Joint attention and language evolution

Abstract

This study investigates how more advanced joint attentional mechanisms, rather than only shared attention between two agents and an object, can be implemented and how they influence the results of language games played by these agents. We present computer simulations with language games showing that adding constructs that mimic the three stages of joint attention identified in children's early development (checking attention, following attention and directing attention) substantially increase the performance of agents in these language games. In particular, the rates of improved performance for the individual attentional mechanisms have the same ordering as that of the emergence of these mechanisms in infants' development. These results suggest that language evolution and joint attentional mechanisms have developed in a co-evolutionary way, and that the evolutionary emergence of the individual attentional mechanisms is ordered just like their developmental emergence.

Modeling Social Learning of Language and Skills

“…Two of the three joint attentional mechanisms proposed in [29] were implemented: checking/sharing attention and following attention. 4 Checking/sharing attention is the most basic one and is initiated by the agent that becomes the speaker.…”

Modelling the coevolution of joint attention and language

“…Autistic children having low levels of JA also exhibit poor communicative or linguistic abilities [5], and improving their levels of JA via early interference or intensive training can enhance their expressive language abilities [6,7]. Some simulation studies [8] also demonstrate that when artificial agents are learning word meanings, a high level of JA greatly reduces the number of candidate meanings for target words, thus assisting language acquisition. Meanwhile, comparative evidence reveals significant differences in the level of JA between humans and non-human primates: 9-12 month old human infants can easily establish common ground during interactive or collaborative activities [9], whereas the level of JA in wild/captive non-human primates of different ages is comparatively low, in particular, collaborative intentions are not easy to share among non-human primates or between human experimenters and captive primates [10].…”

“…Focusing mainly on normal/autistic children and word learning, available acquisition studies [15] fail to reveal the JAlanguage correlation at a social scale and the effect of JA on general language learning in normal children/adults. Moreover, in those simulation studies [8], JA comes to help interpret linguistic utterances only if linguistic knowledge fails to do so, and listeners get direct feedback that clarify speakers' intended meanings. Such 'mind-reading' simplification [16] cannot trace when people start relying on linguistic knowledge and expressions, instead of nonlinguistic cues, in comprehension.…”

Like the breathability of air

“…In Kwisthout et al (2008) we took up Tomasello's (1999) suggestion that the ability to engage in various forms of joint attention provides an essential mechanism for, and may have co-evolved with, cultural learning and language. In checking attention, participants (e.g., a child and parent) consider what the other is focusing his/her attention on (establishing what the other is looking at, for instance).…”