Sequence organization and embodied mutual orientations: openings of social interactions between baboons.

The paper compares Bales' Interaction Process Analysis (IPA) with Sacks' Conversation Analysis (CA), arguing that CA has answered several questions that originally motivated the development of IPA, and while doing so, it has re-specified the phenomena of interaction research. These two research traditions are in many ways diametrically opposed: the former is quantitative, theory-oriented and aims at global characterizations of interactional situations, while the latter is qualitative, inductive and aims at characterizing specific layers of organization (such as turn taking or sequence organization) that give structure to interactional situations. Their primary objects of study are different. For the Balesian tradition, it is the functioning and the structure of a small group, whereas in the Sacksian tradition, it is the structures and practices of human social interaction per se. It is argued, however, that CA has radically expanded understanding of the questions IPA was originally developed to address. These questions include allocation of resources, control and solidarity. Bales' research deals with them in terms of the differentiation of participants of a group, whereas CA has re-specified them as emergent aspects of the very rules and structures that constitute and regulate interaction sequences. The uniqueness of the CA perspective on social interaction is demonstrated by exploring the display of emotion as an interactional phenomenon. It is argued that the display of emotion is intrinsically embedded in the sequential organization of action. Sensitive 'coding and counting' approaches can detect emotion displays, but the contribution of CA is to show the specific ways in which they are part of the business of interaction.

The evolution of language was likely facilitated by a special predisposition for social interaction, involving a set of communicative and cognitive skills summarized as the ‘interaction engine'. This assemblage seems to emerge early in development, to be found universally across cultures, and to enable participation in sophisticated joint action through the addition of spoken language. Yet, new evidence on social action coordination and communication in nonhuman primates warrants an update of the interaction engine hypothesis, particularly with respect to the evolutionary origins of its specific ingredients. However, one enduring problem for comparative research results from a conceptual gulf between disciplines, rendering it difficult to test concepts derived from human interaction research in nonhuman animals. The goal of this theme issue is to make such concepts accessible for comparative research, to promote a fruitful interdisciplinary debate on social action coordination as a new arena of research, and to enable mutual fertilization between human and nonhuman interaction research. In consequence, we here consider relevant theoretical and empirical research within and beyond this theme issue to revisit the interaction engine's shared, convergently derived and uniquely derived ingredients preceding (or perhaps in the last case, succeeding) human language.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Revisiting the human ‘interaction engine’: comparative approaches to social action coordination’.

As a methodological approach that studies naturally occurring social interaction in various settings, conversation analysis (CA) uncovers how social actions are organized in the moment-by-moment details of interaction and how participants as Members make sense of each other in situ (Psathas, 1995; ten Have, 2007). Due to technological limitations, early CA research largely relied on audio recordings of telephone conversations (see Lerner [2004] for a collection of first-generation studies on topics including turn-taking and sequence organization). From the 1970s, as video recordings became a possibility, CA pioneers also started to turn their attention to the interactional details and multimodal resources visibly accessible in face-to-face interaction. Issues addressed in their seminal work include how listenership can be displayed through gaze and other embodied behaviors, and how mutual orientation is established through gestures and other embodied resources (Goodwin, 1981; Heath, 1986). Overall, such work on multimodality views social interaction as Members’ practical actions organized by and accomplished through concerted talk and embodied actions, and investigates interactional resources available through the visual, auditory, and haptic channels as made relevant by participants of an interaction.

Humans and other primates communicate in multiple sensory modalities, and language itself is usually a multimodal form of communication. Discussion of the multimodal nature of primate communication goes back at least as far as the publications of Charles Darwin and has recently seen renewed interest. Here, I review key topics in the study of multimodal communication in nonhuman primates and humans, including issues of definitional complexity as well as classification systems and empirical approaches. I argue that multimodal communication is ubiquitous, ingrained, and advantageous. I discuss sensory aging and how multimodal communication can offer alternative routes to comprehension when sensory systems become impaired. To conclude, I consider future avenues of research that seem likely to prove productive.

