Speech-to-Text applications have made dazzling progress in recent years (e.g. Whisper). However, since they are usually intended to generate texts conform to written standards, they tend to blur marks of an oral nature (e.g. repetitions, pauses in the stream of words, phatics like er…). Thus, even if such applications suggest huge benefits in terms of working time as well as transcription accuracy, they remain inadequate for verbal exchanges analysis. Relying on a sample of transcripts from medical consultations anticipating an awake (...) brain-surgery (a research now in progress), this study aims at three goals: (i) drawing up an inventory of difficulties revealed by the use of Whisper from a speech analyst perspective; (ii) clarifying the origins of these difficulties; (iii) suggesting ways to overcome them. (shrink)

"Hetero-reformulation as a negotiation of meaning strategy. Verbal interaction and argumentation in a televised debate on identity and integration issues. This paper approaches the question of interaction through the phenomenon of reformulation, or more specifically hetero-reformulation, in a televised debate involving issues of identity and integration. The analysis will show that in a reformulation, semantic equivalence between the source utterance and the reformulated utterance does not necessarily imply argumentative co-orientation; and that the paraphrastic reformulation may also indicate a (...) lack of commitment to the utterance. Reformulation enables speakers to negotiate not only the content of the utterances and the direction the debate will take, but also the types of interactions within which they unfold. Keywords: auto-/hetero-reformulation; paraphrastic/non paraphrastic reformulation; enunciative postures; media discourse; integration. ". (shrink)

The present paper focuses on the nurse–patient relationship in forensic psychiatric care. From research in the field six categories of nurse–patient interactions are identified: ‘building and sustaining relationships’, ‘supportive/encouraging interactions’, ‘social skills training’, ‘reality orientation’, ‘reflective interactions’ and ‘practical skills training’. The content of each category of interaction in the context of forensic psychiatric care is described. A conceptual model is presented together with an empirical, philosophical and theoretical foundation for the use of verbal and social interactions in nurse–patient (...) interactions in forensic psychiatric nursing care. The implications and possible uses of the model in the practical field of forensic psychiatric care are discussed. (shrink)

IntroductionEspecially in the chronic phase, individuals with traumatic brain injury may still have impairments at the discourse level, even if these remain undetected by conventional aphasia tests. As a consequence, IwTBI may be impaired in conversational behavior and disadvantaged in their socio-communicative participation. Even though handling discourse is thought to be a basic requirement for participation and quality of life, only a handful of test procedures assessing discourse disorders have been developed so far. The MAKRO Screening is a recently developed (...) screening tool designed to assess discourse impairments. The test construction is based on psycholinguistic frameworks and the concept of macro-rules, which refer to cognitive functions responsible for organizing and reducing complex information in discourse.AimThe aim of our study was to investigate discourse processing in IwTBI in different tasks and to assess problems in communicative participation in the post-acute and chronic phase. In this context, we also aimed to analyze the influence of the severity of the initial impairment and the verbal executive abilities on the discourse performance. Additionally, the impact of macrolinguistic discourse impairments and verbal fluency on perceived communicative participation was targeted in our analysis.MethodsData from 23 IwTBI and 23 healthy control subjects have been analyzed. They completed two subtests of the MAKRO screening: Text production and Inferences. Discourse performance was examined in relation to measures of semantic fluency and verbal task-switching. Socio-communicative problems were evaluated with the German version of the La Trobe Communication Questionnaire.ResultsIwTBI showed lower test results than the control group in the two subtests of the MAKRO-Screening. Difficulties in picture-based narrative text production also indicated greater perceived difficulties in communicative participation. We also found that the subject’s performance on the MAKRO-Screening subtests can partly be explained by underlying dysexecutive symptoms and the severity of their injury. The preliminary results of our study show that cognitive-linguistic symptoms in IwTBI are also evident in the chronic phase. These can be detected with procedures referring to the discourse level, such as the MAKRO-Screening. The assessment of discourse performance should be an integral part in the rehabilitation of IwTBI in order to detect cognitive-linguistic communication disorders and to evaluate their impact on socio-communicative participation. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's interactive alignment account corresponds directly with the account Skinner gave in his book Verbal Behavior. This correspondence becomes evident when “properties of verbal stimuli” substitutes for “channels of alignment.” Skinner 's account appears to have the dual advantages of requiring fewer basic terms and integrating the field of verbal behavior with the whole field of human behavior.

