The Field of Attention

The current online issue of The New York Review of Books has an essay by historian William H. McNeill about Paleolithic art (here). Cro-Magnon peoples were genetically just like us and the date of their oldest cave art is only 27,000 years ago, yesterday on this blog. But I mention the essay  because describes the way cave art serves to bring the observers attention to animal properties already in the cave wall. The notion of joint or social attention plays a big role on this blog.

The essay describes two books, one by Gregory Curtis The Cave Painters. McNeill writes:

Curtis reports that as he explored the caves he often thought he glimpsed an animal, only to find that “the contours of the wall had suggested a head or chest or horns and the play of shadows … had made me think I was seeing a horse or a bison.” Musing on this self-deception provoked a new thought about the artist’s intentions:

[Quoting Curtis] So at last it occurred to me that seeing animals in the rock must have been desirable, perhaps event he primary purpose of the art. The paintings and engravings — maybe not all of them, but many — weren’t adding animals on top of the rock but were a means of pulling out of the stone the animals that were already there.

[McNeill continues] Everyone agrees that many of the masterworks of cave art were constructed around preexisting marks and curves on natural surfaces. In that sense, we can say that human intervention did not create the animals. Instead, it assisted them to emerge from the stone, just as newborns emerged from their mother’s wombs, ready to provide a disembodied spirit with a new home.

This is not art as we know it.

We do so know art that way, at least a little. I once knew a wood carver who was quite adept at using the features of a wood to shape the carving’s features, and he certainly said his carvings merely brought out what was already in the wood. I am more sympathetic to that remark now that I was at the time. He was bringing my attention to subtleties in his material and I find the idea of drawing attention to be valuable in thinking about language and the origins of speech. I think there are many reasons for embracing the proposition that speech is a function of joint attention (discussed here and here) rather than communication theory.

There are many reasons for embracing the proposition that speech is a function of joint attention (discussed here) rather than communication theory.

First, is the commonsense idea that people are talking about two different things when they discuss people communicating or, say, telephones communicating. Telephone communication is about generating a clear signal.  Claude Shannon’s founding paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” defines the task of mechanical communication thusly:

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point.

This description is to be taken literally by the communications engineer but, at best, metaphorically by psychologists. Shannon of course was well aware of the difference between human and mechanical communication.

Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.

It seems unlikely that anyone would ever have confused the two forms of communication if it had not developed that molecular biology depends very much on communication theory, computer science is tied to communication theory, and the behavior of many animals can be explained in whole or in part by communication theory.

Another appeal is the way joint attention reconciles the expectations of evolutionary theory. During the past half-century, linguistics scholars have repeatedly stressed the uniqueness of language, but evolution theory does not easily embrace unprecedented things, especially not unprecedented biological functions. This contradiction led Noam Chomsky, who stresses language’s uniqueness above all else, to doubt that evolution had much light to throw on language origins. This confusion is a direct result of the inadequacy of communication theory to tell us anything useful about the phonology, semantics, or syntax of speech. So it comes as a great relief to say that communication theory has been a distraction and that a (probably) universal function among primates, joint attention, is the real key to understanding speech origins.

Yet another benefit of joint-attention theory is the way that it clarifies the confusion over speech’s meaningful context. This issue has been surprisingly tangled, leading to constant debate over where meaning lies. We all know that context is important in speech. A sentence like, “He did it,” can only be understood by people who already know who he is and what it is. But sometimes meaning seems to be in one’s head, sometimes in a thing out there, and sometimes in some kind of shared understanding. But the concept of joint attention carries with it the notion of an attention field, the “area” where the joint attention is focused. Speech’s semantic context is the field of attention.

In other primates this field of attention appears to be limited to the here and now. At one time in my life I regularly rode a motorcycle past a troop of baboons who would watch me putt-putt by. Mostly the baboons just got out of my way and watched quietly. Sometimes they made yawning threat gestures or little noises. At those moments I was front and center in their field of attention, but the moment I moved away I was outside of it. Being outside the field of attention is not the same as being forgotten. When the baboons saw me again they might have recognized me, but I doubt they paid me any mind once I was gone. Chimpanzees are much more clever and alert than baboons, but their fields of attention too seem to be in the here and now.

The low-level signing ability of chimpanzees and gorillas establishes that they can recognize elements within their attention field and can also recall things and actions associated with these elements. Thus, a chimpanzee, on recognizing a particular trainer, can give the hand sign to request a tickle. Associative recall appears to be about as free as apes ever get to be from the absolute here and now. That faculty is enough to explain observed tool use in chimpanzees. A tool, say a twig, can be associated with termite hunting, so that the sight of twigs alone is enough to inspire a chimpanzee to pick up a twig and go off in search of a termite mound.

We have to be careful about saying what chimpanzees cannot do because they may have more imagination that we know. The Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta has sometimes reported on “genius” chimpanzees who show insightful innovations, but we can say that chimpanzees keep their imagination to themselves. So, for practical purposes, human imagination is unusual in being able to explore a field of attention outside the here and now.

Insightful understanding seems to arise from a double-memory experience with the here and now. We can recognize something and we recall it at the same time. For example, I once recognized a familiar bridge from an unfamiliar angle. Looking up from the base of the bridge, and being reminded of the bridge’s name, I was able to recognize the bridge and its relationship with its surroundings. At the same time I recalled what it looked like from above. The resultant insight was more than just a stronger sense of orientation. I became able to imagine the setting apart from anything I had experienced. In my new, expanded field of attention I could move through the space in ways I had never done, and imagine getting from point A (above the bridge) to point B (below the bridge) by moving along routes I had never traveled. This kind of double-memory seems to lie behind many of the Aha! moments that I have experienced.

It is the ability to share a human field of attention, one that lies in our imagination rather than out there in the here and now, that permits many of language's unique qualities. Reading a novel seems very remote from the verbal interactions of two four-year-old children on a playground, but in both instances people are sharing a field of attention. To understand fully what is going on in either case, you too must enter that field.

So there is yet another attraction of the joint-attention theory over that of communications theory. Even while putting language into a context that makes evolutionary sense, it tells us something unique about humans. We can enter and share imaginary fields of attention.

Comments

[TLTB]

I still don't understand how joint attention makes evolutionary sense for language, and this is particularly highlighted in your post. You now have two things that are very special about humans - language and the ability to share 'imagined fields of attention.'Could the same evolutionary leap have given rise to them both?

If you're sticking with an adaptionist model, we're gonna need a story for (i) why our 'joint attention faculty' got so articulated as to provide us with imagined attention fields and (ii) how having syntax is essential to sharing these imagined fields with one another.

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THE BLOGGER RESPONDS

The basic proposition is this:

1) While communication/information theory excellently describes the actions of DNA, RNA, and many plants and animals, it does not well describe language.

2) Ergo, language is not a too for communication in the mechanical sense of the term.

3) Language as a tool for sharing a field of attention looks like a strong alternative.

As for the other items, stay tuned.

[David]

The capacity for joint attention appears in human infants at the same time as their protolanguage begins - about 9mths, suggesting an evolutionary link between the two. Before this the child and carers can share emotions, but joint attention and protolanguage enable sharing of (rudimentary) meanings about things in the world.

Joint attention together with protolanguage have obvious advantages for teaching learnt behaviours to the young - that other species lack. They may be the foundations for rudimentary cultural learning that produced technologies such as the million year 'hand axe' tradition.