Does non-stoic belief revision explain how people reach mutual understanding in conversation?
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2024-03-31
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en
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People are able to resolve misunderstandings during conversation and reach mutual understanding
(Clark & Schaefer, 1987; Fusaroli et al., 2017; Koivisto, 2015). Here mutual understanding is defined
as both interlocutors sharing a belief. One of the ways this can be achieved is through repair requests
(Fusaroli et al., 2017). A repair request is initiated when the responder does not understand the initiator
and needs additional information. One type of repair request is the restricted offer, which consists of
offering a candidate understanding and asking for confirmation (Dingemanse et al., 2015; Dingemanse &
Enfield, 2015; Fusaroli et al., 2017). The response to this request may provide the responder with new
information, which they can use to update the beliefs they hold about the world (Koivisto, 2015). Current
state-of-the-art explanations make several unrealistic assumptions. The van de Braak (2021) model does
not explain belief revision and the van Arkel (2021) model assumes that the initiator is stoic and the
responder is gullible. Therefore, the explanatory power for the phenomenon of belief revision during
conversation and reaching mutual understanding of these models is limited. This thesis explores how
to computationally explain reaching mutual understanding through restricted offers while having flexible
belief revision for both interlocutors. This non-stoic model has a weighted coherence network, instead of
valuing all beliefs equally heavy. Through running simulations with varying parameter conditions it is
showed that the interlocutors approach mutual understanding. Initiating repair increases the structural
similarity compared to the similarity before the conversation. Repair is not always initiated, even in
conditions where it is expected, which suggests this model does not fully capture the phenomenon. On
the other hand it does show behaviour similar to the conservation principle (Dingemanse et al., 2015)
and Grice’s quantity principle (Grice, 1975) indicating it does capture parts of the qualitative properties
of the phenomenon of reaching mutual understanding in conversation
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen