The view put forward here is that visual bodily signals play a core role in human
communication and the coordination of minds. Critically, this role goes far beyond referential …

What is required to allow an artificial agent to engage in rich, human-like interactions with
people? I argue that this will require capturing the process by which humans continually …

Human expression is open-ended, versatile, and diverse, ranging from ordinary language
use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid …

Languages are powerful solutions to coordination problems: They provide stable, shared
expectations about how the words we say correspond to the beliefs and intentions in our …

How language began is one of the oldest questions in science, but theories remain
speculative due to a lack of direct evidence. Here, we report two experiments that generate …

The field of linguistics concerns itself with understanding the human capacity for language.
Compositionality is a key notion in this research tradition. Compositionality refers to the …

Recent research has shown that semantic category systems, such as color and kinship
terms, find an optimal balance between simplicity and informativeness. We argue that this …

Meta-theoretical perspectives on the research problems and activities of (cognitive)
scientists often emphasize empirical problems and problem-solving as the main aspects that …

When people interact to establish shared symbols for novel objects or concepts, they often
rely on multiple communicative modalities as well as on alignment (ie, cross-participant …

Communication needs to be complex enough to be functional while minimizing learning and
production costs. Recent work suggests that the vocalizations and gestures of some …