Psychoblog

Dear colleagues,

We (as the Department of Developmental Psychology) would like to invite you to a talk by Manuel Bohn (MPI und Uni Leipzig) on Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 12.15 (seminar room 2.111, Waldweg 26). In his talk, Dr. Bohn will speak about “Rational speech-act theory and pragmatic development” (see abstract below).

We are looking forward to seeing you at our colloquium.

Best wishes,
Feride N. Haskaraca Kizilay

Abstract: 

Information integration in language learning across development

Language is a fundamentally social endeavor. Pragmatics is the study of how speakers and listeners use social reasoning to go beyond the literal meanings of words to interpret language in context. In my work, I take a pragmatic perspective on language development and argue for developmental continuity between early non-verbal communication, language learning, and linguistic pragmatics. These phenomena can be linked by relating them to a computational framework (the rational speech act (RSA) framework), which conceptualizes communication as fundamentally inferential and grounded in social cognition. This computational framework also provides a way to think about information integration. By drawing on experimental data from two recent projects, I will illustrate how RSA models can be used to test different hypothesis about the development of information integration during language learning.