In investigating between-person language use, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) have taken a road less traveled. Psychology of language has been dominated by studies of private language processing within individuals, respecting the view of Noam Chomsky that public language, “however construed, appears to have no significance” (1986, p. 31). I particularly admire Garrod and Pickering's (2004) paper in which they invoked between-person alignments at multiple linguistic levels to explain why, for most of us, conversation is easier than monologue even though conversation requires coordination with others.
The approach presented in the target article is important and valuable in other ways. One is the recognition that language production and comprehension at its various descriptive levels are species of action and perception that, accordingly, require explanations consistent with those of nonlinguistic acting and perceiving. A second is the recognition that, in contrast to typical theoretical treatments, language production and comprehension are thoroughly interleaved. To reflect that, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) weaken the “horizontal split” in their Figure 1 that separates processes of comprehension and production within an individual.
However, in my view, the particular integration of production and comprehension processes that the authors propose is unrealistic in consisting of a complex cognitive tiling of predictive modeling processes (that is, predictions at multiple levels that occur repeatedly over time). The proposal falls into the category of theoretical accounts that Bentley (1941) identified as “sad responses,” that are sad in unrealistically ascribing responsibility for behavioral systematicities in the world almost exclusively to processes “in the head” or “in the brain” (p. 13).
I recommend a different route to understanding language use that involves weakening separations not only along the horizontal dimension of P&G's Figure 1, but also along the vertical dimension, the one that separates entities bounded, as Bentley (1941) put it, by the skin. Warren (2006) offered an integrated theory of perception and action along these lines, and Marsh et al. (e.g., Marsh et al. 2006) provided a compatible ecological approach that encompasses social interactions.
Warren (2006) explicitly rejected the model-based approaches adopted by P&G on grounds that, (a) in them, implausibly, actor/perceivers are supposed to interact directly with their internal models, but indirectly with the world itself, and (b) interacting with the models means using representations whose origins must appeal “in circular fashion to the very perception and action abilities they purport to explain” (p. 361). He offered instead an approach in which perceiver/actors and their environments are modeled as dynamical systems that are coupled both mechanically and informationally. Adaptive behavior emerges from constraints arising from the structure of the environment, the biomechanics of the body, perceptual information about the coupled system, and task demands. In the approach of Marsh et al. to social perception and action (e.g., Marsh et al. 2006; 2009), the coupled dynamical systems relevant to understanding social activity include more than one perceiver/actor. In the context of this account, the kinds of alignments among interlocutors that Garrod and Pickering (2004) identified as fostering successful conversation are reflections of the interpersonal coordinations that occur when humans come together to engage in joint activities.
This approach has promise for understanding interpersonal language use in two ways that are relevant to themes in the target article.
One is that the approach promises to obviate postulating the multiple levels of repeated predictive modeling that characterizes P&G's account. Some perceptual information is prospective in nature in signaling what will happen. Moreover, use of prospective stimulus information (e.g., about nutrients at some distance) occurs among organisms that lack a nervous system and hence lack the means to construct forward and inverse models (see, e.g., Reed 1996). Turning to humans, an outfielder for example, does not need to predict where and when a fly ball will become catchable; structure in reflected light over time provides prospective information about the ball's future trajectory (e.g., Michaels & Oudejans 1992). Likewise, information in reflected light can signal whether it is safe to cross a street in traffic without pedestrians having to predict whether or when a vehicle will cross their path (e.g., Oudejans et al. 1996). In short, prospective information can constrain action without intervening predictions being made. In language, the prospective information can be pragmatic, syntactic, lexical, semantic, phonological, and so on.
A second domain in which the ecological approach may have promise for understanding language production and comprehension concerns the pervasive findings to which P&G allude of imitation or, less often, complementation in language use and elsewhere. I suggest that imitation occurs pervasively in laboratory research, because perception of the actions of someone else essentially serves as instructions for imitation (e.g., Fowler et al. 2003). Therefore, it is often easy to imitate, and imitation can be a default reflection of the disposition of humans to coordinate with one another (e.g., Richardson et al. 2007). In general, however, imitation is not always an adaptive response to the actions of someone else. Nor is complementing what is perceived. Missing from much research on “embodied cognition” are task constraints that encourage anything other than default mirroring. However, when imitation is discouraged, embodied responses to language input may occur that are not imitative (cf. Olmstead et al. 2009). In the context of tasks that make other kinds of interpersonal coordinations relevant, imitative responses may not be as pervasive as they are in typical laboratory research.
Indeed, an important issue for understanding public language concerns how in general utterances constrain users' behavior. When someone shouts Duck! to a bicyclist obliviously approaching a low-hanging branch, an adaptive response is, in fact, to duck (not to imitate the utterance). Research using the visual world procedure (e.g., Ferreira & Tanenhaus Reference Ferreira and Tanenhaus2007), albeit designed with other purposes in mind, suggests that language can affect nonimitative adaptive action (in this case, by the eyes) very quickly. Investigation of language use embedded in meaningful contexts may help to reveal whether or not imitation is fundamental.