Since the methods employed during teacher-learner interchange are constrained by the internal structure of a discipline, a study of the interaction amongst verbal language, technical language and structure of disciplines is at the heart of the classic problem of transfer in teaching-learning situations. This paper utilizes the analytic method of philosophy to explore aspects of the role of language in mathematics education, and attempts to harmonize mathematical meanings exposed by verbal language and the precise meanings expressed by the mathematics (...) register (MR) formulated in verbal language. While focusing on the integration of language use and meaning construction in mathematics education, the paper explores the relationship between the conceptual understanding revealed by the mathematics register and the procedural knowledge that refers to the mathematical content through ordinary discourse. (shrink)

Ensemble rehearsal in the European classical music tradition has a relatively homogenised format in which play-through, discussion, and practice of excerpts are employed to establish and agree on performance parameters of notated music. This research analyses patterns in such verbal communication during rehearsals and their development over time. Analysing two newly established ensembles that work over several months to a performance, it investigates the interaction dynamics of two closely collaborating groups and adaptation depending on task demands, familiarity with each (...) other and an upcoming deadline. A case study approach with two groups of five singers allowed in-depth exploration of individual behaviours and contributions; results are reported descriptively and supported by qualitative data. The results highlight changes over time that reflect the development of implicit interactions from explicit. They show a trajectory of opening up and closing down in terms of interactional flexibility, enabling members to significantly contribute to the group, followed by tightening the interaction to establish stability for performance. These findings and novel employment of T-pattern analysis contribute to the understanding of human group behaviour and interaction patterns leading to expert team performance. (shrink)

Recent developments in pattern analysis research have made this methodology suitable for the study of the processes that are set in motion in psychological interventions. Outcome research, based on the comparison between clinical results from treatment and control groups, has leveraged our empirical knowledge about the efficacy of psychological interventions. However, these methods of research are not precise enough for the analysis of these processes. On the contrary, pattern analysis could be a powerful tool to study moment-to-moment interactions typical of (...) psychological interventions. This is methodology is relevant because clinical psychology is experiencing a paradigm shift from a protocol for syndrome perspective to a principle-based and person-centered intervention. This evidence-based, theory-grounded, and process-oriented paradigm of clinical intervention needs new research methods to thrive. The analysis of the therapeutic relationship built into the verbal interaction between the clinician and the client is one of the cornerstones of this new era of research. So, the purpose of this article is three-fold: to discuss the role of the verbal interaction pattern analysis in the clinical context to the development of the principle-based clinical psychology, to analyze the patterns of verbal interaction in a clinical case, and to compare the results using two different methods. To reach these purposes, using the observational methodology, we have coded the verbal interaction of 16 clinical sessions with a person diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. We have analyzed the data using sequential analysis and pattern recognition algorithms. We have been able to detect typical patterns during different phases of psychological intervention. Finally, the conceptual, methodological, and empirical implications of this study will be discussed within the realms of pattern analysis research and principle-based clinical psychology. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific (...) communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

We conceptualise CSR communication as a process of reciprocal influence between organisations and their audiences. We use an illustrative case study in the form of a conflict between firms and a powerful stakeholder which is played out in a series of 20 press releases over a 2-month period to develop a framework of analysis based on insights from linguistics. It focuses on three aspects of dialogism, namely (i) turn-taking (co-operating in a conversation by responding to the other party), (ii) inter-party (...) moves (the nature and type of interaction characterising a turn, i.e. denial, apology or excuse) and (iii) intertextuality (the intensity and quality of verbal interaction between the parties). We address the question: What is the nature and type of verbal interactions between the parties? First we examine (a) whether the parties verbally interact and then (b) whether the parties listen to each other. We find evidence of dialogism suggesting that CSR communication is an interactive process which has to be understood as a function of the power relations between a firm and a specific stakeholder. Also, we find evidence of intertextuality in press releases by six firms which engage in verbal interaction with the stakeholder. We interpret this as linguistic evidence of isomorphic processes relating to CSR practices resulting from the pressure exerted by a powerful stakeholder. The lack of response by ten firms that fail to issue press releases suggests a strategy of ‘watch-and-wait’ with respect to the outcome of the conflict. (shrink)

