Nicolas Fay

University of Western Australia

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Bradley Walker

University of Western Australia

Simon Garrod

University of Glasgow

T. Mark Ellison

University of Cologne

Nik Swoboda

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Ullrich K. H. Ecker

University of Western Australia

Andrew Perfors

University of Melbourne

Piers D. L. Howe

University of Melbourne

Casey J. Lister

University of Western Australia

Maı̈té Paternostre

Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives

Mónica Tamariz

Heriot-Watt University

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University of Western Australia

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives

CEA Paris-Saclay

University of Melbourne

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Psychology

Universidad de Navarra

University of Birmingham

Google (United States)

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How to Bootstrap a Human Communication System

Cognitive Science (2013)

Nicolas Fay Michael A. Arbib Simon Garrod

Abstract How might a human communication system be bootstrapped in the absence of conventional language? We argue that motivated signs play an important role (i.e., signs that are linked to meaning by structural resemblance or by natural association). An experimental study is then reported in which participants try to communicate a range of pre‐specified items to a partner using repeated non‐linguistic vocalization, repeated gesture, or repeated non‐linguistic vocalization plus gesture (but without using their existing language system). Gesture proved more effective (measured by communication success) and more efficient (measured by the time taken to communicate) than non‐linguistic vocalization across a range of item categories (emotion, object, and action). Combining gesture and vocalization did not improve performance beyond gesture alone. We experimentally demonstrate that gesture is a more effective means of bootstrapping a human communication system. We argue that gesture outperforms non‐linguistic vocalization because it lends itself more naturally to the production of motivated signs.

10.1111/cogs.12048

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Citations (138)

Speaker overestimation of communication effectiveness and fear of negative evaluation: Being realistic is unrealistic

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (2008)

Nicolas Fay Andrew C. Page Crystal Serfaty Vivien Tai Chris Winkler

Social Communication

10.3758/pbr.15.6.1160

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Citations (17)

Individual Differences in Intelligence and Personality Guide Human Social Learning

Tiarn Burtenshaw Bradley Walker Gilles E. Gignac Cyril Greuter Nicolas Fay

Social intelligence

10.2139/ssrn.5101390

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Universal Principles of Human Communication: Preliminary Evidence from a Cross-Cultural Communication Game

Nicolas Fay Bradley Walker Nik Swoboda Ichiro Umata Takugo Fukaya

The present study points to several potentially universal principles of human communication. Pairs of participants, sampled from culturally and linguistically distinct societies (Western and Japanese, N=108: 16 Western-Western, 15 Japanese-Japanese and 23 Western-Japanese dyads) played a dyadic communication game in which they tried to communicate a range of experimenter-specified items to a partner by drawing, but without speaking or using letters or numbers. This paradigm forced participants to create a novel communication system. A range of similar communication behaviors were observed among the within-culture groups (Western-Western and Japanese-Japanese) and the across-culture group (Western-Japanese): they (1) used iconic signs to bootstrap successful communication, (2) addressed breakdowns in communication using other-initiated repairs, (3) simplified their communication behaviour over repeated social interactions and (4) aligned their communication behaviour over repeated social interactions. While the across- culture Western-Japanese dyads found the task more challenging, and cultural differences in communication behaviour were observed, the same basic findings applied across all groups. Our findings, which rely on two distinct cultural and linguistic groups, offer preliminary evidence for several universal principles of human communication.

Human communication

Social Communication

Cross-Cultural Communication

10.31234/osf.io/ex3fm

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Citations (2)

Can iterated learning explain the emergence of graphical symbols?

Benjamins current topics (2012)

Simon Garrod Nicolas Fay Shane L. Rogers Bradley Walker Nik Swoboda

This paper contrasts two influential theoretical accounts of language change and evolution – Iterated Learning and Social Coordination. The contrast is based on an experiment that compares drawings produced with Garrod et al.’s (2007) ‘pictionary’ task with those produced in an Iterated Learning version of the same task. The main finding is that Iterated Learning does not lead to the systematic simplification and increased symbolicity of graphical signs produced in the standard interactive version of the task. A second finding is that Iterated Learning leads to less conceptual and structural alignment between participants than observed for those in the interactive condition. The paper concludes with a comparison of the two accounts in relation to how each promotes signs that are efficient, systematic and learnable.