Detecting and recognising the Biological Motion (BM) of other people provides essential information to understand others' actions and intentions, thus facilitating social interactions. Difficulties with social interaction are a hallmark of autism and may stem from altered perceptual recognition or interpretation of others' actions. This systematic review investigates whether BM perception in autistic individuals is influenced by the different categories of BM processing and the methodological differences between different BM paradigms. It also explores potential overlap between performance in non-biological motion tasks and BM perception. A total of 51 empirical studies compared BM task performance between 1066 autistic individuals and 1086 non-autistic individuals. Autistic individuals demonstrated poorer performance in BM discrimination tasks that involved greater social cognition. There were no consistent patterns regarding methodological differences across the tasks, such as stimulus types, motion varieties, or level of instructions. When investigated, poorer performance in BM tasks was often mirrored in non-biological motion tasks, suggesting potential overlap in underlying processing mechanisms. Future research should explore a broader range of ages, directly compare performances across tasks, and level of instructions to advance understanding of perceptual processing in autism.

Motor cognition: a new paradigm to study self–other interactions

Disagreeing with others about how to interpret a social interaction is a common occurrence. We often find ourselves offering divergent interpretations of others’ motives, intentions, beliefs, and emotions. Remarkably, philosophical accounts of how we understand others do not explain, or even attempt to explain such disagreements. I argue these disparities in social interpretation stem, in large part, from the effect of social categorization and our goals in social interactions, phenomena long studied by social psychologists. I argue we ought to expand our accounts of how we understand others in order to accommodate these data and explain how such profound disagreements arise amongst informed, rational, well-meaning individuals.

People who are blind have the inherent tendency of exploring their interaction partner's face to know them better and feel closer. This becomes a necessity when partners become engaged in a conversation and want to be aware of the different facial expressions. Current technologies can deliver coarse-grained abstract haptic cues to the visually impaired. A better solution is needed -- one that allows a blind individual interpretation of others' facial expressions while engaged in bilateral conversation. To meet this goal, the development and evaluation of a platform called 'iHap' is proposed - an interactive haptic-based Explore-learn-interact paradigm that enables a blind individual to access his own facial expressions in a dynamic virtual environment. It is hypothesized that persistent haptic exploration of different movements of a blind individual's own facial features for different expressions in the virtual environment will help him master the haptic language of facial expressions. Hence he will be able to explore others' facial expressions/emotions while engaged in social interaction. As a blind individual makes active use of the sense of touch through feature by feature analysis, emphasis has been given to feature-based active exploration of facial expressions.

Much of our daily lives are spent talking to one another, in both ordinary conversation and more specialized settings such as meetings, interviews, classrooms, and courtrooms. It is largely through conversation that the major institutions of our society - economy, religion, politics, family and law - are implemented. This book Emanuel Schegloff, the first in a series and first published in 2007, introduces the findings and theories of conversation analysis. Together, the volumes in the series constitute a complete and authoritative 'primer' in the subject. The topic of this first volume is 'sequence organization' - the ways in which turns-at-talk are ordered and combined to make actions take place in conversation, such as requests, offers, complaints, and announcements. Containing many examples from real-life conversations, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in human interaction and the workings of conversation.

Veterinarians are trusted by farmers and play an important role in assisting them to implement biosecurity. More research is needed that particularly focuses on the impact of joint farmer-veterinarian discussions to further understand the role of communication in altering biosecurity behaviours. The aim of this study was to analyse joint dairy cattle farmer-veterinarian discussions about the adoption of on-farm biosecurity using novel social interaction methodologies. Farmer and veterinarian stakeholders were invited to take part in a face-to-face meeting. Introductory presentations were given, followed by separate facilitated veterinarian and farmer discussions. All stakeholders were brought together for a final facilitated group discussion which was audio recorded. Corresponding transcripts from the recordings were analysed via thematic and conversation analyses. Conversation analysis assessments such as turn taking, repair, sequence organisation, overlap and asymmetry were employed to investigate the nature of the conversation. Thematic analysis identified the negative repercussions of conflicting information or ineffective communication surrounding biosecurity implementation. The type of, and importance of, the relationship farmers had with veterinarians and other stakeholders was highlighted. The need to provide personalised biosecurity protocols on farms was identified. Four key factors were identified via conversation analyses. These included: 1) how the conversation facilitated agreement, 2) how the conversation allowed the farmer and veterinarian participants to learn from one another in real time, 3) how the discussion enabled participants to expand upon points they were making, and 4) how participants were able to obtain a greater understanding of the other participants’ opinions, even without total resolution. Debate around the effective implementation of biosecurity measures on farms, explored using novel techniques, demonstrated the potential for utilising a discussive approach between veterinarians and farmers to lead to solutions not previously considered. Because of the nature of the discussion, conversation analysis resulted in an informative approach to encapsulating the nuanced dialogue between stakeholders, highlighting the potential of this analysis framework.