We propose that human self-domestication favored the emergence of a less aggressive phenotype in our species, more precisely phenotype prone to replace (reactive) physical aggression with verbal aggression. In turn, the (gradual) transition to verbal aggression and to more sophisticated forms of verbal behavior favored self-domestication, with the two processes engaged in a reinforcing feedback loop, considering that verbal behavior entails not only less violence and better survival, but also more opportunities to interact longer and socialize with more conspecifics, ultimately (...) enabling the emergence of more complex forms of language. Whereas in the case of self-domestication sexual selection has been proposed to work against physical aggression traits, in the case of verbal insult the selection has been proposed to work in favor of verbal aggression. The tension between these two seemingly opposing forces gets resolved/alleviated by a tendency to replace physical aggression with verbal aggression, and with verbal behavior more generally. This also helps solve the paradox of the Self Domestication Hypothesis regarding aggression, more precisely why aggression in humans has been reduced only when it comes to reactive aggression, but not when it comes to proactive aggression, the latter exhibiting an increase with the advent of modern language. We postulate that this feedback loop was particularly important during the time period before 50 kya, arguably between 200 kya and 50 kya, when humans were not fully modern, neither in terms of their skull/brain morphology and their behavior/culture, nor in terms of their self-domestication. The novelty of our approach lies (i) in giving an active role to early forms of language in interacting with self-domestication processes; (ii) in providing specific linguistic details and functions of this early stage of grammar (including insult and humor); (iii) in supplying neurobiological, ontogenetic, and clinical evidence of a link between (reactive) aggression and (reactive) verbal behavior; (iv) in identifying a variety of proxies of the earlier stages in evolution among cognitive disorders; and (v) in identifying specific points of contact and mutual reinforcement between these two processes (self-domestication and early language evolution), including reduction in physical aggression and stress/tension, as well as sexual selection. (shrink)

Verbal irony constitutes a rough class of indirect intentional communication involving a complex interaction of language-specific and communication-general phenomena. Conversationalists use verbal irony in conjunction with paralinguistic signals such as speech prosody. Researchers examining acoustic features of speech communication usually focus on how prosodic information relates to the surface structure of utterances, and often ignore prosodic phenomena associated with implied meaning. In the case of verbal irony, there exists some debate concerning how these prosodic features manifest themselves in conversation. (...) A form-function approach can provide a valuable tool for understanding speakers' varied vocal strategies in this domain. Here I describe several ways conversationalists employ prosodic contrasts, laughter, and other speech characteristics in their attempts to communicate effectively and efficiently. The presented examples, culled from spontaneous conversation recordings, reveal just a small sample of the enormous variation in delivery styles speakers adopt when communicating with ironic language. (shrink)

This article has a dual purpose: on the one hand, it aims to add to the study of text production from a formulation-centered perspective ; on the other, since the analysis and discussion of linguistic problems presented here focus on a specific discourse type within scientific communication, this article is intended as a contribution to scientific communication studies. As I am particularly interested in text production as a process, the corpus I examine consists of oral interviews. In particular, I explore (...) the oral interaction between scientists and specialized journalists that precedes the writing of science popularization texts targeted for the lay reader. I analyze and assess, from a structural and functional point of view, two types of recurrent formulation procedures usually deployed by experts: `illustration' and `reformulation', and claim they constitute resources for the construction of the interlocutors' discursive identities. (shrink)

This article is aimed at introducing a French discourse analysis model, e.g. the ‘star model’, initiated by the LAA team led by Robert Vion in Aix-en-Provence, to English-speaking researchers. It will be argued that language activity is multi-dimensional and can be traced at various heterogeneous levels of speech productions belonging to macro as well as micro orders. Speakers achieve different varieties of positioning which result in negotiating an interactional space within a pre-given situation. The model is precisely designed to offer (...) a unified and comprehensive view of such heterogeneous phenomena in constant interconnection. In this study, we also intend to illustrate our approach through the analysis of two different corpora. Speakers’ strategies under extreme conditions will be analysed; the various sequences used were taken from a special corpus which we were asked to study as part of a national research programme. In order to illustrate interactional space shifts, we will also use the transcript of a meeting which took place between a patient and a medical investigator in a hospital in Marseilles. (shrink)

