The structuring of ambiguous stimuli in human communication

structuring;human communication;human information processing;categorization;attributes;ambiguous stimuli

Pimenta, Geovania

University of Waterloo

关键词: structuring;    human communication;    human information processing;    categorization;    attributes;    ambiguous stimuli;   

Others  :  https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/10012/10505/4/Pimenta_Geovania.pdf

瑞士|英语

来源: UWSPACE Waterloo Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

AbstractInformation theory (Shannon, 1948) and relative similarity (Rosch and Mervis, 1975) areused to investigate the problem of how people communicate about ambiguous, unstructuredstimuli. Specifically, the following one-way communication setting is considered: given a setof ambiguous items available to both a sender and a receiver, the sender uses messages todescribe one of the items from the set, such that the receiver is able to identify this targetitem correctly. It is argued that information reduces uncertainty in ambiguous communicationsettings through the development of structure, which is conceptualized in terms of a systemof categories. During the communication process, distinguishing an item from a set of otheritems involves clustering items into subsets; that is, grouping items together that are similarto one another and leaving out items that are dissimilar. It is proposed that relative similarityis the cognitive mechanism involved in the development of those categories. It is furtherproposed that perceptions of relative similarity are made with respect to one attribute. Peopletake advantage of the perceived structure of the ambiguous stimulus and form categories in agoal-directed manner, focusing on whatever attribute best enables them to distinguish thetarget item from the others (Barsalou, 1983). Each time one attribute is used incommunication to refer to a cluster or subset of items, uncertainty is reduced. Furthermore, itis postulated that when people have the choice of one attribute from multiple possibleattributes to communicate about unstructured stimuli, two categorization logics operate toreduce uncertainty. Hypothesis 1 predicts that people maximize distinctiveness by choosingthe attribute that allows for a larger gap (i.e., greater dissimilarity) between the subsetcontaining the target item and the subset of remaining items. Hypothesis 2 predicts thatpeople maximize information gain by choosing the attribute that allows for the smaller subsetcontaining the target item. The theoretical framework is built upon illustrative examples.Three experiments were conducted to investigate the cognitive mechanisms thatpeople use to identify and describe a specific ambiguous item from among a set ofambiguous items during communication. Participants took the role of either sender orreceiver in a one-way communication situation. In the role of sender they ranked a set ofdescriptions/attributes based on the degree to which they thought the descriptions wouldenable an imagined receiver to identify a specific target item from a set of ambiguous items.As receiver, they were given specific descriptions/attributes from an imagined sender, andranked a set of ambiguous items based on which of the items they thought the sender wasreferring to. Experiments 1 and 2 used two different kinds of unstructured stimuli;experiment 3 utilized a structured way of manipulating unstructured/ambiguous stimulus.The results of experiments 1 and 2 were consistent with hypotheses 1 and 2. There werestrong consistency between the two different stimuli and, therefore, strong evidence forgeneralizability of the observed effects. The results of experiment 3 gave inconsistent supportfor the hypotheses. The theoretical framework, the design of the experiments, and the resultsare discussed.