Creating Understanding : How Communicating Aligns Minds

Jessica Gasiorek

ISBN 10: 1433168154 / ISBN 13: 9781433168154

Published by Peter Lang, 2020

About this Item

Druck auf Anfrage Neuware - Printed after ordering - Winner of the Jake Harwood Outstanding Book Award (2022). What, exactly, is understanding And how do people create, maintain, and manipulate states of understanding via communication This book addresses these questions, drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in cognitive science, communication, psychology, and pragmatics. Rejecting classic descriptions of communication as 'sending and receiving messages,' this book proposes a novel perspective that depicts communication as a process in which interactants construct, test, and refine mental modes of a joint experience on the basis of the meme states (mental representations) activated by stimuli in social interactions. It explains how this process, when successful, results in interactants' mental models aligning, or becoming entrained-in other words, in creating a state of understanding. This framework is grounded in a set of foundational observations about evolved human cognition that highlight people's intrinsic social orientation, predisposition toward efficiency, and use of predictive interference-making. These principles are also used to explain how codified systems ('codes') emerge in extended or repeated interactions in which people endeavor to create understanding. Integrating and synthesizing research across disciplines, this book offers communication scholars and students a theoretical framework that will transform the way they see understanding, communication, and social connection.

Seller Inventory # 9781433168154

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creating Understanding : How Communicating Aligns Minds
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1433168154
• ISBN 13: 9781433168154
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu

About this title

Synopsis

What, exactly, is understanding? And how do people create, maintain, and manipulate states of understanding via communication? This book addresses these questions, drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in cognitive science, communication, psychology, and pragmatics. Rejecting classic descriptions of communication as "sending and receiving messages," this book proposes a novel perspective that depicts communication as a process in which interactants construct, test, and refine mental modes of a joint experience on the basis of the meme states (mental representations) activated by stimuli in social interactions. It explains how this process, when successful, results in interactants' mental models aligning, or becoming entrained―in other words, in creating a state of understanding. This framework is grounded in a set of foundational observations about evolved human cognition that highlight people's intrinsic social orientation, predisposition toward efficiency, and use of predictive interference-making. These principles are also used to explain how codified systems ("codes") emerge in extended or repeated interactions in which people endeavor to create understanding. Integrating and synthesizing research across disciplines, this book offers communication scholars and students a theoretical framework that will transform the way they see understanding, communication, and social connection.

About the Author

Jessica Gasiorek (Ph.D., University of California – Santa Barbara) is an associate professor in the Department of Communicology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. Her research addresses communication accommodation, social cognition, intergroup dynamics, and communication about age and aging.

R. Kelly Aune (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is a professor in the Department of Communicology at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa. His research and teaching address message processing, inference-making and implicature, and creating understanding.