9 Cooperation in com

Question 1

relationship between communication and cooperation

Answer 1

• How human communication requires cooperation
  
  • How people request and give assistance
    A normative preference for cooperative responses

Question 2

pointing gestures

Answer 2

• Recipients understand what a gesture does by using the three principles seen in Week 1
  • Use of the three principles requires cooperative thinking
  • Let’s consider three important communicative actions (Tomasello, 2008): requesting, informing, sharing

Question 3

requesting

Answer 3

producers assume recipients are motivated to cooperate

Question 4

offering information

Answer 4

p assumtion that r want to be helpful

Question 5

sharing

Answer 5

p assume that r will be interested in hearing the story

Question 6

cooperative thinking and communication

Answer 6

• Fundamental communicative actions (requesting, informing, sharing) rely upon cooperative assumptions and motivations
  • With the ‘cooperative turn’ (week 2), our species started to rely on cooperation for its adaptation and survival
  • Communication emerged on the back of already existing cooperative thinking○ Human communication requires cooperative thinking and normative expectations that communicators will be cooperative (Grice, 1975)

Question 7

how people ask for help? (Curl, 2006; Kendrick & Drew, 2016)

Answer 7

in many cases people only describe their problem, and others spontaneously offer assistance (Curl, 2006; Kendrick & Drew, 2016)

- Recipients listen out for the implications of what others say; for example, in terms of their needs and wants (Tomasello, 2008)

- This shows that communication is driven by cooperative thinking and cooperative motivations

	○ Note: what risks are associated with ‘describing a problem’ as a way of seeking assistance? Also remember our discussion about neurodivergence in week 2.

Question 8

cooperation does not always require talk? (Kendrick & Drew 2016)

Answer 8

research suggests people can obtain assistance when they visibly look for an object in a room.

or by body language; e.g. showing a picture in a book, someone tilts their head suggesting trouble seeing, so person turns the book so he can see

Question 9

Alternative responses to initiating actions

Answer 9

humans have a preference for cooperative responses, often involve question and answer however…

alternative responses to initiating actions are often possible (e.g. accepting or declining an invitiation)

different ways to produce these types of responses

Question 10

preferred responses

Answer 10

A makes proposal

B accepts (quickly and with a turn without elaboration)

cooperative

Question 11

dispreferred responses

Answer 11

A makes a proposal

B may not reject explicitly; silence followed by “well” “i dont know” and then mentions other arrangement, implying an inability to accept A’s proposal

Question 12

speakers can modify their initiating action, anticipating a dispreferred response

Answer 12

e.g. when hear a silence and then “well”, person A can modify their question, one which would then allow person B to respond with a preferred response

e.g. “do you want to go..” “um well..” “or are you busy” “yeah i have plans”

Question 13

note on delayed responses

Answer 13

gaps longer than 0.2 seconds can be meaningful to pps (departing from the minimisation of gaps rule)

gaps are also meaningful as they indicate a problem

They are treated this way because of the notion of PREFERENCE in the organisation of communicative action

Question 14

preference

Answer 14

refers to social norms that favour some responses over others (not referring to personal favours).

responses that support an initiating action are preferred (they’re delivered straight-forwardly and quickly)

Not supporting an initiating action is dispreferred; evidenced by delayed and accompanied by explanations. quite often not an explicit rejection = needs to be inferred by the producer

Question 15

evidence for the preference for cooperation (Kendrick & Torreira, 2015; Stivers, 2010)

Answer 15

found dispreffered responses often start with delays “um” “well”

Stivers - 72% of questions received a ‘yes’ response (people could dislike saying no, but also could be that questioners actively avoid questions that are likely to have a no response)

Question 16

reading: what does person A do if a silence over the second half of a second do?

Answer 16

silence as communicative action

- Person A will rephrase when there is a break in convo 

• this changes the bias of the question in such a way that ‘no’ becomes the preferred response, therefore B can continue without delay

questioners will usually ask questions that will create a preferred response

Question 17

reading: why do speaker B’s leave a gap/ use delays before giving a ‘dispreferred’ response?

Answer 17

they leave enough of a gap to show that what is coming is not the preferred kind of response - signals on purpose

Question 18

reading: are yes/no question answers quicker or non-answers? (e.g. idk)

Answer 18

answers versus nonanswer responses—we found that the average answer (yes, no, or equivalent) started earlier than the overall average response: at around 150 milliseconds from the end of the question.

The nonanswer responses started on average much later: at around 650 milliseconds after the end of the question

Question 19

reading: what type of response usually starts with non-words (umm)

Answer 19

In nearly half of the dispreferred responses, the first sound one hears is not a word at all, but an in-breath (or click, that is, a “tut” or “tsk” sound).

By contrast, preferred actions mostly do not start with these nonword sounds (only 17 percent do)