Les troubles du langage font partie des troubles cognitifs présents dans la maladie d’Alzheimer. Ils sont le plus souvent étudiés dans des tâches cliniques ciblées, éloignées des situations de communication naturelle. Leur but est de mettre en évidence les déficits linguistiques comme par exemple les troubles lexico-sémantiques présents dès le début de l’évolution et spécifiques de la maladie. Nous avons choisi de compléter les épreuves classiques d’évaluation du langage par l’étude d’une situation d’échange conversationnel en essayant de dégager de nouveaux (...) critères cliniques fonctionnels. Notre étude porte sur l’analyse automatique de corpus conversationnels recueillis auprès de 10 personnes âgées (moyenne d’âge = 90 ans) dont 5 présentant une maladie d’Alzheimer à un stade débutant à modéré (MMS moyen = 15/30). Nos analyses montrent des différences quantitatives et qualitatives entre les deux populations étudiées et proposent de s’intéresser davantage à l’interaction verbale pour mieux décrire le retentissement des troubles du langage sur la communication verbale des sujets avec maladie d’Alzheimer. (shrink)

This article examines the interactions of verbal and visual signifiers to advertise shares offers in the 2005 bank recapitalisation in Nigeria. It considers such signifiers as rhetorical devices to influence the prospective subscribers to invest in shares, thereby saving for the proverbial rainy day. Data for the study comprise eight adverts culled from some of Nigeria’s national daily newspapers and news magazines between March and December 2005. Lemke’s multimodal semiotic theory and Barthes’ conception of the interaction of signs as (...) encapsulated in the concepts of ‘anchorage’ and ‘relay’ provide the theoretical perspective for the data analysis. The study reveals that the advertisers creatively blend verbal and visual cues in the discourse largely to elicit certain sensibilities in the readers so as to make them think and act in the direction of the investment offer being touted. Generally, the advertisers’ appropriation of culture-specific issues in the Nigerian context, building a strong and credible brand to enhance the integrity of the respective banks and harping on the exigency of keying into the investment offers, serves as useful rhetorical appeals for the effectiveness of the multimodal semiotic resources in the discourse. (shrink)

Anders Pettersson presents a comprehensive account of the foundations of literature, grounded in an original analysis of the interactions between author and reader. Drawing on post-Gricean pragmatics and Nicholas Wolterstorff's notion of presentationality, Pettersson develops the idea of the verbal text and conveys an integrated and nuanced understanding of literary experience, its conditions, and the values it affords. In the second part of Verbal Art he systematically examines the cognitive, affective, and formal aspects of the literary work and explores their (...) interrelations.Pettersson demonstrates the implications and applications of the theory through a series of detailed studies of literary works, taking care to show that his theory is compatible with a broad variety of perspectives. Combining an intimate knowledge of modern literary theory and the aesthetics of literature with innovative applications of linguistics and cognitive psychology to the literary work, he provides a thorough treatment of fundamental problems in the area, including the concept of a text or work, the concept of form, and the distinctiveness of the literary use of language. (shrink)

The present paper describes the main discursive uses of creo, a performative form of doxastic verb creer, in oral Spanish interaction, specifically those in which the verbal form shows attenuation or intensification. To that end, this paper performs a thorough analysis of creo instances across conversational corpora (COGILA, COJEM, Val.Es.Co., Val.Es.Co. 2.0) and parliamentary debates corpora (Congreso de los Diputados, Les Corts Valencianes), with a combined 700 000 words collated as the sample. A preliminary qualitative and quantitative investigation was (...) carried out in which the goals were twofold: First, to isolate the features of each Concrete Interactive Context (CIC, Briz y Albelda, 2013) of creo in wich the doxastic verbal form appears and to identify which features favor its use (namely, register, level of dialogicity, and specific genre traits, Soler, 2019). Second, to determine what argumentative, face, or discursive factors influence the development of frequent pragmatic functions (Soler, 2018). This work finds that creo, although defined as a polyfunctional form (Simon-Vandenbergen, 2000; Gachet, 2009: Mullan, 2010), exhibits a set of three pragmatic values that affects, in different ways, the interactants’ face: affiliation or reinforcement of relations with other/-s - neutrality - de-responsibility. (shrink)

