Context-dependent communication under environmental constraints
Krzysztof Główka Julian Zubek Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi
There is significant evidence that real-world communication cannot be reduced
to sending signals with context-independent meaning. In this work, based on a
variant of the classical Lewis (1969) signaling model, we explore the
conditions for the emergence of context-dependent communication in a situated
scenario. In particular, we demonstrate that pressure to minimise the
vocabulary size is sufficient for such emergence. At the same time, we study
the environmental conditions and cognitive capabilities that enable contextual
disambiguation of symbol meanings. We show that environmental constraints on
the receiver's referent choice can be unilaterally exploited by the sender,
without disambiguation capabilities on the receiver's end. Consistent with
common assumptions, the sender's awareness of the context appears to be
required for contextual communication. We suggest that context-dependent
communication is a situated multilayered phenomenon, crucially influenced by
environment properties such as distribution of contexts. The model developed in
this work is a demonstration of how signals may be ambiguous out of context,
but still allow for near-perfect communication accuracy.