Intentional Communicative Behavior Research Articles

Development of Intentional Communicative Behavior in Korean Toddlers 12 to 30 Months

배경 및 목적: 영유아 시기의 의도적 의사소통행동 발달은 의사소통 발달의 기초가 되며, 추후 언어 발달과도 밀접한 관계를 갖는다. 본 연구는 12-30개월 사이의 영아들을 대상으로 의도적 의사소통행동 발달을 살펴보는 것을 목적으로 하였다 방법: 12-30개월 사이의 전형적 발달 영유아 41명을 대상으로 하였다. 참여 영유아는 6개월 간격의 세 연령 집단으로...

Visually impaired people and the guide dog in france

s e7 attention-getting behaviors, 3) the requirement of an audience to exhibit the behaviors. Taking these 3 criteria as a reference, we analyzed how pet dogs engage in communicative behaviors in the presence of their owner when the dogs’ toy is out of reach. Observations were performed when only the toy, only the owner or both the toy and the owner were present to control for motivational (vs. intentional) and referential nature of the behaviors. Gaze alternation between the hidden target and the owner, and the position of the dogs in relation to the location of the target were analyzed. The results show that, as in chimpanzees, gaze alternation was used, by the dogs, as an apparent functionally referential and intentional communicative behavior. The dogs apparently also used their own position as a local enhancement signal. We concluded that part of the criteria to assess apparent referential and intentional communicative behaviors in gaze alternations and locations in space, is found in dogs.

Communicating without a functioning language system: Implications for the role of language in mentalizing

A debated issue in the relationship between language and thought is how our linguistic abilities are involved in understanding the intentions of others (‘mentalizing’). The results of both theoretical and empirical work have been used to argue that linguistic, and more specifically, grammatical, abilities are crucial in representing the mental states of others. Here we contribute to this debate by investigating how damage to the language system influences the generation and understanding of intentional communicative behaviors. Four patients with pervasive language difficulties (severe global or agrammatic aphasia) engaged in an experimentally controlled non-verbal communication paradigm, which required signaling and understanding a communicative message. Despite their profound language problems they were able to engage in recipient design as well as intention recognition, showing similar indicators of mentalizing as have been observed in the neurologically healthy population. Our results show that aspects of the ability to communicate remain present even when core capacities of the language system are dysfunctional.

Online Professional Development for Early Interventionists

This article describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of an online course designed to train early interventionists to implement strategies with caregivers (parents) that promote interactions with infants who have multiple disabilities. The focus was on supporting caregivers to observe and understand their infants' states and cues, and to develop responsive interaction strategies that encourage their infants' development of intentional communicative behavior. Because infants with multiple disabilities represent a low-incidence and challenging population, there is a significant need for efficient inservice methods, such as online instruction. A total of 86 early interventionists in California completed the online course successfully and used the strategies effectively with caregivers and their infants. An overview of the course content, structure, assignments, and online instruction is provided. A discussion of outcomes includes feedback from students on (a) their perception of changes in their own professional competencies based on pre- and posttest data, (b) their satisfaction with the overall course design, (c) challenges and benefits of online instruction, and (d) the impact of what they learned on their professional practice. Course effectiveness was also measured through informal analyses of online discussions, course assignments, and instructor reflections. Implications for future professional development efforts are identified.

Neuroethics and the Problem of Other Minds: Implications of Neuroscience for the Moral Status of Brain-Damaged Patients and Nonhuman Animals

Our ethical obligations to another being depend at least in part on that being’s capacity for a mental life. Our usual approach to inferring the mental state of another is to reason by analogy: If another being behaves as I do in a circumstance that engenders a certain mental state in me, I conclude that it has engendered the same mental state in him or her. Unfortunately, as philosophers have long noted, this analogy is fallible because behavior and mental states are only contingently related. If the other person is acting, for example, we could draw the wrong conclusion about his or her mental state. In this article I consider another type of analogy that can be drawn between oneself and another to infer the mental state of the other, substituting brain activity for behavior. According to most current views of the mind–body problem, mental states and brain states are non-contingently related, and hence inferences drawn with the new analogy are not susceptible to the alternative interpretations that plague the behavioral analogy. The implications of this approach are explored in two cases for which behavior is particularly unhelpful as a guide to mental status: severely brain–damaged patients who are incapable of intentional communicative behavior, and nonhuman animals whose behavioral repertoires are different from ours and who lack language.