The phenomenology of auditory verbal hallucinations occurring in hypnagogic and hypnopompic states has received little attention. In a sample of healthy participants, 108 participants reported H&H AVHs and answered subsequent questions on their phenomenology. AVHs in the H&H state were found to be more likely to only feature the occasional clear word than to be clear, to be more likely to be one-off voices than to be recurrent voices, to be more likely to be voices of people known to the (...) individual than unknown persons, to be more likely to talk directly to the person rather than not, and to only rarely give commands, ask questions, or to result in an interactive conversation. Their phenomenology was similar to normative AVHs in wakefulness in that the voice-hearer was usually the target of the voice, and the voice was more likely to be of a recognized person. However, H&H AVHs differed from AVHs in wakefulness in that commands and questions were rare, and there was typically no dialogical engagement with the voice. We conclude by proposing that two distinct types of H&H AVHs may exist, based on an analysis of the phenomenology of the experience, and suggest avenues for future research. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that morphological awareness and word detection skills have facilitating roles in reading fluency; however, it is unknown whether they can interplay with each other in such roles. The present study explored the relationships of MA, word detection, and passage reading fluency across ages. In total, 180 Chinese primary and secondary school students, aged from 8.52 to 15.67 years, completed tasks for these aforementioned capacities. After controlling gender, non-verbal intelligence, and reading ability at the word level, the results (...) showed that the participants with higher scores for MA or word detection performed better in passage reading fluency. However, the predictive effect of word detection on reading fluency became weaker as the children became older. The interaction between MA and word detection was positive in younger children, whereas this interaction tended to be negative for older children. The results demonstrated a dynamic interplay between MA and word detection in contributing to passage reading fluency in Chinese children. While it has a positive interaction with word detection on reading fluency in younger children, MA may become a compensator in older children whose word detection skills are less effective in facilitating fluent reading. (shrink)

Life history shaped language as, cascading in time, social strategies became more verbal. Although the insight is important, Locke & Bogin also advocate a code model of language. Rejecting this input-output view, I emphasize the interpersonal dynamics of dialogue. From this perspective, childish minds as well as language could be derived from the selective advantages of a total interactional history.

The necessity for introducing interactionist and parallelism approaches in different branches of cognitive science emerged as a reaction to classical sequential stage-based models. Functional psychological models that emphasized and explained how different components interact, dynamically producing cognitive and perceptual states, influenced multiple disciplines. Chiefly among them were experimental psycholinguistics and the many applied areas that dealt with humans’ ability to process different types of information in different contexts. Understanding how bilinguals represent and process verbal and visual input, how their neural (...) and psychological states facilitate such interactions, and how linguistic and nonlinguistic processing overlap, has now emerged as an important area of multidisciplinary research. In this article, we will review available evidence from different language-speaking groups of bilinguals in India with a focus on situational context. In the discussion, we will address models of language processing in bilinguals within a cognitive psychological approach with a focus on existent models of inhibitory control. The paper's stated goal will be to show that the parallel architecture framework can serve as a theoretical foundation for examining bilingual language processing and its interface with external factors such as social context. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to enhance our understanding about the processing of implicit and explicit temporal chronological relations by investigating the roles of temporal connectives and verbal tenses, separately and in interaction. In particular, we investigate how two temporal connectives (ensuiteandpuis, both meaning ‘then’) and two verbal tenses expressing past time (the simple and compound past) act as processing instructions for chronological relations in French. Theoretical studies have suggested that the simple past encodes the instruction to relate events (...) sequentially, unlike the more flexible compound past, which does not. Using an online experiment with a self-paced reading task, we show that these temporal connectives facilitate the processing of chronological relations when they are expressed with both verbal tenses, and that no significant difference is found between the two verbal tenses, nor between the two connectives. By means of an offline experiment with an evaluation task, we find, contrary to previous studies, that comprehenders prefer chronological relations to be overtly marked rather than implicitly expressed, and prefer to use the connectivepuisin particular. Furthermore, comprehenders prefer it when these relations are expressed using the compound past, rather than the simple past. Instead of using thecontinuityhypothesis (Segal et al. 1991,Murray 1997) to explain the processing of temporal relations, we conclude that a more accurate explanation considers a cluster of factors including linguistic knowledge (connectives, tenses, grammatical and lexical aspect) and world knowledge. (shrink)

