ABSTRACT
Feedback and reflexion are intertwined aspects of all human communication. The role of reflexion compares in an interesting way with Professor Tucker's dilemma. Tucker's prisoners, presented with the task of reaching an agreement and maintaining a consensus about it, found themselves in a less than ideal situation to do this and governed by a rule that forebade communication between them. The formation of prisoners' everyday agreements, or even prisoners' broadest social consensuses, depends in part upon the conditions of communication, actual and perceived. The pioneer social psychologist George Herbert Mead, early in the twentieth century, identified the socializing power of language and gesture as the role of the significant symbol. Significant symbols exert an important influence on the continuous reworking of the social order. Dance and Larson believe, children help socialize themselves, literally by talking themselves into their own maturity. Dance and Larson describe the function of speaking as a way of linking a person with himself or herself.
