Simulation of the development of individual interactional patterns

The questions of how and why individuals develop normal or abnormal interpersonal patterns have received nonconsistent answers in the behavioral sciences, perhaps because they were too much concerned with the semantics and the syntax aspects of the communication process that mediates human interaction. This paper demonstrates that a pragmatic approach is necessary and sufficient to answer the above questions. The information processing aspect of the “single bit of information exchange” model (P. De Giacomo and A. Silvestri, 1979) is developed to create a computer simulation procedure. Using both clinical data and normal population measurements of KALTEST (O. G. Pereira and C. P. Ferreira, 1984) as the basic criteria, it is found that the development of a stable normal pattern of interaction depends on the ability to share proposals with the other significant person in the environment and that the development of an abnormal pattern depends on refusal to share coupled with a tendency to escape from the ring of the interaction.