In attempting to solve a wide variety of tasks, people naturally seek to modify their external environment such that the physical space in which they work is more amenable or ‘congenial’ to achieving a desired outcome. Attempts to determine the effectiveness of certain artifacts or spatial reorganizations in aiding reasoners solve problems must be relativised to the difficulty of the task and the cognitive abilities of the reasoners. These factors were examined using a simple word production task with letter tiles. (...) Two sets of tiles that differed in terms of word production difficulty were selected. Participants were asked to produce as many words as they could within a finite time period for each letter set. In one group, participants were encouraged to rearrange or touch the tiles when producing words, and in the other group, participants could not interact with or point to the tiles. Participants were further split in a low and high verbal fluency group as a function of their score on the Thurstone word fluency test taken at the end of the experiment. In the high fluency group, letter rearrangement did not improve the participants’ ability to generate words. In contrast, in the low verbal fluency group, letter rearrangement significantly enhanced the ability to produce new words from both the hard and easy letter set. For these participants, the task was more taxing and the opportunity to restructure the letter set substantially elevated their performance. The advantages of a distributed cognition analysis of this and other reasoning tasks are discussed. (shrink)

As teams of people increasingly incorporate robot members, it is essential to consider how a robot's actions may influence the team's social dynamics and interactions. In this work, we investigated the effects of verbal support from a robot on human team members' interactions related to psychological safety and inclusion. We conducted a between-subjects experiment where the robot team member either gave verbal support or did not give verbal support to the human team members of a human-robot team comprised of 2 (...) human ingroup members, 1 human outgroup member, and 1 robot. We found that targeted support from the robot had a positive effect on outgroup members, who increased their verbal participation after receiving targeted support from the robot. When comparing groups that did and did not have verbal support from the robot, we found that outgroup members received fewer verbal backchannels from ingroup members if their group had robot verbal support. These results suggest that verbal support from a robot may have some direct benefits to outgroup members but may also reduce the obligation ingroup members feel to support the verbal contributions of outgroup members. (shrink)

Interactions between human beings and chatbots are gradually becoming part of our everyday social lives. It is still unclear how human–chatbot interactions, compared to human–human interactions, influence individual morality. Building on the dual-process theory of moral judgment, a secondary data analysis, and two scenario-based experiments provide sufficient evidence that HCIs support utilitarian judgments, which reduce participants' donation amount. Study 3 further demonstrates that the negative effects of HCIs can be attenuated by inducing a social-oriented communication style in chatbots’ verbal language (...) designs. These findings highlight the negative impacts of HCIs on relationships among human beings and suggest a practical intervention for nonprofit organization managers. (shrink)

The present study investigated the comprehension processes of verbal irony by clarifying the temporally distinct contributions of three information sources, namely, salience-based lexical meaning, egocentric context, and allocentric Theory of Mind. We predicted that salience-based lexical meaning initially activates the literal representation of an ironic utterance. This is immediately followed by the activation of the ironic representation supported by the automatic interaction between salience-based lexical meaning and egocentric context. Finally, overall interpretation is achieved by incorporating the information from Theory (...) of Mind, which is provided by effortful processing. Salience-based representations are retained rather than suppressed. Cognitive load prevents incorporating the allocentric information given by Theory of Mind, resulting in an egocentric interpretation. The experimental results supported our hypothesis: both ironic representations (Experiment 1) and salience-based literal representations (Experiment 2a) become active early on. Cognitive load prevented the deactivation of unintended ironic representations (Experiment 3) and did not affect the retention of salience-based representations (Experiment 4). Intentional irony required longer reading times than unintentional irony and literal utterances (Experiment 5). (shrink)

