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Requesting plays a key role in human communication. One can request the same thing in multiple ways (e.g., "Pass the salt" vs. "Could you pass the salt?"). How do speakers determine which request form to produce? And how does this choice affect a recipient's evaluation of a request? Previous analyses of naturalistic conversations suggest that a speaker's "entitlement" -- their expectations that the recipient of a request is able and willing to fulfill it -- can influence their formatting decisions. However, the role of entitlement in format selection has not been tested experimentally, nor is it known how a requester's entitlement impacts a recipient's evaluation of a request form. Across several online experiments, we asked whether manipulations of a speaker's entitlement influenced formatting preferences across requesters and recipients. While requesters robustly "recognized" normative mappings between entitlement and request formatting (Experiment 2), they did not necessarily follow these mappings unprompted (Experiments 1-1b); instead, they tended to produce modal interrogative requests ("Can you do X?"), regardless of entitlement. Recipients, however, systematically modulated their preferences for particular forms as a function of a requester's entitlement (Experiment 3). We also conducted exploratory analyses on the data from each experiment using human-normed judgments about entitlement and other social-interactional variables (e.g., "degree of imposition"); critically, for both Experiments 2 and 3, judgments about a requester's entitlement explained variance in participants' responses above and beyond other variables.

Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children participated in a resource task with a peer-partner, where we established ownership by assigning children to one side or the other of an apparatus and by marking resources with colors to help children keep track of them. When retrieving resources in the partner's presence, the majority of children took their own things and respected what belonged to their partner. A proportion of children in all societies also respected ownership in their partner's absence, although the strength of respect varied considerably across societies. We discuss implications for the development of ownership concepts and possible explanations for societal differences.

ABSTRACT Two views claim to account for the origins of great ape gestural forms. On the Leipzig view, gestural forms are ontogenetically ritualised from action sequences between pairs of individuals. On the St Andrews view, gestures are the product of natural selection for shared gestural forms. The Leipzig view predicts within‐ and between‐group differences between gestural forms that arise as a product of learning in ontogeny. The St Andrews view predicts universal gestural forms comprehensible within and between species that arise because gestural forms were a target of natural selection. We reject both accounts and propose an alternative “recruitment view” of the origins of great ape gestures. According to the recruitment view, great ape gestures recruit features of their existing behavioural repertoire for communicative purposes. Their gestures inherit their communicative functions from visual (and sometimes tactile) presentations of familiar and easily recognisable action schemas and states and parts of the body. To the extent that great ape species possess similar bodies, this predicts mutual comprehensibility within and between species – but without supposing that gestural forms were themselves targets of natural selection. Additionally, we locate great ape gestural communication within a pragmatic framework that is continuous with human communication, and make testable predications for adjudicating between the three alternative views. We propose that the recruitment view best explains existing data, and does so within a mechanistic framework that emphasises continuity between human and non‐human great ape communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on interspecies communication has shown that animals can be trained to use Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices, such as soundboards, to make simple requests of their caretakers. The recent uptake in AIC devices by hundreds of pet owners around the world offers a novel opportunity to investigate whether AIC is possible with owner-trained family dogs. To answer this question, we carried out two studies to test pet dogs' ability to recognise and respond appropriately to food-related, play-related, and outside-related words on their soundboards. One study was conducted by researchers, and the other by citizen scientists who followed the same procedure. Further, we investigated whether these behaviours depended on the identity of the person presenting the word (unfamiliar person or dog's owner) and the mode of its presentation (spoken or produced by a pressed button). We find that dogs produced contextually appropriate behaviours for both play-related and outside-related words regardless of the identity of the person producing them and the mode in which they were produced. Therefore, pet dogs can be successfully taught by their owners to associate words recorded onto soundboard buttons to their outcomes in the real world, and they respond appropriately to these words even when they are presented in the absence of any other cues, such as the owner's body language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property as a social "agreement" comprises both a communicative component, in which someone makes a claim that she is entitled to some piece of property, and a cooperative component, in which others in the community respect that claim as legitimate. In the current study, preschool children were (a) given the opportunity to mark some objects as "theirs" (to claim them in the face of other fictitious children who would supposedly enter the room later); and (b) confronted with stickers in various spatial arrangements (e.g., piled up neatly vs. scattered), told that a fictitious child had previously chosen some for herself but had to suddenly leave the room, and then invited first to choose some stickers for themselves and second to identify which stickers had already been claimed by the fictitious child. Five-year-olds but not 3-year-olds were skillful in both of these tasks, demonstrating an understanding of the crucial role of communication in asserting property claims and the crucial role of cooperation in respecting them.