Iterated function

10.1075/bct.45.03gar

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Self-certification: A novel method for increasing sharing discernment on social media

PLoS ONE (2024)

Piers D. L. Howe Andrew Perfors Keith Ransom Bradley Walker Nicolas Fay

The proliferation of misinformation on social media platforms has given rise to growing demands for effective intervention strategies that increase sharing discernment (i.e. increase the difference in the probability of sharing true posts relative to the probability of sharing false posts). One suggested method is to encourage users to deliberate on the veracity of the information prior to sharing. However, this strategy is undermined by individuals' propensity to share posts they acknowledge as false. In our study, across three experiments, in a simulated social media environment, participants were shown social media posts and asked whether they wished to share them and, sometimes, whether they believed the posts to be truthful. We observe that requiring users to verify their belief in a news post's truthfulness before sharing it markedly curtails the dissemination of false information. Thus, requiring self-certification increased sharing discernment. Importantly, requiring self-certification didn't hinder users from sharing content they genuinely believed to be true because participants were allowed to share any posts that they indicated were true. We propose self-certification as a method that substantially curbs the spread of misleading content on social media without infringing upon the principle of free speech.

Discernment

10.1371/journal.pone.0303025

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Design, Adaptation and Convention: The Emergence of Higher Order Graphical Representations

Conference Cognitive Science (2004)

Nicolas Fay Simon Garrod Tracy Macleod John Lee Jon Oberlander

Design, Adaptation and Convention: The Emergence of Higher Order Graphical Representations Nicolas Fay (nfay@atr.jp) ATR Media Information Science Labs, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto 619-0228, Japan Simon Garrod (simon@psy.gla.ac.uk) Tracy MacLeod (tracym@psy.gla.ac.uk) Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QB, Scotland John Lee (j.lee@ed.ac.uk) Jon Oberlander (j.oberlander@ed.ac.uk) HCRC, University of Edinburgh, 2 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9LW, Scotland Abstract example (Figure 1), we argue that conventions are culturally evolved higher order cognitions. Over several thousand years the original Chinese character that represents mountain (left) has evolved into its current, less complex, form (right). We argue that this change is not arbitrary; it is a result of global coordination that took place over time and space, culminating in a refined, conventional form that promotes rapid communication with reduced effort. This is an example of an evolutionary process where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To study the development of graphical conventions we had members of a simulated community play a series of graphical interaction games with partners drawn from the same pool (Experiment 1). Once the community was established, a conventional graphical referring scheme emerged that facilitated high levels of semantic coordination, with reduced communicative effort. Next, a forced choice reaction time study (Experiment 2) demonstrated that the graphical conventions developed in the simulated community offer distinct processing advantages when compared with those developed by isolated pairs (i.e. participants who always interact with the same partner). This is interpreted as evidence that the graphical conventions that evolve within a closed community constitute higher order cognitions, the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Figure 1. The changing form of the Chinese character that represents mountain (Vacarri & Vacarri, 1961; cited in Arbib, in press) Background Vygotsky (1981) claims that higher order cognition is a product of social interaction, that novel structures emerge as a consequence of interpersonal, as opposed to intrapersonal, communication. Hutchins (1995) shares this view, arguing that higher order cognition is a cultural product, a consequence of interaction (human- environment and human-human) that is distributed across time and space. According to Hutchins, higher order cognitions emerge from “an adaptive process that accumulates partial solutions to frequently encountered problems” (p.354). Lewis (1969, 1975) defines conventions in a related way, as arising from situations where a community faces the recurrent problem of coordination. If we agree that conventions are cultural products, should we accept that they represent higher order cognitions? Using Chinese characters as an Having partners collaborate on a graphical referential communication task, Fay, Garrod, Lee and Oberlander (2003) studied the influence of interaction upon representational form. The task requires pairs of participants to graphically communicate a series of recurring concepts. Figure 2 illustrates the changing representation of the concept ‘Clint Eastwood’ over 6 games, where partners’ drawing and identifying roles alternated from game to game. What is initially a designed, iconic representation of Clint Eastwood, develops, through a process of adaptation and entrainment, into a simplified, symbolic form (an arrow pointing East). Although there are obvious similarities between this process and the evolution of Chinese characters, the derived representation of Clint Eastwood does not constitute a convention in Lewis’ terms. According to Lewis, a convention must be common knowledge within the

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People Attribute a Range of Highly-Varied and Socially-Bound Meanings to Naturalistic Sad Facial Expressions

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior (2024)

