Latest Past Events

Lisa O’Bryan – Communication and the Coordination of Collective Behavior in Non-human and Human Social Groups

Lisa O'Bryan, Rice University In order to obtain social benefits, individuals must remain cohesive, coordinate their behavior, and collectively process information. The field of collective behavior focuses on understanding how group-wide properties such as these emerge from the interactions of many individuals. Most studies of collective behavior examine how coordination is achieved through visual cues […]

Federico Rossano – Interacting like a human being: a developmental and comparative perspective on calibrating requests

In his paper on the “human interaction engine”, Levinson famously asserted that, in social interaction, people’s responses “are to actions and intentions, not to behaviors” (2006: 45). Indeed human beings attribute intentions/goals to the production of signals and parsing other’s signals means simulating others’ mental worlds, at least to some degree.  But how do speakers calibrate their […]