Older Siblings' Use of Responsive Interaction Strategies and Effects on Their Younger Siblings with Down Syndrome

The effects of an intervention designed to facilitate interactions between older typically developing siblings and their younger siblings with Down syndrome were investigated. Older siblings were taught to use two responsive interaction strategies through the use of written materials, modeling, role play, and oral feedback. Following training, older siblings increased their use of mirroring and verbal responding. Intentional communicative behaviors increased among their younger siblings. One-month follow-up observations indicated that older siblings maintained their use of the responsive interaction strategies, but the effects of the intervention did not appear to generalize to an untrained setting. In an assessment of social validity, blind observers found sibling interactions to appear more positive and reciprocal following intervention than during baseline.

Hand use and gestural communication in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Hand use in gestural communication was examined in 115 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Hand use was measured in subjects while they gestured to food placed out of their reach. The distribution of hand use was examined in relation to sex, age, rearing history, gesture type, and whether the subjects vocalized while gesturing. Overall, significantly more chimpanzees, especially females and adults, gestured with their right than with their left hand. Foods begs were more lateralized to the right hand than pointing, and a greater prevalence of right-hand gesturing was found in subjects who simultaneously vocalized than those who did not. Taken together, these data suggest that referential, intentional communicative behaviors, in the form of gestures, are lateralized to the left hemisphere in chimpanzees.

Use of microswitch technology to facilitate social contingency awareness as a basis for early communication skills

Individuals with vision and hearing impairments in combination with severe orthopaedic impairments often fail to demonstrate any clear awareness of contingent relationships between their own behaviors and environmental outcomes. Without contingency awareness, it is not possible to engage in intentional communicative behavior. A single case design is presented involving a deaf-blind child with severe orthopaedic impairments who demonstrated no contingency awareness. The study was designed to examine the use of microswitch manipulanda to facilitate the awareness of social contingencies as a potential foundation for the development of intentional communicative behavior. Results indicated that the child increased the targeted motor behavior (activating a microswitch) under conditions involving the delivery of social contingencies, but not under conditions involving the delivery of nonsocial contingencies. Subsequent clinical applications are described to illustrate the direct impact of these findings on proce...

Intentional Communicative Behavior of Children with Autism: Theoretical and Practical Issues

Intentional Communicative Behavior of Children with Autism: Theoretical and Practical Issues

Rocking gesture as communicative behavior in the wild pygmy chimpanzees in Wamba, central Zaire

The pygmy chimpanzee rocks its upper body in a variety of contexts, while the common chimpanzee rocks in only 3 situations; courtship, charging display and frustration. In the pygmy chimpanzee, behaviors involving rocking except for charging display are intentional communicative behaviors which bring about various body contact interactions. Each interaction pattern corresponds to each information set consisting of participant age-sex combination, additional signal and group situation. Rocking without any other gestures functions as a sign of tolerance or appeasement to access. This suggests that communicative behaviors involving rocking have a kind of segmentive structure, i.e., rocking represents access while other additional information sets represent the interaction pattern, the character of which is analogous to linguistic communication. Rocking in most interactions possibly derived from rocking in courtship behavior which appears to be a ritualized form of frustrated rocking, while other forms of rocking may possibly be of different origins.

Establishing Pragmatic Discriminations among the Communicative Functions of Requesting, Rejecting, and Commenting in an Adolescent

A 15-year-old learner with severe handicaps who exhibited minimal intentional communicative behavior was taught to discriminately encode three classes of communicative functions, including requesting, rejecting, and commenting. A single symbol (want) represented the requesting function, and another symbol (no) represented the rejecting function. Four signs from American Sign Language represented each of four object labels taught in the commenting function. Communicative functions were taught in a mixed sequential paradigm (requesting, requesting/rejecting, and requesting/rejecting/commenting). Elicited probes were administered after each acquisition criterion was reached to assess generalization across communicative situations. Results suggest that a series of pragmatic discriminations can be established early in a sequence of communicative intervention. Further, the learner used requesting and rejecting spontaneously in other classroom environments. Results are discussed in terms of content, selection, and sequencing in communication intervention programs designed for learners with severe handicaps.

Effects of day-care experience on the use of intentional communicative behaviors in a sample of socioeconomically depressed infants.

Effects of day-care experience on the use of intentional communicative behaviors in a sample of socioeconomically depressed infants.

Effects of day-care experience on the use of intentional communicative behaviors in a sample of socioeconomically depressed infants.

Effects of day-care experience on the use of intentional communicative behaviors in a sample of socioeconomically depressed infants.