When established communication systems cannot be used, people rapidly create novel systems to modify the mental state of another agent according to their intentions. However, there are dramatic inter-individual differences in the implementation of this human competence for communicative innovation. Here we characterize psychological sources of inter-individual variability in the ability to buil...

Recent language testing research investigates factors other than language proficiency that may be responsible for systematic variance in language test performance. One such factor is the test takers' cognitive styles. The present study was carried out with the aim of finding the probable effects of Iranian EFL learners' cognitive styles on their performance on communicative tests. For purposes ...

I argue that the analysis of different kinds of cooperation will benefit from an account of the cognitive and communicative functions required for that cooperation. I review different models of cooperation in game theory—reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, cooperation about future goals, and conventions—with respect to their cognitive and communicative prerequisites. The cognitive factor...

Descriptions used by participants in conversation tend to be progressively systematized. A paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is the global shift from concrete to abstract descriptions observed in Maze Task dialogues. We propose to explain this trend by the appeal to communicative and cognitive pressures exerted on participants during conversation. We conclude that models of meaning coordi...

Whenever we compose a message in words, we take a perspective. Indeed, it’s impossible to utter or write a sentence without, at the same time, deciding how to “frame” the content that we are trying to express. Furthermore, we must make use of the tools that are provided by the particular language we are using. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that each language provides a set of preferre...