Psychology
Centre for Situated Action and Communication
The Centre has at its core a commitment to studying psychological phenomena in relation to the contexts and situations in which they emerge. Its work covers a multitude of areas – such as developmental psychology, animal behaviour, understanding of object functions, autism and psycholinguistics. It also covers a multitude of methods – such as naturalistic observations, experiments, conversation analysis, cross-cultural studies, longitudinal studies and so on.
Our focus on situation and context takes the body and the social and material world in which we live as fundamental to all Psychology. Many of our studies focus on the processes through which animate beings are not only influenced by, but actually shape their immediate worlds. In this vein, ‘things’ in the world – often seen as physical objects – are often deeply social as well.
International Network: TESIS- Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity (2011-2015)
The centre is part of a Marie-Curie ITN (Initial Training Network) involving Centres at the Universities of Copenhagen, Heidelberg, Munich, Parma, San Sebastian, Hertfordshire, Chieti, and the partnership of LEGO, Interactive-Academie and Springer (www.tesis-itn.eu)
Examples of Research Projects
“Can I have some pepper please?”
Grammatical structures can vary with the situations in which they are used. For example, when English speakers request an object from another person, they notice whether or not there are any momentary ‘warrants’ for making the request. For example, in the picture, the girl’s father has just used the pepper grinder; in such situations people usually acknowledge the existence of the event or ‘warrant’ by asking with a form of words such as ‘Can I have X?’. When no such ‘warrants’ exist, people use the form ‘Can you give me X?’ (Zinken & Borek, 2012; Zinken & Ogiermann, 2011)
Perceiving deceptive intentions in football
Football players sometimes deceptively exaggerate the effect of a tackle. In an attempt to find out whether we can reliably tell which effects are faked – in a ‘dive’ – and which ones are genuine, three studies were conducted. One showed that non-professional participants agree strongly in their judgements about which players were attempting deception and which were not, and also about the tackles in which the intentions were ambiguous. Another study showed that the intentions of tackled players matched the judgment of their intentions by observers. A third identified the specific behaviours associated with deceptive and non deceptive intentions. (Morris & Lewis, 2010)
Talking to yourself in mirrors
Babies – even two month-olds - can interact with themselves in mirrors, responding to the other in the mirror with interest to smiles, (Reddy 2000) and testing ( Reddy et al, 2007). Such interactions reveal the presence of early emotional reactions and early interests in exploring contingencies. The practice of ‘talking’ to yourself can carry on into adulthood (as some of us might know)! Children with autism (Reddy et al, 2010) and children with Down syndrome also love mirrors, although they use the mirror in different ways, treating themselves as social audiences or exploring reflections and testing effects.
Language and gestures in joint activities
When people are engaged in joint activities, understanding their communication implies taking into account gestures and other physical actions as well as speech. Our research shows that when people are working together to evaluate, create or transform objects, their assessments are achieved by a finely integrated combination of talk and gestures. This makes each person quicker and more efficient at identifying exactly what the other is referring to, what is meant and what changes are proposed. Participants closely monitor each other’s physical actions and incorporate them in their own responses, showing that gestures are a constitutive part of communication and not only accessories to speech.
Assessing mutable objects: multimodal analysis
Fasulo, Alessandra and Monzoni, C. (2009) Assessing mutable objects: multimodal analysis. Research on Language & Social Interaction, 42 (4). pp. 362-376. ISSN 0835-1813 10.1080/08351810903296481