R2.2 - recommendations: empathy as pragmatic skill

[jvcasillas]

As mentioned in the detailed comments, I don’t think it makes sense to conflate empathy and “pragmatic skills”. I know the authors claim that they are “operationalizing” empathy as pragmatic skills, but I don’t see a need to do this. While being highly empathetic might and probably does play a role in one’s pragmatic skills, I don’t think it makes sense to say they are the same thing. I think the authors can simply talk about empathy and leave it there, which is what they are doing in the analysis anyway.

Action: choose stance, explain via D'Imperio studies (see also https://github.com/RAP-group/empathy_intonation_perc/issues/55)

[juanjgarridop]

Following what I explained in issue #61 We can say:

Thank you for touching on this issue. We operationalized empathy as a pragmatic skill following previous research that treats empathy as a pragmatic skill. For example, Esteve Gibert et al. (2020) state, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that is generally known as theory of mind (ToM), mind reading, mentalizing, or perspective-taking (Baron-Cohen, 2011; Carruthers, 2009; Frith & Frith, 2003)." (p. 566). They add, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that enable listeners to understand the communicative intentions and feelings behind the interlocutor’s words (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004)." (p. 577). However, there are previous studies that regard empathy as a cognitive skill that affects pragmatic abilities, and not as a pragmatic skill itself (see Orrico & Dimperio, 2020). We agree with Reviewer 2 that it might be better to say just 'empathy' and treat it as a cognitive skill that plays a role in one's pragmatic abilities.

[juanjgarridop]

If we want to reject the reviewer's suggestion, we can probably say:

Thank you for touching on this issue. We operationalized empathy as a pragmatic skill following previous research that frames empathy as a pragmatic skill. For example, Esteve Gibert et al. (2020) state, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that is generally known as theory of mind (ToM), mind reading, mentalizing, or perspective-taking (Baron-Cohen, 2011; Carruthers, 2009; Frith & Frith, 2003)." (p. 566). They add, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that enable listeners to understand the communicative intentions and feelings behind the interlocutor’s words (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004)." (p. 577). Since our study builds upon the findings of Esteve Gilbert et al. (2020), we operationalize empathy as a pragmatic skill to be consistent with previous research.

[jvcasillas]

Went with this:

This issue is referenced several times. We respond here and subsequent comments refer back to this response. Thank you for touching on this issue. We operationalized empathy as a pragmatic skill following previous research that also frames empathy as a pragmatic skill. For example, @esteve2020empathy state, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that is generally known as theory of mind (ToM), mind reading, mentalizing, or perspective-taking [@baron2011zero; @carruthers2009we; @frith2003development]" (p. 566). They add, "Empathy is part of the set of pragmatic abilities that enable listeners to understand the communicative intentions and feelings behind the interlocutor’s words [@baron2004empathy]" (p. 577). We accept that the reviewer may not agree with this particular operationalization. That being said, we don't believe that implementing it affects the main points of our manuscript. Given that our study builds upon the findings of @esteve2020empathy, we feel it is appropriate to operationalize empathy as a pragmatic skill to be consistent with the previous research.

Added via https://github.com/RAP-group/empathy_intonation_perc/pull/69