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Communicating Through Acting: Affording Communicative Intention in Pantomimes
Siyi Gong1, Kaiwen Jiang2, Jessica G Li3
1Department of Communication, University of California, Los Angeles.
Cognitive Science
|October 2, 2025
Summary
People intuitively recognize communicative intention in pantomimes when actions have partial affordance. Recognizing instrumental goals and suboptimal conditions enhances the communicative signal, revealing a novel mechanism for interpreting actions.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Psychology
- Human Communication
Background:
- Pantomimes pose a challenge in distinguishing communicative intention from instrumental action.
- Two hypotheses exist: instrumental intention competes with or is nested within communicative intention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how people intuitively recognize communicative intention in pantomimes.
- To test the relationship between instrumental and communicative intention in action perception.
- To explore the role of affordance in interpreting communicative intent.
Main Methods:
- Compiled a video dataset of action-object pairs.
- Qualitatively varied scene affordance to support or hinder action execution.
- Conducted two empirical experiments measuring communicative ratings.
Main Results:
- A nonmonotonic relationship was found between affordance and communicative ratings.
- Partial affordance (some support for instrumental purpose) elicited the strongest perception of communicative intention.
- Recognizing instrumental components of actions predicted higher communicativeness.
Conclusions:
- Humans can interpret novel pantomimes by recognizing instrumental goals and suboptimal conditions.
- This study reveals a novel mechanism for communicative intention perception.
- The rationality principle aids in distinguishing communicative intention and identifying embedded instrumental content.
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