This paper reports on a quiz robot experiment in which we explore similarities and differences in human participant speech, gaze, and bodily conduct in responding to a robot’s speech, gaze, and bodily conduct across two languages. Our experiment involved three-person groups of Japanese and English-speaking participants who stood facing the robot and a projection screen that displayed pictures related to the robot’s questions. The robot was programmed so that its speech was coordinated with its gaze, body position, and gestures in (...) relation to transition relevance places, key words, and deictic words and expressions in both languages. Contrary to findings on human interaction, we found that the frequency of English speakers’ head nodding was higher than that of Japanese speakers in human-robot interaction. Our findings suggest that the coordination of the robot’s verbal and non-verbal actions surrounding TRPs, key words, and deictic words and expressions is important for facilitating HRI irrespective of participants’ native language. Keywords: coordination of verbal and non-verbal actions; robot gaze comparison between English and Japanese; human-robot interaction ; transition relevance place ; conversation analysis. (shrink)

Research on interaction in speaking assessment suggests that both verbal and nonverbal interaction are integral parts of the construct of interactional competence (Galaczi & Taylor, 2018; Plough et al., 2018; Young, 2011). However, little has been done to investigate which features significantly contribute to interactional competence scores. This study, therefore, examined which interaction features that raters noticed in individual scripted interview and paired discussion tasks to gain an insight into the interactional competence construct, providing validity evidence for (...) an inclusion of interactional competence in speaking assessment. Sixty-eight student performances were rated based on interaction rating scales. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four factors: nonverbal communication, topic management, interactional management, and interactive listening. Logistic regressions showed that while raters attended to more topic management features in the individual scripted interview task, they noticed more interactional management features in the paired discussion task. Simple regressions showed that nonverbal communication and topic management features predicted interactional competence scores in the individual scripted interview task, whereas nonverbal communication, topic management, interactional management, and interactive listening features were predictors of scores in the paired discussion task. The findings suggest that both nonverbal and verbal interaction features are important in the interactional competence construct with the paired task providing test-takers with more opportunities to demonstrate their interactional ability. (shrink)

Human diversity cannot be denied. In our everyday social interactions, we constantly experience the fact that each individual is a unique combination of characteristics with specific cultural norms, roles, personality, and mood. Efficient social interaction thus requires an adaptation of communication behaviors to each specific interlocutor that one encounters. This is especially true for non-verbal communication that is more unconscious and automatic than verbal communication. Consequently, non-verbal communication needs to be understood as a dynamic and adaptive process in the (...) theoretical modeling and study of social interactions. This perspective paper presents relevance, challenges, and future directions for the study of non-verbal adaptation in social interactions. It proposes that non-verbal adaptability is more pertinently studied as adaptation to interlocutor's inner characteristics than to interlocutor's behaviors per se, because behaviors are communication messages that individuals interpret in order to understand their interlocutors. The affiliation and control dimensions of the Interpersonal Circumplex Model are proposed as a framework to measure both the interlocutors' inner characteristics and the individuals' non-verbal responses. These measures can then be compared across different interactions to assess an actual change in behavior tailored to different interlocutors. These recommendations are proposed in the hope of generating more research on the topic of non-verbal adaptability. Indeed, after having gathered the evidence on average effects of non-verbal behaviors, the field can go further than a “one size fits all” approach, by investigating the predictors, moderators, and outcomes of non-verbal adaptation to the interlocutors' inner characteristics. (shrink)

In theatre rehearsals, actors can occasionally be seen getting stuck in the play text, which is called blanking. To overcome such textual difficulties and continue with the given text, a prompter can verbalize the line in question, thus contributing to an actor’s word search by prompting. The paper focuses on interactional practices by which prompters and actors interactionally resolve blanking situations. This study’s data comprises a case collection of 67 prompting situations, which are taken from a 200-h video corpus of (...) a rehearsal process at a professional theatre. These cases demonstrate how theatre professionals organize prompting situations and how they negotiate/sanction prompting actions such as when there was no blanking but a dramatic pause or when the dramatic performance is interrupted due to a missing prompt. In addition to the audiovisual recordings, eye tracking data of the person prompting is also used to describe the coordination of the visual resources in the context of multimodal interaction analysis. The analysis suggests that prompting and blanking persons interactively resolve blankings with the help of verbal and visual markers. (shrink)

