Skip to main content

micro-primer on entrainment

I just wanted to emphasize that the basic idea here is a quite simple one:  Two loosely-coupled systems tend to get in sync, or otherwise into a steady state of interaction.  Historically the phenomenon was discovered when two grandfather clocks next to each other started beating in time.

Personally I learned about the concept in this article:

Iverson, J. M. & Thelen, E. (1999). Hand, mouth and brain. The dynamic emergence of speech and gesture. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(11-12), pp. 19–40. (http://cspeech.ucd.ie/Fred/docs/IversonThelen.pdf)

This article seems quite apropos for the study of non-verbal communication -- indeed, it illustrates an originary link between non-verbal and verbal communication.

I'm finding the ideas from that article useful (at least at a metaphorical level) thinking about how to build AI systems that use language.  I'd assert that this will really take off when we see that it's not just about text mining -- which would correspond to our verbal communication -- but also about automatic generation of code that uses the text (corresponding to non-verbal communication).

In the world of standard human communication, I noted an interesting partial correlate:
Emoji assist in a peculiarly modern task: conveying emotional nuance in short, online utterances. - http://www.wired.com/2016/04/the-science-of-emoji/

A short video of the classic case is below; I'd also note this wiki page, which describes another case of coupling between biological systems and their environment.  Maybe this one helps explain why my sleep schedule is so weird!


Comments

  1. A more in-depth treatment of related topics: http://www.amazon.com/Sync-Order-Emerges-Universe-Nature/dp/0786887214

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The plot thickens (with Herbert Spencer)

In a paper attempting to outline the conceptual domain of comparative psychology , Herbert Spencer discusses the quality of impulsiveness in relation with human races (bearded and unbearded). Among his "sundry questions of interests" about the relationship between mental energy, evolution, complexity, etc. are the following notes: ( b ) What connection is there between this trait and the social state? Clearly a very explosive nature - such as that of the Bushman - is unfit for social; and, commonly, social union, when by any means established, checks impulsiveness. ( c ) What respective shares in checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state fosters - such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of sociality , the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings , the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more or less distant; and th...

Metacommunicative cues

In the previous post on Extra channels I finished with a distinction between diachronic and synchronic metacommunication. In this post I'd like to respond to some comments by the co-author of this blog, Joe, in some of his previous posts, by invoking Jurgen Ruesch's concept of metacommunication . Gregory Bateson was interested in thinking about cybernetics, but didn't seem to feel constrained to think about it using a strictly computational or information-theoretic paradigm, while still being informed by the ideas. This gave him the freedom to talk about ideas like "context", "relationship", "learning", and "communication" without needing to define them in precise computational terms. Nevertheless, he handles the ideas fairly rigorously. (Joe, Phatic Workshop: towards a μ-calculus ) Gregory Bateson and Jurgen Ruesch, among many other notable thinkers, were part of the Palo Alto Group of researchers tasked to apply new methods (a...