The presence of divergent and independent research traditions in the gestural and vocal domains of primate communication has resulted in major discrepancies in the definition and operationalization of cognitive concepts. However, in recent years, accumulating evidence from behavioural and neurobiological research has shown that both human and non-human primate communication is inherently multimodal. It is therefore timely to integrate the study of gestural and vocal communication. Herein, we review evidence demonstrating that there is no clear difference between primate gestures and vocalizations in the extent to which they show evidence for the presence of key language properties: intentionality, reference, iconicity and turn-taking. We also find high overlap in the neurobiological mechanisms producing primate gestures and vocalizations, as well as in ontogenetic flexibility. These findings confirm that human language had multimodal origins. Nonetheless, we note that in great apes, gestures seem to fulfil a carrying (i.e. predominantly informative) role in close-range communication, whereas the opposite holds for face-to-face interactions of humans. This suggests an evolutionary shift in the carrying role from the gestural to the vocal stream, and we explore this transition in the carrying modality. Finally, we suggest that future studies should focus on the links between complex communication, sociality and cooperative tendency to strengthen the study of language origins.

Sequence organization: A universal infrastructure for social action

Human language is probably the most complex communication system in the living world. It is investigated by various scientific disciplines, including linguistics, neuroscience, or cultural studies. However, despite this large and interdisciplinary effort, one key question has remained open and continues to perplex the scientific community; how could such an intricate system evolve? Comparative research on our extant evolutionary neighbours—the non-human primates—is often considered a good starting point to investigate the origins and evolution of human language. As humans communicate mainly with speech, primate vocal behaviour is the natural target of investigation, although this approach is not uniformly accepted. Behaviourist theories, in particular, characterise primate vocal behaviour as a predominantly hard-wired system, arguing that not much can be learned from it regarding language evolution. On the other hand, there is growing evidence for a considerable cognitive component in non-human primate communication, which often points to early signs of flexibility and indications of gradual evolutionary patterns more generally. In this thesis, I ventured to further our understanding of the flexibility in non-human primate communication systems through series of field experiments on wild South African vervet monkeys. First, I assessed the capacity of vervet monkeys to socially learn novel call-context associations. Using unfamiliar animal models in conjunction with alarm call playbacks, I showed that monkeys rapidly associated alarm calls with these models, evidenced by high vigilance towards them in the subsequent encounter. Furthermore, some juveniles also produced alarm calls similar to the playbacks they heard during the first encounter, showing how rapid social learning could influence call comprehension and usage in this species. In a second experiment, I tested the functional flexibility of vocalisations by providing wild vervet monkeys with opportunities to socially learn a novel usage of move-grunts to obtain food rewards. I worked with two groups that differed in the complexity of the learning stimuli provided during the experiments. For the first group of monkeys, I paired playback of movegrunt with a food dispenser providing a reward, such that the call predicted food as a simple conditioning stimulus. In the second group, I provided subjects with a demonstration video of a conspecific producing a move-grunt in order to activate the food dispenser and obtain a reward. While I did not find any evidence for relevant learning in the first group, a juvenile female from the second group started to produce her own move-grunts to obtain food rewards, suggesting that primates can learn to produce calls in completely novel circumstances if provided with the right social input. The focus of the third experiment was on flexibility in call perception. I examined whether vervet monkeys, when confronted with referentially ambiguous calls, use contextual information to respond to them. I addressed this by probing them with male 'leopard' alarm calls, which can naturally be given to terrestrial predators or during intergroup encounters. In the experiment, I played back leopard alarms either during natural between-group encounters or in a control situation. The subjects showed anti-predator responses and looked for additional information in control but not inter-group situations, suggesting that call meaning in primate communication is subject to simple forms of pragmatic inference. The results of these experiments indicate that non-human primate vocal communication rests on a primitive cognitive infrastructure that, within the human lineage, could have gradually evolved into the complex communication system seen in today's human languages. Finally, I conclude the thesis by proposing a classification scheme for non-human primate vocalisations, based on differences in underlying cognitive complexity, and briefly speculate about the future of primate research in light of emerging technologies that have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the evolution of human and non-human communication.

