Project description
The main aim of the project was to elaborate and verify the completeness and coherence of a theory of emergence of symbols within situated action. The theory was introduced on the basis of Peirce’s semiotics by Terrence Deacon (Deacon, 1997) and adapted to the process of development by Rączaszek-Leonardi, Nomikou, Rohlfing & Deacon (2018). Even though the theory was conceptually appealing and seemed to be congruent with the developmental data, it had its critics (e.g. Steffensen and Harvey, 2018) and its details have not been elaborated.
The OPUS 15 project was designed to elaborate details of the relation between symbol processing and situated action by the means of theoretical analyses and agent-based computational modeling. Such computational models are a recommended form of theories in general in cognitive sciences (and specifically in language emergence theories, see e.g. Parisi and Cangelosi, 2002), because they assure the completeness and coherence of a given set of claims comprising the theory. They are especially useful in the case of theories which propose that a given phenomenon is due to multiple, complex processes, unfolding (often nonlinearly) over multiple time-scales. Such is the case of the research questions regarding the emergence of symbols and their functioning within dynamics.
List of publications:
Rorot, W., Skowrońska, K., Nagórska, E., Zieliński, K., Zubek, J., & Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. (2023). Structuring unleashed expression: Developmental foundations of human communication. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e13.
Hodges, B. & Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. (2022). Ecological Values Theory: Beyond Conformity, Goal-Seeking, and Rule-Following in Action and Interaction. Review of General Psychology, Vol. 26, 1, 86–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211048174
Rączaszek-Leonardi, J., Główka, K., Nomikou, I., & Rossmanith, N. (2022). Time-to-smile, time-to-speak, time-to-resolve: Timescales for shaping engagement in language. Language Sciences, 93, 101495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2022.101495
Korbak, T.; Zubek, J.; Kuciński, Ł.; Miłoś, P. & Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. (2021). Interaction history as a source of compositionality in emergent communication. Interaction Studies 22 (2):212-243.
Rączaszek-Leonardi (2021). Complementarity of Description and the Promise
of Semiotics in Dealing with an Eluding Object. Biosemiotics, 14, p. 589–595.
Popova, Y.B. & Rączaszek-Leonardi J. (2020) Enactivism and Ecological Psychology: The Role of Bodily Experience in Agency. Front. Psychol. 11:539841. https://10.3389/fpsyg.2020.539841
Deacon, T.W. & Rączaszek-Leonardi, J. (2019). Abandoning the code metaphor is compatible with semiotic proces. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, e224, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19001419
Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi
Julian Zubek
Michał Denkiewicz
Konrad Zieliński
