Meaning is a marvellous and dreadful matter, as it is neither totally intelligible nor totally unintelligible. It cannot be considered as a univocal, closed and fixed entity, atomic in nature, universally shared and invariable in time. Rather, meaning has a complex design, composed by different facets: a referential, an inferential, and a differential one. This standpoint, which overcomes the truth-conditional semantics as well as the structural one, entails that meaning is patterned in nature, based on the encyclopaedic knowledge and connected with mental concepts.

Anolli, 2005

The contributions collected in this book are a Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli, a great scholar and communication researcher. Luigi Anolli has had, and continues to have, a remarkable career, one in which his commitment to interdisciplinary study stands out.

His ties to the psychological research date back as far as 1977, when he was appointed external professor of Applied Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan. At that time, his research activity focused on visual perception. Nine years later, in 1986, he was awarded a Social Psychology chair at Milan University. Here he deepened the analysis of social influence both at an interpersonal level and at a group one, especially with regard to the devices connected with uniformity and social acquiescence and the processes connected with mass media and new media.

Since the Nineties, his scientific interests have been focused on communication and emotion psychology. Continuing his involvement in new approaches to establishing interdisciplinary connections, he particularly deepened deception and irony in communication. In the former he proposed the Deceptive Miscommunication Theory (DeMiT) as a new model for the analysis of deceptive communication. In the latter, starting from the distinction between kind and sarcastic irony, Luigi Anolli advanced the so-called "fencing game" model as a specific way of irony in communication.

Within communication domain, he gave special attention to nonverbal communication (vocal, facial expressions, gestures and body posture) as well as to new devices for non-verbal behavior analysis. Main results of his work in this area are the concepts of "modal meaning" and semantic and pragmatic tuning.

The development of communication study led him to identify the psychology of culture as "natural" horizon of communication, overcoming the dichotomized distinction between nature and nurture (gene-culture). In particular, Luigi Anolli proposed a new perspective of culture, as a domain-general device both internal (in the minds) and external (out of the minds) able to manage every specific-domain of life.

His most recent topics of interest concern on one side, the analysis of optimism as a cross point between positive emotions and subjective well-being, on the other side the concept of multicultural mind.

The book draws from the work of Luigi Anolli the criticism towards the nature/nurture distinction. It has been thought that any outcome of the development of individuals (personality, intelligence, physical appearance, etc.) is caused mostly, if not entirely, by either inheritance (genes) or learning (environment). Even if this distinction is now fairly widely known to be faulty, the critical part is to understand how nature and nurture interact. The writings of Prof. Anolli suggest four interdependent levels of analysis: genetic activity, neural activity, behavior, and environmental influences. In particular, he claims that in the communicative and cultural processes these levels are coactive and bidirectional; that is, in communication all levels mutually influence each other.

For this reason, the study of communication is a special setting for understanding how these processes interact. Specifically, Prof. Anolli underlined the critical role played by non-verbal communication: it subsumes several categories of human expressiveness such as facial displays (including eye contact and gaze behavior), gesture and body movement, posture and proxemics, touch, human spacing and territorial behavior, and vocal and paralinguistic behavior. Through their analysis it is possible to investigate three key dimensions of interpersonal relationships: immediacy (how positive or close individuals feel toward others), status (whether individuals have higher, equal, or lower standing with respect to others), and responsiveness (how active and focused an individual’s communication is).

The emergence of new media made this analysis even more complex. In the latest media - high definition TV, computer games and, especially, Virtual Reality – the user is no more a passive receiver but fully experiences the media content: he is present in it.

The book, accepting the difficult challenge taken by Luigi Anolli, tries to outline a unitary theory of interpersonal relationship where communication and presence are simply the two faces of the same coin: intersubjective experience. In particular, the main message of the book is the following: the cooperative activities are created and governed by a reciprocal intentional game between the communicators regulated by the level of presence experienced by the interactants: 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).

As suggested by Prof. Anolli, Miscommunication has a central role in these processes. This is why this book tries to provide the reader with worthwhile options for a vast array of specific communicative contexts – leisure, learning and therapy - and discusses the theories and methods needed to understand them. After completing this text, the reader should thus be better equipped to make more reasoned and more effective communication decisions. We have put a great deal of thought and effort into the definition of the structure of the book and the sequence of the contributions, so that those in search of a specific reading path will be rewarded. To this end we have divided the book into four main Sections comprising 14 chapters overall:

Section I. Communication and Presence: Their Relationship

Section II. From Presence to Communication: Inner Presence vs. Media Presence

Section III. From Communication to Presence: Emotion, Cognition and Culture

Section IV. Communication and Presence in Practice: Leisure, Therapy and Learning

The starting point of the book is the assumption that a viable theory of interpersonal relationship has also to explain the link between communication and presence – the feeling of being there.

Following this perspective, in Section I - Communication and Presence: Their Relationship – the Chapter 1 by Mantovani and colleagues opens a discussion on the links and reciprocal contributions between communication and presence, by arguing that they might be identified and analyzed at three levels: theoretical, methodological and applicative.

In Section II - From Presence to Communication: Inner Presence vs. Media Presence the attention of the authors moves to the analysis of what presence is and how it can be used to better understand our personal and interpersonal activities.

Coelho and colleagues in Chapter 2 analyze the two different but coexisting visions of presence found in literature: the rationalist and the psychological/ecological points of view. The rationalist point of view considers a VR system as a collection of specific machines with the necessity of the inclusion of the concept of presence. The researchers agreeing with this approach describe the sense of presence as a function of the experience of a given medium (Media Presence). At the other extreme, there is the psychological or ecological perspective (Inner Presence). Specifically, this perspective considers presence as a neuropsychological phenomenon, evolved from the interplay of our biological and cultural inheritance, whose goal is the control of the human activity.

Riva in Chapter 3 focuses on the ecological perspective. He argues that different visions from social and cognitive sciences – Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation - and discoveries from neuroscience – Mirror and Canonical Neurons - suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. In this picture the role of presence and social presence is to allow the process of self-identification through the separation between “self” and “other,” and between “internal” and “external”.

Chapter 4 by Waterworth and Waterworth, expands on the general notion of presence as a dimension of communication, and describes how this perspective can inform an understanding of designed variations in presence as a function of use, context, and individual psychological factors. The chapter underlines that the presence required in a communicative situation depends on many factors, including the communication devices available, the intended use and the context of use. In addition, differences between individuals, such as personality, as well as physical and psychological state, will affect how readily presence is invoked and also its impact on the individual concerned.

Moller and Barbera, in Chapter 5 suggest that dreaming consciousness may be considered the most archetypal form of media technology, and discuss dreams as a useful metaphor for virtual reality. They argue that presence can be equally compelling whether experienced via self-generated simulation during the process of dreaming, or through an externally generated media simulation. A speculative therapeutic approach, “dream simulation therapy”, is discussed as a future possible area of study.

Section III - From Communication to Presence: Emotion, Cognition and Culture presents a framework for the analysis of Communication in terms of the main cognitive, emotive and cultural processes.

Magnusson, in Chapter 6 underlines how patterns in behavior are frequently hidden from the consciousness of those who perform them, as well as to unaided observers. Considering this as a fact, the chapter presents a method – t-system - for defining and discovering repeated temporal patterns  - t-pattern - in behavior with a special focus on interactive behavior.

Chapter 7 by Ciceri and Biassoni, considers the vocal interaction in a multicomponential perspective, both as a multilayered phenomenon in itself and as one component in wider interactive patterns. Starting from this perspective the authors present an analysis model that handles both the complexity of the vocal act and its being-in-context in the interactive flow. Two different vocal interactions are then examined using it:  a human face-to-face interaction and another one between an Embodied Conversational Agent and its user.

Li and Roloff in Chapter 8 present an overview of the actual research on emotion in negotiation that integrates cognitive, affective, and cultural aspects. The chapter addressed the following issues: the effects of mood and emotion on negotiator cognition and performance and the potential of emotion as a negotiation strategy; individual differences in emotional expression and individual traits, such as self-monitoring and emotional intelligence, that impact on the use of strategic emotion; and cultural influences on negotiation and on emotional experience and expression.

Jonsson discusses in Chapter 9 the idea that face-to-face interaction can be construed as having a definite organization or structure, just as language is understood in terms of its grammar. In particular he suggests that the structure of interaction is related to the personality traits of the subject. This position is tested through the analysis of real-time patterns in twenty-four dyadic interactions between male students.

Chapter 10 by Anguera and Izquierdo, presents an overview of different methodological process whose aim is the objective observation of perceivable communicative behavior. Specifically the authors suggest how the methodological options available within scientific observation, both qualitative and quantitative, can be used to approach a number of problems in the field of human communication research.

Deepening this topic, Agliati and colleagues present in Chapter 11 a methodology for the analysis of the interaction with Embodied Conversational Agents. The proposed approach considers the hidden temporal organization underlying communicative interaction and provides a specific methodology for the structural analysis of the interactive flow.

The final section, Section IV - Communication and Presence in Practice: Leisure, Therapy and Learning, is devoted to the analysis of the interaction between Communication and Presence within three different contexts: leisure, therapy and learning.

Chapter 12 by Thon, describes multiplayer first-person-shooter games as a form of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Within this general context, the chapter examines these games showing that it is possible to understand the large amounts of social-emotionally oriented communication happening in them as a form of miscommunication.

Wiederhold and Wiederhold discuss in Chapter 13 how virtual reality driving simulators may be used as an aid to traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of a variety of driving-related disorders. Clinical applications include specific driving phobias, driving phobias related to panic and agoraphobia, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of motor vehicle accidents. Another presented application is the neurorehabilitation for individuals who have sustained various brain injuries.

Chapter 14 by Realdon and colleagues, details how communication skills could be learned through computer-based interactive simulations. First, a definition of communication skills is proposed. Second, a framework for building interactive simulations is presented. Finally, a road map for building e-learning simulations specifically targeted at the training of communication skills is sketched out, focusing on the development of a narrative structure that adequately reduplicates the flow of the communicative interaction.

The fourteen contributions selected are among the first scientific attempts to take a serious look at the interaction between communication and presence. However, the authors did not start from scratch but draw from the vision coming out from both Prof. Anolli writings and the ones from his disciples.

For this reason, through this book we thank Luigi Anolli for his years of generous, wise advice, to us and to his many other students and colleagues. No effort shall be made here to evaluate and praise his many merits as a teacher and researcher in communication, emotion, culture and other fields. We only wish to express our gratitude for both the friendship and generous support offered to those who have known him for a long time, and his kind and open manner towards those who have joined this research area more recently.

His deep knowledge and understanding of what communication is and what it should be will remain a major source of inspiration to all those who take a genuine interest in the field. Grazie Luigi.

Fabrizia Mantovani, Ph.D.
CESCOM
University of Milan Bicocca
Milan, Italy

Giuseppe Riva, Ph.D.
Faculty of Psychology
Catholic University of Sacred Heart
Milan, Italy

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