Ph.D. Candidate: Alaz Aydın
Program: Cognitive Science
Date: 05.09.2024 / 09:00
Place: B-116

Abstract: Metarepresentational understanding is at the core of human cognition. We produce and understand behavior by continuously considering how others represent the world we share. Researchers have been studying how this capacity is utilized in action and communication, in addition to its development. Another important characteristic of human social interaction is that we are able to generate and use symbols: context independent signals based on conventional agreement. Experimental semiotics investigates this behavior by providing subjects with non-conventional communication channels in constrained environments, such that participants need to come up with novel forms of communication to accomplish the task. Observing behavior under laboratory settings enable researchers to manipulate and focus on specific aspects of this capacity. In addition, since the complete history of development of these communication systems are available to researchers it becomes possible to investigate emergence of symbols and linguistic structure, providing insights about the symbol grounding problem. On the other hand, defining the problem at the computational level requires formal definitions of inputs and outputs, which makes theoretical assumptions explicit. Furthermore, formalized theories can be tested for psychological plausibility via computational complexity analysis, and empirical inquiries can be directed to the parameters that make problem intractable. This study aims for an investigation of emergence of symbols and communication systems within constrained environments while focusing on action and the metarepresentational capacities of communicating parties. By committing to formal methods, we expect to gain insights about the behavior through tractability analyses and follow theoretically motivated empirical investigations by focusing on parameters that make the problem intractable.