The Primacy of Multimodal Alignment in Converging on Shared Symbols for Novel Referents

When people interact to establish shared symbols for novel objects or concepts, they often rely on multiple communicative modalities as well alignment (i.e., cross-participant repetition of behavior). Yet these interactional resources have rarely been studied together, so little is known about if and how combine in achieve joint reference. To investigate this, we systematically track the emergence lexical gestural a referential communication task with objects. Quantitative analyses reveal that frequently use combination alignment, such multimodal tends emerge earlier compared unimodal alignment. Qualitative contexts which emerges flexibly deploy line modality affordances needs.