2021/07/09 by Amanda Royka, Marieke Schouwstra, Simon Kirby +1 · 1 voice
Psychology · #Hearing Impairment and Communication #Action Observation and Synchronization #Child and Animal Learning Development
paper · pdf · doi:10.31234/osf.io/2h5vu
openalex publication_date 2021/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
For a gesture to be successful, observers must recognize its communicative purpose. Are communicators sensitive to this problem and do they try to ease their observer’s inferential burden? We propose that people shape their gestures to help observers easily infer that their movements are meant to communicate. Using computational models of recursive goal inference, we show that this hypothesis predicts that gestures ought to reveal that the movement is inconsistent with the space of non-communicative goals in the environment. In two gesture-design experiments, we find that people spontaneously shape communicative movements in response to the distribution of potential instrumental goals, ensuring that the movement can be easily differentiated from instrumental action. Our results show that people are sensitive to the inferential demands that observers face. As a result, people actively work to help ensure that the goal of their communicative movement is understood.