The present work investigated young children's normative understanding of property rights using a novel methodology. Two- and 3-year-old children participated in situations in which an actor (1) took possession of an object for himself, and (2) attempted to throw it away. What varied was who owned the object: the actor himself, the child subject, or a third party. We found that while both 2- and 3-year-old children protested frequently when their own object was involved, only 3-year-old children protested more when a third party's object was involved than when the actor was acting on his own object. This suggests that at the latest around 3 years of age young children begin to understand the normative dimensions of property rights. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Countless discussions have been generated by the animal language studies, specifically those utilizing mechanical interfaces, termed here Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices (e.g., lexigrams; magnetic chips; keyboards). Overall, three concerns dominate the field: (1) claims that AIC device using animals manifest linguistic skills remain nebulous, and simpler alternative mechanisms have been proposed (e.g., associative learning); (2) such methodology may be unsuitable as some theorize AIC device interfaces are not sufficiently ecologically relevant to foster meaningful use; (3) data may be considered dubious due to potential cueing from experimenters and lack of systematicity in reporting training and performance. Despite such controversy—which eventually led to the field's deterioration around the last quarter of the twentieth century—this research also saw important successes, such as improvements in captive animal welfare, the outcomes of which hold promise for future interspecies communication work. This article is categorized under:Linguistics > Evolution of Language [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans are perhaps the most curious animals on earth, but to what extent our innate motivations for discovering new information are shared with our closest relatives remain poorly understood. To shed light on this question, we presented great apes with two experimental paradigms in which they had to initially choose between an empty opaque cup and a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in study 1, or to choose between a transparent cup with rewards or a baited opaque cup with rewards invisible to the ape in studies 2 and 3. We also presented young children with scenarios comparable to the second paradigm (studies 4 and 5). Notably, after the initial choice phase, we presented participants with potential alternatives providing better rewards than the previously secured options. Importantly, those alternatives shared some features with the uncertain options, giving subjects the possibility to relate both options through analogical reasoning. We found that most great apes were not curious about the uncertain options. They only explored those options after they were presented with the alternatives. Children, instead, explored the uncertain options before the alternatives were presented, showing a higher degree of curiosity than the great apes. We argue that differences between children and apes mostly lay in motivational dispositions to explore the unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first studies that sought to establish two-way communication between humans and great apes led to important findings but were nevertheless heavily criticized for their training methods, testing procedures, and claims. More recently, hundreds of pet owners around the world have begun training domesticated animals to use Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) soundboard devices, contributing to the first ever large-scale study on interspecies communication. Here, we introduce our scientific approach to our global citizen science project, where we will investigate how dogs and cats use AIC devices, building an incremental research program starting from their associative learning of buttons to determining how AIC device use might impact their welfare and their capacity for symbolic representation. We discuss how our multi-faceted approach can alleviate many of the concerns regarding the original studies performed with apes, achieving larger sample sizes, ample documentation of training techniques, and testing animals' performance in controlled experimental settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational interaction occurs against a layered backdrop of what speakers know in common and what they do not. Expectations of others' knowledge permeate every utterance and are flavored by social considerations of both rights-to and responsibilities-for knowledge in various domains. Speakers adopt an epistemic stance in turns-at-talk through the use of linguistic and interactional resources, and coparticipants hold normative expectations that the assumed stance is a felicitous expression of the speaker's underlying epistemic status. Yet, this norm is sometimes violated. This paper examines cases where conversational participants orient to a mismatch between an inappropriately high epistemic stance and a lower underlying epistemic status and engage in repair or remediation to address this inconsistency. In some cases, participants reformulate their stance in a single turn at talk. In other cases, they are opaquely prompted to lower their epistemic stance and the responsive reformulation has many markers of dispreference, suggesting that epistemic stance lowering is a problematic action for participants. Remediation of epistemic stance is even, on occasion, the topic of narratives, a testament to the salience of such exchanges. We argue that features of these sequences both orient-to and reinforce the expected norm of epistemic felicity. • Conversational