Credo

Home Credo

Human Interactivity and Language Lab

Human Interactivity and Language Lab devotes its efforts to studying one of the core conundrums in the Cognitive Sciences: Our experience, perception and action in the world are continuous, unique, situated processes (think about how you laugh, grab a pen, dance), yet cognition seems to rely on replicable forms, such as routines, words, logical symbols and numbers. What is the relation between the two realms? How does one give rise to the other? Is their co-existence necessary for cognition, and if yes – why?
The primary example of this relation that we aim to study is how human language (a system of replicable forms) arises from and shapes human interactivity: How language enables certain coordinations and realization of certain values, and how using it may result in losing others. Language development is – we feel – the most revealing process for the nature of this relation. Within the affect-saturated engagements, infants learn how to do things with their actions and with their words.

Between form and dynamics

Within the affect-saturated engagements, infants learn how to do things with their actions and with their words. But the core conundrum has, of course, multiple manifestations, and we are also interested in its broader, and equally societally vital example:

How digital technology enables and transforms human coordination?

We ask this question at the most basic of levels, asking how creation of something digital may happen at all, which are needed? We think this is not as a feat of an individual mind, but – crucially – that processes of such abstraction happen in social interaction. We study, both in empirical research involving participants and in computational models, how the abstraction, resulting in quantifiable entities, inevitably selects values realized in interactions; how it facilitates some aspects of human coordination (such as when a phone or zoom may enable meeting at a distance), but may thwart aspects of our experiences and relations (e.g., a video-conferencing software is geared towards productive business meeting, but not so much spontaneous social interactions).

Values in interaction

The aim of the first thread of our research, on language development, is thus to learn about and become sensitive to the values that are being realized in early interactions, values which shape our agentivity and ways to relate to others as participants in the social life. One of the key questions/the key question is:

How are those values enabled and transformed by language?

The aim of the second thread is to awaken responsibility in the digitalization process, to see how it transforms the above values, to question the hubris of the digital and show its broader humane context, to uncover factors that would make AI technology careful, inclusive and human-agentive.
Our conceptual heritage roots in ecological psychology, enactivism and dynamical systems, where we find both theoretical tools, as well as research and data analysis methods, that match the structure and complexity of our research questions.

Who we are?

HILL is a group of independent researchers: some team members joined with their own research problems, with which they deeply identify, and about which they think in similar categories. For others, the core problem seems indeed crucial and they are still seeking its researchable expression. In our individualities we form a distributed entity, coalescing in subgroups and rearranging in various projects, complementing each others’ skills. While doing research we strive to realize values such as social responsibility, intellectual honesty and intellectual freedom. We believe in creating a nurturing, democratic, non-hierarchical environment, where everybody is respected and recognized, erring is natural, and where ideas may flow freely.