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- Volume 3, Issue, 1995
Pragmatics & Cognition - Volume 3, Issue 2, 1995
Volume 3, Issue 2, 1995
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Communicating attention: Gaze position transfer in cooperative problem solving
Author(s): Boris M. Velichkovskypp.: 199–223 (25)More LessThe results of two experiments, in which participants solved constructive tasks of the puzzle type, are reported. The tasks were solved by two partners who shared the same visual environment hut whose knowledge of the situation and ability to change it to reach a solution were different. One of the partners — the "expert" — knew the solution in detail but had no means of acting on this information. The second partner — the "novice " — could act to achieve the goal, but knew very little about the solution. The partners were free to communicate verbally. In one third of the trials of the first experiment, in addition to verbal communication, the eye fixations of the expert were projected onto the working space of the novice. In another condition the expert could use a mouse to show the novice relevant parts of the task configuration. Both methods of facilitating the 'joint attention' state of the partners improved their performance. The nature of the dialogues as well as the parameters of the eye movements changed. In the second experiment the direction of the gaze-position data transfer was reversed, from the novice to the expert. This also led to a significant increase in the efficiency of the distributed problem solving.
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Pragmatic considerations in semantic analyses
Author(s): Ruth Manorpp.: 225–245 (21)More LessIn this paper I argue against a sharp separation of semantics from pragmatics. While it may be useful to consider semantics independently of pragmatics, in some cases this strategy may lead us astray. First, I make a methodological point. Competing semantic analyses are often presented as supported by competing semantic intuitions of native speakers. Functional considerations are pragmatic considerations which should affect our choice of semantics. These are inferences from the linguistic goals the speakers actually achieve to the meanings their expressions must therefore have. Second, there are linguistic expressions whose semantic (literal) meaning is a function of their pragmatic uses.I consider two examples. First, the logicians' debate over the universal analysis of conditionals in natural language. The participants in the debate all ignore conditional forms other than the assertoric and subjunctive. In particular they ignore the conditional speech-act reading. The meaning of the conditional is related to its function: to restrict the commitment of a given speech-act to special conditions. A functional proof of the existence of such conditionals (even in the assertoric mood) is given, thus showing that the different semantics account only for part of the relevant facts. The second example concerns vague terms. I claim that one of their main uses is to help us identify objects by reference not to their absolute properties but relative to their background. This function cannot be performed by the use of non-vague terms. Vague terms are context dependent and may in some contexts be used non-vaguely and refer to distinct objects in the discourse domain. In a way, what these terms end up denoting is a function of the use of predicates to partition a given domain.
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A hybrid architecture for text comprehension: Elaborative inferences and attentional focus
Author(s): Jesus Ezquerro Martínez and Mauricio Iza Miqueleizpp.: 247–279 (33)More LessO'Brien et al. (1988) reported that readers generated elaborative inferences only when a text contained characteristics (a strong biasing context or a demand sentence) that made it easy to predict the specific inference that a reader would draw, and virtually eliminated the possibility of the inference being discon-firmed. Garrod et al. (1990), however, offered two qualifications to these conclusions. First, the two text characteristics manipulated may have produced different types of elaborative inferencing: a biasing context results in a passive form of elaborative inferencing, involving setting up a context of interpretation, whereas the presence of a demand sentence invites the reader to actively predict a subsequent expression. Secondly, clear evidence for either type of inference will be apparent only with truly anaphoric materials.This work describes how a passive form of elaborative inferencing, reported by Garrod et al, may be implemented in a connectionist manner. We take the connectionist model proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde (1993) in order to represent a text in the form of a network. Next we analyze and discuss how an attentional focus could operate with the proposed reasoner system in order to deal with inference control and anaphora resolution (i.e., antecedent activation), during text understanding. Our own suggestion is that the system proposed by Shastri and Ajjanagadde could be extended by incorporating focus in order to apply it to some open problems related to text processing. However, this extension presents implementational problems due to its local character. Distributed models seem to be in a better position to deal with the shift of the attentional states, given that these systems can learn. Particularly, the model proposed by Sun (1994) is close to our aims, and so we will discuss its implications in order to design a cognitive architecture for text comprehension.
Volumes & issues
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Volume 31 (2024)
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Volume 30 (2023)
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Volume 29 (2022)
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Volume 28 (2021)
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Volume 27 (2020)
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Volume 26 (2019)
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Volume 25 (2018)
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Volume 24 (2017)
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Volume 23 (2016)
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Volume 22 (2014)
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Volume 21 (2013)
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Volume 20 (2012)
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Volume 19 (2011)
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Volume 18 (2010)
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Volume 17 (2009)
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Volume 16 (2008)
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Volume 15 (2007)
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Volume 14 (2006)
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Volume 13 (2005)
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Volume 12 (2004)
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Volume 11 (2003)
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Volume 10 (2002)
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Volume 9 (2001)
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Volume 8 (2000)
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Volume 7 (1999)
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Volume 6 (1998)
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Volume 5 (1997)
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Volume 4 (1996)
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Volume 3 (1995)
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Volume 2 (1994)
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Volume 1 (1993)
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