{"pk":26561,"title":"Shifting meanings: The fluidity of signal-meaning mappings in a minimalcommunicative task","subtitle":null,"abstract":"We used a non-linguistic experimental paradigm to explore the instantaneous creation of new communicative con-ventions. Participants played a computer game, in which they sent and interpreted minimal signals to obtain shared rewardswithin a virtual scene. Trials manipulated the space of possible signals that could be sent, and the meanings to be expressed (lo-cations and quantities of rewards); as such, optimal success in the task required participants to jointly construct signal-meaningmappings that functioned as part of a system, rather than in isolation.We observed different signalling strategies among participants, but with some individuals using ‘system-mapping’ conven-tions that globally reorganized in light of changing task constraints. Such behaviour reflects the principle of pre-emption inpragmatics, where the inferred meaning of an utterance depends on its relationship among a set of alternatives. Our initialfindings provide a basis for future research, investigating contexts that are conducive to this phenomenon.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[],"section":"Member Abstracts","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ss2j691","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Jennifer","middle_name":"","last_name":"Misyak","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Warwick","department":""},{"first_name":"Takao","middle_name":"","last_name":"Noguchi","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Warwick","department":""},{"first_name":"Nick","middle_name":"","last_name":"Chater","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Warwick","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26561/galley/16197/download/"}]}