards Of Living ◽

The Social ◽

East German

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.

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