From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotions and Culture towards the Ultimate Communicative Experience. Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli



76

G. Riva, M.T. Anguera, B.K. Wiederhold and F. Mantovani (Eds.)

From Communication to Presence: Cognition, Emotions and Culture towards the
Ultimate Communicative Experience.
Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli

IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2006, (c) All rights reserved - http://www.emergingcommunication.com

the same language how can we differentiate between them. In particular how can we
distinguish between a perceived action, a planned or an executed one?

More, even if imitation has frequently been proposed as the central mechanism
mediating the reproduction, spread, intergenerational transmission and stabilization
of human cultural forms, our imitation is selective. How and why do we imitate?
Finally, developmental psychology clearly shows that our simulative abilities are not
the same in the different phases of our life. How and why do they evolve?

In the chapter we suggested that a psychology of presence is a possible answer to
these questions. In our vision “Presence” and “Social Presence” have a simple but
critical role in our everyday experience: the control of agency and social interaction
through the unconscious separation of both “internal” and “external”, and “self” and
“other”. Specifically, Presence allows the recognition of the intentions of the self and
Social Presence allows the recognition of the intentions of the other.

For this reason, Presence and Social Presence converge within the social and
cooperative activities. Particularly, these activities are created and governed by a
reciprocal intentional game between the communicators regulated by the level of
presence and social presence experienced by the interactants [92]: the display and
ostension of a given intention by the speaker ("intentionalization" process) and the
ascription and attribution of a certain intention to him/her by the addressee ("re-
intentionalization" process). For instance, when self perceives a reduction in the
extended presence - e.g. the communication is no more interesting - he can activate a
new behavior - e.g. asking for a new question - to improve it. At the same way, the
self can use his perception of other’s intentions to tune the communication. A similar
mechanism is probably behind the imitation process: without an elevated level of
presence and social presence the infant does not imitate.

Another important role of presence and social presence is related to the processes of
internalization and externalization. As suggested by Vygotsky [93, 94], on one side
external activity transform internal cognitive processes (internalization). On the other
side, knowledge structures and moments of internal activity organize and regulate
external social processes (externalization).

We suggest that the processes of internalization and externalization are influenced
by the experienced presence and social presence in actions and interactions: the more
is the presence and social presence, the more is the possibility that the contents of the
action/interaction will be internalized/externalized.

Obviously, this chapter has its limitations: the psychology of presence here
introduced is still in progress and some of the claims presented require an empirical
confirmation and additional theoretical work. Specifically, given space limitation - as
well as the preliminary state of the model in my mind - further details of the
psychology of presence remain to be specified elsewhere.

More, no clear indications are provided about how to measure presence. Related to
this point, some suggestions may come from the chapters by Magnusson, and Agliati
and colleagues in this book (see also [118]). Finally, additional studies are needed to
understand the links between presence and classical cognitive processes like
attention, emotions or memory. Nevertheless, quite independently of the intricacies of
terminology and conceptualizations, we hope that the model presented here will help
to disentangle the large variety of claims, notions and theories that currently
characterizes research in this area.



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