The Multiple Perspectives Theory of Mental States in Communication

Inspired by early proposals in philosophy, dominant accounts of language posit a central role for mutual knowledge, either encoded directly in common ground, or approximated through other cognitive mechanisms. Using existing empirical evidence from language and memory, we challenge this tradition, a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive science 2023-07, Vol.47 (7), p.e13322-n/a
Main Authors: Heller, Daphna, Brown‐Schmidt, Sarah
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alignment
Assertions
Cognitive ability
Common ground
Communication
Comprehension
Conversation
Humans
Language
Memory
Mental Processes
Mutual knowledge
Questions
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Summary:Inspired by early proposals in philosophy, dominant accounts of language posit a central role for mutual knowledge, either encoded directly in common ground, or approximated through other cognitive mechanisms. Using existing empirical evidence from language and memory, we challenge this tradition, arguing that mutual knowledge captures only a subset of the mental states needed to support communication. In a novel theoretical proposal, we argue for a cognitive architecture that includes separate, distinct representations of the self and other, and a cognitive process that compares these representations continuously during conversation, outputting both similarities and differences in perspective. Our theory accounts for existing data, interfaces with findings from other cognitive domains, and makes novel predictions about the role of perspective in language use. We term this new account the Multiple Perspectives Theory of mental states in communication.
ISSN:0364-0213
1551-6709
DOI:10.1111/cogs.13322