Joint actions and the pragmatic foundations of interaction and communication

Post date: Oct 20, 2012 9:29:03 AM

How do we engage in joint actions and interactions? Why are interactions (apparently) so simple?

Neuroscience research has demonstrated that in primates a huge brain network is devoted to 'action understanding' and the planning of social actions, collaborative or competitive. This is not surprising as the social milieu is extremely important for primates. It remains to be understood how multiple subprocesses (e.g., action understanding, prediction, joint attention, common ground formation, communication) are coordinated to realize efficacious -and apparently effortless- joint actions.

As discussed in (Sebanz, Bekkering, & Knoblich, 2006) problems of joint action can be described at two different (but interacting) levels: (1) at the higher level, agents have to understand actions executed by other agents and their associated goals, select goals and actions complementary to those of other agents, and form collaborative plans; (2) at the lower level, agents have to coordinate their actions in real time. Ongoing research is trying to elucidate how these problems are solved and how mechanisms at the different levels are integrated.

We have developed a series of computational models that explain the coordination of higher and lower level aspects of joint action. In these models, interaction dynamics are guided by (and in turn influence) high-level processes of shared representations formation and 'signaling' (and the mutual adaptation of behavior typical of joint actions). These models follow principles of (hierarchical) Bayesian inference to model action understanding (via action simulation, Dindo, Zambuto & Pezzulo, 2011) and joint action (Pezzulo & Dindo, 2011). The general hypothesis is that co-actors engaged in joint actions use a 'joint action optimization' strategy; this leads to interesting dynamics of sharing of representations and signaling (Pezzulo, 2011; Pezzulo and Dindo, forth). We are also exploring how primitive forms of 'sensorimotor communication' arising during joint actions could provide a pragmatic foundation for the development of more complex (and linguistic) forms of communication (Pezzulo, 2012).

Illustration of an interactive strategy for joint actions. See Pezzulo 2011; Pezzulo & Dindo, 2011.

Events:

This is a video of the conscious body workshop

Selected pubs:

• Pezzulo G., Iodice, P., Donnarumma, F., Dindo, H., Knoblich, G. (2017) Avoiding accidents at the champagne reception: A study of joint lifting and balancing. Psychological Science, 28(3), 338-345 [link]

• Donnarumma, F., Dindo, H., Pezzulo, G. (2017) Sensorimotor communication for humans and robots: improving interactive skills by sending coordination signals. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems [link]

• Donnarumma, F., Dindo, H., Pezzulo, G. (2017) Sensorimotor coarticulation in the execution and recognition of intentional actions. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 237 [link]

• Pezzulo, G., Donnarumma, F., and Dindo, H. (2013). Human Sensorimotor Communication: A Theory of Signaling in Online Social Interactions PLoS ONE 8 (11), e79876 [link]

• Pezzulo, G. and Dindo, H. (2013). Intentional strategies that make co-actors more predictable: the case of signaling. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36:4, 43-44 (Commentary to Pickering and Garrod).

• Pezzulo, G. (2011). Shared representations as coordination tools for interactions. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2(2):303–333. [pdf]

• Dindo, H., Zambuto, D., and Pezzulo, G. (2011). Motor simulation via coupled internal models using sequential monte carlo. In Proceedings of IJCAI 2011, pages 2113–2119. [pdf]

• Pezzulo, G. and Dindo, H. (2011). What should I do next? using shared representations to solve interaction problems. Experimental Brain Research, 211(3):613–630. [pdf]

• Pezzulo, G. (2012). The interaction engine: a common pragmatic competence across linguistic and non-linguistic interactions. IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, 4(2):105–123. [link][pdf]

See also:

• Sebanz, N., Bekkering, H., and Knoblich, G. (2006) Joint action: bodies and minds moving together. Trends Cogn Sci, 10, 70-76