Need for Structure and the Emergence of Communication

Tom Kouwenhoven, Roy de Kleijn, Stephan Raaijmakers, Tessa Verhoef

Abstract: Language is a unique hallmark of humans, it is both learnedand symbolic, which poses the problem of emergence: if nei-ther form nor meaning is known, how can individuals com-municate in the first place? The current study replicates workthat investigates the emergence of signal forms and meaningsand explores howPersonal Need for Structure(PNS) of in-teracting partners can aid or hinder the emergence of com-municative systems. We include an existing measure of per-sonal need for structure to investigate its relationship with theemergence of such systems while participants play the em-bodied communication game (ECG). Similar to the originalstudy, our work shows that a bootstrapping process and suf-ficient common ground are integral to the recognition of sig-nalhood. Moreover, this process appears to be more successfulfor individuals who respond differently to a lack of structure ascompared to their interaction partner. Contrary to what is usu-ally assumed, our results indicate that not onlysharedexpec-tations and biases seem to matter in communicative tasks, butthatdiversityin biases of communication partners can also bebeneficial for the emergence of new communication systems.