In investigating between-person language use, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) have taken a road less traveled. Psychology of language has been dominated by studies of private language processing within individuals, respecting the view of Noam Chomsky that public language, “however construed, appears to have no significance” (1986, p. 31). I particularly admire Garrod and Pickering's (2004) paper in which they invoked between-person alignments at multiple linguistic levels to explain why, for most of us, conversation is easier than monologue even though conversation requires coordination with others.
The approach presented in the target article is important and valuable in other ways. One is the recognition that language production and comprehension at its various descriptive levels are species of action and perception that, accordingly, require explanations consistent with those of nonlinguistic acting and perceiving. A second is the recognition that, in contrast to typical theoretical treatments, language production and comprehension are thoroughly interleaved. To reflect that, Pickering & Garrod (P&G) weaken the “horizontal split” in their Figure 1 that separates processes of comprehension and production within an individual.
However, in my view, the particular integration of production and comprehension processes that the authors propose is unrealistic in consisting of a complex cognitive tiling of predictive modeling processes (that is, predictions at multiple levels that occur repeatedly over time). The proposal falls into the category of theoretical accounts that Bentley (1941) identified as “sad responses,” that are sad in unrealistically ascribing responsibility for behavioral systematicities in the world almost exclusively to processes “in the head” or “in the brain” (p. 13).
I recommend a different route to understanding language use that involves weakening separations not only along the horizontal dimension of P&G's Figure 1, but also along the vertical dimension, the one that separates entities bounded, as Bentley (1941) put it, by the skin. Warren (2006) offered an integrated theory of perception and action along these lines, and Marsh et al. (e.g., Marsh et al. 2006) provided a compatible ecological approach that encompasses social interactions.
Warren (2006) explicitly rejected the model-based approaches adopted by P&G on grounds that, (a) in them, implausibly, actor/perceivers are supposed to interact directly with their internal models, but indirectly with the world itself, and (b) interacting with the models means using representations whose origins must appeal “in circular fashion to the very perception and action abilities they purport to explain” (p. 361). He offered instead an approach in which perceiver/actors and their environments are modeled as dynamical systems that are coupled both mechanically and informationally. Adaptive behavior emerges from constraints arising from the structure of the environment, the biomechanics of the body, perceptual information about the coupled system, and task demands. In the approach of Marsh et al. to social perception and action (e.g., Marsh et al. 2006; 2009), the coupled dynamical systems relevant to understanding social activity include more than one perceiver/actor. In the context of this account, the kinds of alignments among interlocutors that Garrod and Pickering (2004) identified as fostering successful conversation are reflections of the interpersonal coordinations that occur when humans come together to engage in joint activities.
This approach has promise for understanding interpersonal language use in two ways that are relevant to themes in the target article.
One is that the approach promises to obviate postulating the multiple levels of repeated predictive modeling that characterizes P&G's account. Some perceptual information is prospective in nature in signaling what will happen. Moreover, use of prospective stimulus information (e.g., about nutrients at some distance) occurs among organisms that lack a nervous system and hence lack the means to construct forward and inverse models (see, e.g., Reed 1996). Turning to humans, an outfielder for example, does not need to predict where and when a fly ball will become catchable; structure in reflected light over time provides prospective information about the ball's future trajectory (e.g., Michaels & Oudejans 1992). Likewise, information in reflected light can signal whether it is safe to cross a street in traffic without pedestrians having to predict whether or when a vehicle will cross their path (e.g., Oudejans et al. 1996). In short, prospective information can constrain action without intervening predictions being made. In language, the prospective information can be pragmatic, syntactic, lexical, semantic, phonological, and so on.
A second domain in which the ecological approach may have promise for understanding language production and comprehension concerns the pervasive findings to which P&G allude of imitation or, less often, complementation in language use and elsewhere. I suggest that imitation occurs pervasively in laboratory research, because perception of the actions of someone else essentially serves as instructions for imitation (e.g., Fowler et al. 2003). Therefore, it is often easy to imitate, and imitation can be a default reflection of the disposition of humans to coordinate with one another (e.g., Richardson et al. 2007). In general, however, imitation is not always an adaptive response to the actions of someone else. Nor is complementing what is perceived. Missing from much research on “embodied cognition” are task constraints that encourage anything other than default mirroring. However, when imitation is discouraged, embodied responses to language input may occur that are not imitative (cf. Olmstead et al. 2009). In the context of tasks that make other kinds of interpersonal coordinations relevant, imitative responses may not be as pervasive as they are in typical laboratory research.
Indeed, an important issue for understanding public language concerns how in general utterances constrain users' behavior. When someone shouts Duck! to a bicyclist obliviously approaching a low-hanging branch, an adaptive response is, in fact, to duck (not to imitate the utterance). Research using the visual world procedure (e.g., Ferreira & Tanenhaus Reference Ferreira and Tanenhaus2007), albeit designed with other purposes in mind, suggests that language can affect nonimitative adaptive action (in this case, by the eyes) very quickly. Investigation of language use embedded in meaningful contexts may help to reveal whether or not imitation is fundamental.