Making Meaningful Movements: A computational model of nonverbal communication interpretation
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2010-08-30
Language
en
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The Tacit Communication Game (TCG) is a task used by cognitive neuroscientists to
study the basic principles of human communication (de Ruiter et al., 2007, 2010). In
this task, a Sender player must communicate goals nonverbally to a Receiver player by
moving a token on a 3-by-3 grid. Both players are assigned a token in each trial, which
can vary in shape and can differ between the players. The Sender player must design
and perform a sequence of movements that signals the goal location and orientation of
the Receiver's token, allowing the Receiver to place it correctly.
An architecture for a computational model of the task was recently developed by
van Rooij et al. (2009) at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior. A
key hypothesis of the architecture is that players assign meaning to movements through
analogy and re-representation. This thesis describes the first implementation of a core
part of said architecture in the form of a Receiver model. Building on established
concepts from analogy research such as structure-mapping theory (Gentner, 1983), the
implemented Receiver model is capable of correctly interpreting movement sequences
resulting from common strategies used by human Sender players.
The capabilities of the model show that analogy and re-representation can be sufficient for the successful interpretation of signals used by human players. Both the
strengths and shortcomings of the implementation are analyzed in context of how they
can inform future work on a TCG-playing model. A number of possible improvements
are discussed, as are several key problems that future research will have to solve in order
to develop a fully sufficient TCG-playing model.
Description
Citation
Faculty
Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen