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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Unconventional communication: making meaning across modalities

Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
Abstract

Humans are social beings, and intentional communication is the backbone of how people share what they are thinking, coordinate over long periods of time, and learn from each other's ideas. People have finely attuned capacities for inferring each other's mental states, but intentional communication offers a much richer and more direct window into someone else's thoughts than passive mind-reading alone.