We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call 'natural pedagogy', enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We argue that human infants are p...

When humans and artificial agents (e.g. robots) have mismatched perceptions of the shared environment, referential communication between them becomes difficult. To mediate perceptual differences, this paper presents a new approach using probabilistic labeling for referential grounding. This approach aims to integrate different types of evidence from the collaborative referential discourse into ...

The Map Task (Anderson et al., 1991) and Tangram (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986) are traditional referential communication tasks that used in psycholinguistics research to demonstrate how conversational partners mutually agree on descriptions (or referring expressions) for landmarks or unusual target objects. These highly-controlled, laboratory-based take place under conditions relatively natu...

Referential acts play a crucial part in our every day communication since human language is, in its essence, a referential system. Reference can be made via icons, indices and signs but also via ostensive/inferential gestural communication, in which the behavior of the actor directs the attention of the recipient to particular aspects of the environment. The earliest uses of ostensive/inferenti...

A Game-Theoretic Model of Grounding for Referential Communication Tasks