Capturing interactive alignment with the predictive processing framework

The predictive processing theory is believed to be able to capture all cognitive processes and therefore should also be able to capture alignment phenomena in communication. The interactive or integrated alignment theory describes how alignment can work when interlocutors are in easy dialogue and is a very promising theory of human cognition. Thus, if interactive alignment is indeed a part of human cognition, the predictive processing framework should be able to capture interactive alignment phenomena. This thesis shows how interactive alignment can be described using predictive processing and what the benefits and perks of this approach are. The predictive processing framework can help to broaden the interactive alignment theory so that it can describe more than just very easy dialogues and it can contribute to the development of a full computational implementation of the interactive alignment theory, which is not yet available. Although predictive processing can describe basic alignment, there are further challenges, such as capturing communication with its multimodality and in all its different forms.