participants use mechanisms of repair to alter epistemic stance. • Third turn alterations of epistemic stance appear to be dispreferred. • Remediation of epistemic stance orients to a norm of epistemic felicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Interaction Engine Hypothesis postulates that humans have a unique ability and motivation for social interaction. A crucial juncture in the ontogeny of the interaction engine could be around 2–4 years of age, but observational studies of children in natural contexts are limited. These data appear critical also for comparison with non-human primates. Here, we report on focal observations on 31 children aged 2- and 4-years old in four preschools (10 h per child). Children interact with a wide range of partners, many infrequently, but with one or two close friends. Four-year olds engage in cooperative social interactions more often than 2-year olds and fight less than 2-year olds. Conversations and playing with objects are the most frequent social interaction types in both age groups. Children engage in social interactions with peers frequently (on average 13 distinct social interactions per hour) and briefly (28 s on average) and shorter than those of great apes in comparable studies. Their social interactions feature entry and exit phases about two-thirds of the time, less frequently than great apes. The results support the Interaction Engine Hypothesis, as young children manifest a remarkable motivation and ability for fast-paced interactions with multiple partners. This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordination'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint commitment, the feeling of mutual obligation binding participants in a joint action, is typically conceptualized as arising by the expression and acceptance of a promise. This account limits the possibilities of investigating fledgling forms of joint commitment in actors linguistically less well-endowed than adult humans. The feeling of mutual obligation is one aspect of joint commitment (the product), which emerges from a process of signal exchange. It is gradual rather than binary; feelings of mutual obligation can vary in strength according to how explicit commitments are perceived to be. Joint commitment processes are more complex than simple promising, in at least three ways. They are affected by prior joint actions, which create precedents and conventions that can be embodied in material arrangements of institutions. Joint commitment processes also arise as solutions to generic coordination problems related to opening up, maintaining and closing down joint actions. Finally, during joint actions, additional, specific commitments are made piecemeal. These stack up over time and persist, making it difficult for participants to disengage from joint actions. These complexifications open up new perspectives for assessing joint commitment across species. This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordination'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A prerequisite for social coordination is bidirectional communication between teammates, each playing two roles simultaneously: as receptive listeners and expressive speakers. For robots working with humans in complex situations with multiple goals that differ in importance, failure to fulfill the expectation of either role could undermine group performance due to misalignment of values between humans and robots. Specifically, a robot needs to serve as an effective listener to infer human users' intents from instructions and feedback and as an expressive speaker to explain its decision processes to users. Here, we investigate how to foster effective bidirectional human-robot communications in the context of value alignment—collaborative robots and users form an aligned understanding of the importance of possible task goals. We propose an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) system in which a group of robots predicts users' values by taking in situ feedback into consideration while communicating their decision processes to users through explanations. To learn from human feedback, our XAI system integrates a cooperative communication model for inferring human values associated with multiple desirable goals. To be interpretable to humans, the system simulates human mental dynamics and predicts optimal explanations using graphical models. We conducted psychological experiments to examine the core components of the proposed computational framework. Our results show that real-time human-robot mutual understanding in complex cooperative tasks is achievable with a learning model based on bidirectional communication. We believe that this interaction framework can shed light on bidirectional value alignment in communicative XAI systems and, more broadly, in future human-machine teaming systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to other animals, humans appear to have a special motivation to share experiences and mental states with others (Clark, 2006; Grice, 1975), which enables them to enter a condition of 'we' or shared intentionality (Tomasello & Carpenter, 2005). Shared intentionality has been suggested to be an evolutionary response to unique problems faced in complex joint action coordination (Levinson, 2006; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005) and to be unique to humans (Tomasello, 2014). The theoretical and empirical bases for this claim, however, present several issues and inconsistencies. Here, we suggest that shared intentionality can be approached as an interactional achievement, and that by studying how our closest relatives, the great apes, coordinate joint action with conspecifics, we might demonstrate some correlate abilities of shared intentionality, such as the appreciation of joint commitment. We provide seven examples from bonobo