This chapter offers a brief overview of earlier research on emotion in social interaction, and sets out the questions that the current collection seeks to answer. Earlier research in conversation analysis, interactional linguistics and related fields has shown that the verbal, prosodic and non-vocal expression of emotion is intimately tied to the sequential organization of interaction. Expression of emotion is part of an action at a particular place in the on-going interaction, and it makes relevant specifiable responses from the co-participants that go along or change the jointly constructed emotional ground. The current collection seeks to further our knowledge regarding the ways in which emotional stances expressed in social interaction, the contributions that these expressions make to the organization of action sequences, and their regulation in institutional settings.

Who better to write a concluding commentary on a collection of Scandinavian studies than an Australian living in Japan? While I was honored to be asked, my immediate reaction was, What do I know about Scandinavia? My entire experience with the region to date consists of a week in Sweden and a 2-h stopover in Copenhagen. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that an outsider could perhaps offer a broadening perspective on the question of how Scandinavian bilingual and second-language users interact; after all, sometimes, you have to stand back in order to get a better view. My own research is based on Japanese bilingual speakers and learners of English, but on reading the articles in this collection, I realized that there is a lot more in common with my situation than I first thought. While this is a collection of articles based in Finnish, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian contexts, the microcontext of bilingual interaction has plenty of implications for other pairs and for second speakers all over the world.The authors make use of conversation analysis (CA)-an approach that began with the work of Sacks in the United States in the 1960s.1 Although the vast majority of CA research today has been carried out among L1 speakers of English, recent years have seen considerable advances in CA studies in non-English contexts, many of which have been made by Scandinavian researchers (e.g. Cromdal, 2003; Kangasharju, 1996; Kurhila, 2006; Lindstrom, 1994; Steensig, 2000). CA has its roots in sociology, so rather than focusing on per se, it is first and foremost interested in how people accomplish a variety of actions by and through talk. Some of the actions highlighted in the current collection, for example, include reformulations (Svennevig), receipts (Foegtmann), clarifications (Osvaldsson et al.), explanations (Slotte-Luttge et al.), and disagreements (Cekaite and Bjork-Willen).CA's radically emic approach enables analysts to observe talk from the perspective of speakers themselves. Central to the analysis is a holistic, bottom-up approach to looking at naturally occurring interaction, allowing the analyst to document a variety of practices that participants use to achieve intersubjectivity, or mutual understanding, including such features as the organization of sequence, turn-taking, repair, and preference.The CA approach has been used to examine bilingual interaction for over 25 years now, beginning with Peter Auer's groundbreaking work on code-switching (Auer, 1984). This generated a variety of CA investigations into other pairs, including those by Li Wei (1994), Alfonzetti (1998), Sebba and Wooffitt (1998), Bailey (2000, 2002), Torras (2005), Cashman (2005), Cromdal (2001, 2004), and Gafaranga (1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007). Generally speaking, these authors have been interested in the way that alternation can be used to achieve various socio-interactional functions and the part it plays in the discursive display of identity. Justifying their findings through the next-turn proof procedure, CA studies of bilingual interaction have focused on real-time participant displays of understanding, which led Gafaranga and Torras (2002) to respecify code-switching as interactional otherness, suspending the notion of language until a point in the talk when the participants themselves orient to their languages.Applied linguists, on the other hand, have only relatively recently begun to recognize the potential of the CA approach for analyzing second-language talk. Two Denmark-based researchers, Firth and Wagner (1997), called for a reconceptualization of second-language learning-one that dedicates itself to the sociointeractional rather than the cognitive. This article was met with considerable debate, but it has also led to a renewed interest in the use of CA as a methodological approach for documenting second-language learner talk, including a variety of edited collections and special issues (Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Hua, Seedhouse, Wei, & Cook, 2007; Markee & Kasper, 2004; Richards & Seedhouse, 2005) and a recent special issue of The Modern Language Journal that looks at the effect of Firth and Wagners' call 10 years on (Wagner & Firth, 2007). …