Università Roma Tre

The course aims to investigate human communication from a cognitive and semiotic perspective. By exploring the psychological processes involved in its functioning and evolution, the course focuses on the multimodal character of human communication, in which the body plays a central role to account for effective human interaction in real communicative contexts. Both in the light of current studies coming from the “second-generation cognitive sciences” and with reference to experimental research on both typical and clinical individuals, the course aims at highlighting how the centrality of multimodality and corporeality has important implications for reflecting on more general theoretical issues involved in the study of human nature.
At the end of the course, participants:
- will be able to critically discuss the main theoretical proposals inherent language and human communication;
- will be able to identify the main components of verbal and nonverbal communication as well as to identify its cognitive and evolutionary underpinnings;
- will acquire knowledge on the main methods of applying experimental research to multimodal communication to construct plausible explanations of the nature and functioning of the multiple expressive formats in which communication takes place.