Sarah de la Harpe Romina Palermo Emily Brown Nicolas Fay Amy Dawel

Abstract Depictions of sadness are commonplace, and here we aimed to discover and catalogue the complex and nuanced ways that people interpret sad facial expressions. We used a rigorous qualitative methodology to build a thematic framework from 3,243 open-ended responses from 41 people who participated in 2020 and described what they thought sad expressors in 80 images were thinking, feeling, and/or intending to do. Face images were sourced from a novel set of naturalistic expressions (ANU Real Facial Expression Database), as well as a traditional posed expression database (Radboud Faces Database). The resultant framework revealed clear themes around the expressors’ thoughts (e.g., acceptance, contemplation, disbelief), social needs (e.g., social support or withdrawal), social behaviours/intentions (e.g., mock or manipulate), and the precipitating events (e.g., social or romantic conflict). Expressions that were perceived as genuine were more frequently described as thinking deeply, reflecting, or feeling regretful, whereas those perceived as posed were more frequently described as exaggerated, overamplified, or dramatised. Overall, findings highlight that facial expressions — even with high levels of consensus about the emotion category they belong to — are interpreted in nuanced and complex ways that emphasise their role as other-oriented social tools, and convey semantically related emotion categories that share smooth gradients with one another. Our novel thematic framework also provides an important foundation for future work aimed at understanding variation in the social functions of sadness, including exploring potential differences in interpretations across cultural settings.

Sadness

Expression (computer science)

Thematic Analysis

Romance

Naturalism

10.1007/s10919-024-00463-y

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Directing peptide crystallization through curvature control of nanotubes

Journal of Peptide Science (2014)

Frédéric Gobeaux Christophe Tarabout Nicolas Fay Cristelle Mériadec Melinda Ligeti

In the absence of efficient crystallization methods, the molecular structures of fibrous assemblies have so far remained rather elusive. In this paper, we present a rational method to crystallize the lanreotide octapeptide by modification of a residue involved in a close contact. Indeed, we show that it is possible to modify the curvature of the lanreotide nanotubes and hence their diameter. This fine tuning leads to crystallization because the radius of curvature of the initially bidimensional peptide wall can be increased up to a point where the wall is essentially flat and a crystal is allowed to grow along a third dimension. By comparing X‐ray diffraction data and Fourier transform Raman spectra, we show that the nanotubes and the crystals share similar cell parameters and molecular conformations, proving that there is indeed a structural continuum between these two morphologies. These results illustrate a novel approach to crystallization and represent the first step towards the acquisition of an Å‐resolution structure of the lanreotide nanotubes β ‐sheet assembly. Copyright © 2014 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

10.1002/psc.2647

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Elucidation of the Self-Assembly Pathway of Lanreotide Octapeptide into β-Sheet Nanotubes: Role of Two Stable Intermediates

Journal of the American Chemical Society (2010)

Émilie Pouget Nicolas Fay Erik Dujardin Nadège Jamin Patrick Berthault

Nanofabrication by molecular self-assembly involves the design of molecules and self-assembly strategies so that shape and chemical complementarities drive the units to organize spontaneously into the desired structures. The power of self-assembly makes it the ubiquitous strategy of living organized matter and provides a powerful tool to chemists. However, a challenging issue in the self-assembly of complex supramolecular structures is to understand how kinetically efficient pathways emerge from the multitude of possible transition states and routes. Unfortunately, very few systems provide an intelligible structure and formation mechanism on which new models can be developed. Here, we elucidate the molecular and supramolecular self-assembly mechanism of synthetic octapeptide into nanotubes in equilibrium conditions. Their complex hierarchical self-assembly has recently been described at the mesoscopic level, and we show now that this system uniquely exhibits three assembly stages and three intermediates: (i) a peptide dimer is evidenced by both analytical centrifugation and NMR translational diffusion experiments; (ii) an open ribbon and (iii) an unstable helical ribbon are both visualized by transmission electron microscopy and characterized by small angle X-ray scattering. Interestingly, the structural features of two stable intermediates are related to the final nanotube organization as they set, respectively, the nanotube wall thickness and the final wall curvature radius. We propose that a specific self-assembly pathway is selected by the existence of such preorganized and stable intermediates so that a unique final molecular organization is kinetically favored. Our findings suggests that the rational design of oligopeptides can encode both molecular- and macro-scale morphological characteristics of their higher-order assemblies, thus opening the way to ultrahigh resolution peptide scaffold engineering.

Supramolecular assembly

Ribbon

10.1021/ja9088023

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Citations (79)