Title: Sensorimotor communication: a theory of signaling in online

social interactions

Abstract: The study of human communication has principally focused on

language use, gesture, and deictics. In online social interactions

these forms of communication are complemented by another kind of

(sensorimotor) communication: signaling. For example, while we are

together a table together, I can push it in a certain direction to

signal you where I want it to be placed. Other examples of signaling

are over-articulating words in noisy environments and over-emphasizing

vowels in child-directed speech. In all these examples, humans

intentionally modify their action kinematics to make their goals

easier to recognize. We present a formal theory that describes

signaling as a combination of a pragmatic and a communicative action

(say, push table to move it and push table to inform you), and

explains how it simplifies coordination in online social interactions.

According to the theory, signaling requires solving a trade-off

between the costs of modifying one's behavior and the benets in terms

of interaction success. Signaling is thus an intentional strategy; it

acts in concert with automatic mechanisms of resonance, prediction,

and imitation, especially when the context makes actions and

intentions ambiguous and difficult to read. The study of signaling

provides an excellent opportunity to understand the adaptive (and

evolutionary) value of communication in terms of coordination and

interaction success.