The Mirror Game (MG) is a common exercise in dance/movement therapy and drama therapy. It is used to promote participants’ ability to enter and remain in a state of togetherness. In spite of the wide use of the MG by practitioners, it is only recently that scientists begun to use the MG in research, examining its correlates, validity and reliability. This study joins this effort by reporting on the identification of scale items to describe the nonverbal behaviour expressed during the (...) MG and its correlation to measures of attachment. Thus, we explored the application of the MG as a tool for assessing the embodiment of attachment in adulthood. Forty-eight participants (22 females, mean age = 33.2) played the MG with the same gender-matched expert players. All MG were videotaped. In addition, participants were evaluated on two central measurements of attachment in adulthood: The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Experience in Close Relationship questionnaire (ECR). To analyse the data, we developed the “mirror game scale” that coded the nonverbal behavior during the movement interaction, using 19 parameters. The sub-scales were reduced using factor analysis into two dimensions referred to as “together” and “free”. The free factor was significantly correlated to both measurements of attachment: Participants classified as having secure attachment on the AAI, received higher scores on the MG free factor than participants classified as insecure (t (46) = 7.858, p =.000). Participants who were high on the avoidance dimension on the ECR, were low on the MG free factor (r (48) =-.-285, p =.007). This is the first study to examine the MG as it is used by practitioners and its correlation to highly standardized measures. This exploratory study may be considered as part of the first steps of exploring the MG as a standardized assessment tool. The advantages of the MG as a simple, non-verbal movement interaction demonstrate some of the strengths of dance/movement and drama therapy practice. (shrink)

Counterfactual verbal irony, an evaluative form of figurative language wherein a speaker’s intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning of his or her words, is used to serve many social goals. Despite recent calls for theoretical accounts to include the factors that influence irony interpretation, few studies have examined the individual differences that may impact verbal irony interpretation. The present study examined whether adults with elevated shyness would generate more negative interpretations of ironic statements. University students with varying degrees (...) of shyness listened to stories wherein one character made literal or ironic criticisms or compliments to another character. Participants then appraised each speaker’s belief and attitude. Self-reported shyness did not predict comprehension of the counterfactual nature of ironic statements. However, shyer adults rated speakers who made ironic compliments as being meaner than did adults low in shyness. Thus, while understanding that ironic speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shyer individuals construed the social meaning of irony more negatively. Such interpretive biases may lead shy individuals to more frequently take offense at ironic compliments and experience more negativity in social interactions. (shrink)

Cet article examine comment, par leur discours, les femmes se construisent comme mère, dans leurs interactions avec leurs enfants adolescent-e-s, occasionnellement avec leurs maris, contribuant ainsi à la reproduction sociale des stéréotypes de masculinité et de féminité ou, au contraire, de quelle façon elles rompent avec la tradition et proposent des modèles alternatifs. Acceptent-elles ou non leur héritage symbolique en matière de genre? En voulant la reproduire, comment réinvestissent-elles la dimension genrée dans un contexte d’interactions verbales avec leurs adolescent-e-s, les (...) renvoyant ou pas à leurs « origines » culturelles? Les mères dépassent-elles le modèle de binarité des sexes traditionnel pour parvenir à un modèle agentif? À travers le continuum de normativité et d’agentivité, l’entre-deux prend tout son sens : en quoi l’imaginaire linguistique constitue-t-il un espace à construire, un « à travers »? This research paper examines the way women discursively construct themselves as mothers, in their interactions with their teenage children, and occasionally with their husbands, and the way they thus contribute to the social reproduction of manhood and womanhood stereotypes or on the contrary break with the tradition to propose alternative models. Do they or don’t they accept their symbolic heritage as regards sex and gender? While intending to reproduce this heritage, how do they reinvest the gendered dimension in the context of verbal interaction with their teen-agers, sending them back or not to their cultural “origins”? Do the mothers go beyond the traditional binary model of sex and gender to reach an agentive model? Through the continuum that goes from normativity to agentivity, the idea of an in-between stage makes sense: in what way does the linguistic imaginary constitute an area to be forged, a crossing space? (shrink)