joint activities to illustrate our framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies a previously undescribed genre of narrative about instances where an absent third party trespasses into the epistemic territory of the speaker by disregarding the speaker’s expertise in a knowledge domain tied to the speaker’s identity. These narratives occurred in unstructured interaction between close friends. We extracted a collection of exchanges from a corpus of sixty audio/video recording of conversations elicited in a university setting and analyzed them using methods from Conversation Analysis. In such narratives, speakers vilify the absent third party, make extensive use of direct reported speech, and explain why they are the true authority on the subject in question. They often speak directly to the absent party, sanctioning their behavior. Listeners respond to these narratives by displaying shock at reports of the third party’s statements and amusement at re-enactments of the speaker’s retorts. Listeners also assist in the narratives, often participating in scolding and denigrating the trespasser. We argue that these narratives act to recruit listener assistance in an after-the-fact sanctioning of the trespassing third party and validation of the speaker’s knowledge and related identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how the presence of others and anticipated distributions for self influence children’s fairness-related decisions in two different socio-moral contexts. In the first part, three- and five-year-old children (N = 120) decided between a fair and an unfair wheel of fortune to allocate resources (procedural justice). In the second part, they directly chose between two distributions of resources (distributive justice). While making a decision, each child was either observed by the affected group members (public), alone (private), or no others were introduced (non-social control). Children choose the fair option more often when others were affected (independently of their presence) only in the procedural justice task. These results suggest that using a fair procedure to distribute resources allows young preschoolers to overcome selfish tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Several studies have reported on wide‐spread contamination of U.S. paper currency with cocaine and to a lesser extent other illicit drugs. Canines are trained and employed to search for and alert to drugs. Canine alert to currency has been used as evidence that currency has been directly involved in illicit drug trafficking to justify currency seizure and forfeiture. This assertion, particularly when the only evidence is based upon canine alert, has been challenged in the courts considering that most currency in circulation is contaminated with cocaine. Comprehensive review of the scientific literature establishes that (i) 67–100% of circulated U.S. currency is contaminated with cocaine ranging from a few nanograms to over one milligram/bill (ii) various biological and environmental parameters impact canine alert to drugs. It is concluded that canine alert to U.S. currency is not sufficiently reliable to determine that currency was directly used in an illicit drug transaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Human adults often show a preference for scarce over abundant goods. In this paper, we investigate whether this preference was shared by 4‐ and 6‐year‐old children as well as chimpanzees, humans’ nearest primate relative. Neither chimpanzees nor 4‐year‐olds displayed a scarcity preference, but 6‐year‐olds did, especially in the presence of competitors. We conclude that scarcity preference is a human‐unique preference that develops as humans increase their cognitive skills and social experiences with peers and competitors. We explore different potential psychological explanations for scarcity preference and conclude scarcity preference is based on children's fear of missing out an opportunity, especially when dealing with uncertainty or goods of unknown value in the presence of competitors. Furthermore, the results are in line with studies showing that supply‐based scarcity increases the desirability of hedonic goods, suggesting that even as early as 6 years of age humans may use scarce goods to feel unique or special. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys (LCA-m) and chimpanzees (LCA-c) and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how the focus on how communicative signals might emerge and how the capacity to interpret them might develop, does not yet explain what type of motivation is required to actually deal with those signals. Without the consistent production of appropriate responses to the production of communicative signals, there would be no point in producing any signal. If language is a tool to accomplish things with others, we need to understand what would lead to cooperation. The first step consists in avoiding the blind belief that all cooperation requires some prosocial attitude. A great deal of cooperation can occur while each participant in the interaction is selfishly attempting to maximize their own benefits or minimizing damaging consequences. I describe how different types of turn-taking can be achieved via different levels of cognitive complexity and how interpretive turn-taking requires a great deal of cognitive abilities that great apes possess. Finally, I provide empirical evidence of social manipulation in non-human primates. Given our awareness of the occurrence of social manipulation during cooperation among human adults, it seems necessary to reconsider to what degree human communication and language evolution require unique prosocial motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, some scholars have claimed that humans are unique in their capacity and motivation to engage in cooperative communication and extensive, fast-paced social interactions. While research on gestural communication in great apes has offered important findings concerning the gestural repertoires of different species, very little is known about the sequential organization of primates' communicative behavior during interactions. Drawing on a conversation analytic framework, this paper addresses this gap by investigating the sequential organization of bonobo mother-infant interactions, and more specifically, how individuals solicit carries from one another. It shows how bonobos establish participation frameworks before producing a carry request gesture and how the ensuing communicative actions can be organized in adjacency-pair sequences. Moreover, the timing between the initiation of an action and its response is similar to what has been documented in adult human interaction. Finally, it outlines some of the orderly practices bonobos use to deal with the absence of response from the addressed participants in carry sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Analyses of talk-in-interaction are usually bounded to single encounters. [•] We describe a large-scale interactional organization in two kinds of psychotherapy. [•] Courses of action spanning over multiple sessions recur in psychotherapies. [•] Courses of action in psychotherapy may end in a display of change by patients. [•] Participants use techniques that tie past talk to the ongoing courses of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Questions are design problems for both the questioner and the addressee. They must be produced as recognizable objects and must be comprehended by taking into account the context in which they occur and the local situated interests of the participants. This paper investigates how people do ‘questioning’ and ‘responding’ in Italian ordinary conversations. I focus on the features of both questions and responses. I first discuss formal linguistic features that are peculiar to questions in terms of intonation contours (e.g. final rise), morphology (e.g. tags and question words) and syntax (e.g. inversion). I then show additional features that characterize their actual implementation in conversation such as their minimality (often the subject or the verb is only implied) and the usual occurrence of speaker gaze towards the recipient during questions. I then look at which social actions (e.g. requests for information, requests for confirmation) the different question types implement and which responses are regularly produced in return. The data shows that previous descriptions of “interrogative markings” are neither adequate nor sufficient to comprehend the actual use of questions in natural conversation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A fundamental puzzle in the organization of social interaction concerns how one individual elicits a response from another. This article asks what it is about some sequentially initial turns that reliably mobilizes a coparticipant to respond and under what circumstances individuals are accountable for producing a response. Whereas a linguistic approach suggests that this is what “questions” (more generally) and interrogativity (more narrowly) are for, a sociological approach to social interaction suggests that the social action a person is implementing mobilizes a recipient's response. We find that although both theories have merit, neither adequately solves the puzzle. We argue instead that different actions mobilize response to different degrees. Speakers then design their turns to perform actions, and with particular response-mobilizing features of turn-design speakers can hold recipients more accountable for responding or not. This model of response relevance allows sequential position, action, and turn design to each contribute to response relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' response to a commentary by Emanuel A. Schegloff and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen on their article "Mobilizing Response" published in the current issue of the journal. They say that conversation analysis (CA) research supports a theory of communication that fundamental structures of social interaction are robust across gender, class, and culture. They say that Schegloff proposes as candidate structures, turntaking, repair organization, and sequence organization a challenge arises from the fact that not every contribution to a conversation makes response conditionally relevant. They says that the first hypothesis suggested by Schegloff and Couper-Kuhlen regarding nonfocused talk relies on a dichotomy of states of conversation.

This paper deals with clients' personal narratives in psychotherapy. Using the method of conversation analysis, we focus on actions and tasks accomplished through clients' narratives. We identify, within the overall structural organization of therapeutic talk in our corpus, two different sequential placements of clients' narratives and describe some of their distinctive features. When they are placed within an inquiry phase of the session and are solicited by therapists' questions, the clients' narratives mainly provide information for therapists in the service of their inquiring agenda. When placed within an elaboration phase of the session, personal narratives are regularly volunteered by clients and produced as responses to therapists' reinterpretations, i.e., statements working up clients' circumstances as previously described by clients. In this latter placement, they mainly offer further evidence relevant to the therapists' reinterpretations, and thus show how clients understand therapists' reinterpretations and what they make of them. The import of these findings, for both an explication of therapeutic techniques and a better understanding of the therapeutic process, is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]