Search

Purpose: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with a range of cognitive-communicative deficits that interfere with everyday communication and social interaction. Considerable effort has been directed at characterizing the nature and scope of cognitive-communication disorders in TBI, yet the underlying mechanisms of impairment are largely unspecified. The present research examines sensitivity to a common communicative cue, disfluency, and its impact on memory for spoken language in TBI. Method: Fifty-three participants with moderate–severe TBI and 53 non-injured comparison participants listened to a series of sentences, some of which contained disfluencies. A subsequent memory test probed memory for critical words in the sentences. Results: Participants with TBI successfully remembered the spoken words (b = 1.57, p < .0001) at a similar level to non-injured comparison participants. Critically, participants with TBI also exhibited better recognition memory for words preceded by disfluency compared to words from fluent sentences (b = 0.57, p = .02). Conclusions: These findings advance mechanistic accounts of cognitive-communication disorder by revealing that, when isolated for experimental study, individuals with moderate–severe TBI are sensitive to attentional orienting cues in speech and exhibit enhanced recognition of individual words preceded by disfluency. These results suggest that some aspects of cognitive-communication disorders may not emerge from an inability to perceive and use individual communication cues, but rather from disruptions in managing (i.e., attending, weighting, integrating) multiple cognitive, communicative, and social cues in complex and dynamic interactions. This hypothesis warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic memory encompasses one's knowledge about the world. Distributional semantic models, which construct vector spaces with embedded words, are a proposed framework for understanding the representational structure of human semantic knowledge. Unlike some classic semantic models, distributional semantic models lack a mechanism for specifying the properties of concepts, which raises questions regarding their utility for a general theory of semantic knowledge. Here, we develop a computational model of a binary semantic classification task, in which participants judged target words for the referent's size or animacy. We created a family of models, evaluating multiple distributional semantic models, and mechanisms for performing the classification. The most successful model constructed two composite representations for each extreme of the decision axis (e.g., one averaging together representations of characteristically big things and another of characteristically small things). Next, the target item was compared to each composite representation, allowing the model to classify more than 1,500 words with human‐range performance and to predict response times. We propose that when making a decision on a binary semantic classification task, humans use task prompts to retrieve instances representative of the extremes on that semantic dimension and compare the probe to those instances. This proposal is consistent with the principles of the instance theory of semantic memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disfluencies such as pauses, "um"s, and "uh"s are common interruptions in the speech stream. Previous work probing memory for disfluent speech shows memory benefits for disfluent compared to fluent materials. Complementary evidence from studies of language production and comprehension have been argued to show that different disfluency types appear in distinct contexts and, as a result, serve as a meaningful cue. If the disfluency-memory boost is a result of sensitivity to these form-meaning mappings, forms of disfluency that cue new upcoming information (fillers and pauses) may produce a stronger memory boost compared to forms that reflect speaker difficulty (repetitions). If the disfluency-memory boost is simply due to the attentional-orienting properties of a disruption to fluent speech, different disfluency forms may produce similar memory benefit. Experiments 1 and 2 compared the relative mnemonic benefit of three types of disfluent interruptions. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the scope of the disfluency-memory boost to probe its cognitive underpinnings. Across the four experiments, we observed a disfluency-memory boost for three types of disfluency that were tested. This boost was local and position dependent, only manifesting when the disfluency immediately preceded a critical memory probe word at the end of the sentence. Our findings reveal a short-lived disfluency-memory boost that manifests at the end of the sentence but is evoked by multiple types of disfluent forms, consistent with the idea that disfluencies bring attentional focus to immediately upcoming material. The downstream consequence of this localized memory benefit is better understanding and encoding of the speaker's message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by early proposals in philosophy, dominant accounts of language posit a central role for mutual knowledge, either encoded directly in common ground, or approximated through other cognitive mechanisms. Using existing empirical evidence from language and memory, we challenge this tradition, arguing that mutual knowledge captures only a subset of the mental states needed to support communication. In a novel theoretical proposal, we argue for a cognitive architecture that includes separate, distinct representations of the self and other, and a cognitive process that compares these representations continuously during conversation, outputting both similarities and differences in perspective. Our theory accounts for existing data, interfaces with findings from other cognitive domains, and makes novel predictions about the role of perspective in language use. We term this new account the Multiple Perspectives Theory of mental states in communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written memoranda of conversations, or memcons, provide a near‐contemporaneous record of what was said in conversation, and offer important insights into the activities of high‐profile individuals. We assess the impact of writing a memcon on memory for conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in conversation and were asked to recall the contents of that conversation 1 week later. One participant in each pair memorialized the content of the interaction in a memcon shortly after the conversation. Participants who generated memcons recalled more details of the conversations than participants who did not, but the content of recall was equally and largely accurate for both participants. Remarkably, only 4.7% of the details of the conversation were recalled by both of the partners after a week delay. Contemporaneous note‐taking appears to enhance memory for conversation by increasing the amount of information remembered but not the accuracy of that information. These findings have implications for evaluating the testimony of participants on conversations with major political or legal ramifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoken language is interpreted incrementally, with listeners considering multiple candidate meanings as words unfold over time. Due to incremental interpretation, when a speaker refers to something in the world, there is often temporary ambiguity regarding which of several candidate items in the referential context the speaker is referring to. Subsequent tests of recognition memory show that listeners have good memory for referenced items, but that listeners also sometimes recognize non-referenced items from the referential context that share features with items that were mentioned. Predicted or inferred (but not experienced) interpretations of what was said are also sometimes retained in memory. While these findings indicate that multiple items from the referential context may be encoded in memory, the mechanisms supporting memory for the context of language use remain poorly understood. This paper tests the hypothesis that a consequence of temporary ambiguity in spoken language is enhanced memory for the items in the referential context. Two experiments demonstrate that periods of temporary referential ambiguity boost memory for non-referenced items in the referential context. Items that temporarily matched the unfolding referring expression were better remembered than those that did not. The longer the period of ambiguity, the stronger the memory boost, particularly for items activated early in the expression. In sum, the fact that spoken language unfolds over time creates momentary ambiguity about the speaker's intention; this ambiguity, in turn, allows the listener to later remember not only what the speaker did say, but also what they could have, but did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies of conversational recall show that the amount of conversation that can be recalled after a delay is limited and biased in favor of one’s own contributions. What aspects of a conversational interaction shape what will and will not be recalled? This study aims to predict the contents of conversation that will be recalled based on linguistic features of what was said. Across 59 conversational dyads, we observed that two linguistic features that are hallmarks of interactive language use—disfluency (um/uh) and backchannelling (ok, yeah)—promoted recall. Two other features—disagreements between the interlocutors and use of “like“—were not predictive of recall. While self-generated material was better remembered overall, both hearing and producing disfluency and backchannels improved memory for the associated utterances. Finally, the disfluency-related memory boost was similar regardless of the number of disfluencies in the utterance. Overall, we conclude that interactional linguistic features of conversation are predictive of what is and is not recalled following conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3-4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we communicate, we alter our language and gesture based on the mutually shared knowledge - common ground - that we have with our listener. How memory supports these alterations remain unclear. We asked healthy adults and patients with hippocampal amnesia to engage in a referential communication task. Previous work suggests that common ground can be encoded by distinct memory systems; Amnesic patients show normal learning and referential label use as common ground increases, but inconsistently mark these labels with definite determiners (e.g., the vs. a windmill). Which memory systems support the ability to mark common ground via hand gesture? We found that gestures of both healthy participants and amnesic patients reflected common ground status. Both groups produced high gestures when common ground was lacking, and were less likely to do so as common ground increased. These findings suggest that gesture can reflect common ground status during conversation, potentially via non-declarative memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well established in studies of two-party conversation that conversational partners jointly establish brief labels for repeatedly mentioned entities. When speaking to a new partner who is unfamiliar with the labels, speakers use longer expressions to facilitate understanding. How this process of audience design scales up to multiparty conversation, where individuals differ in mutual knowledge, is unknown. Here we propose, and test, three potential hypotheses regarding how speakers design referring expressions in three-party conversation. Participants completed a referential communication task in groups of three in which one participant, the Director, gave instructions to two Matchers who differed in their knowledge of referential labels. Directors flexibly alternated between partner-specific representations of common ground (CG), producing longer descriptions for low-CG than for high-CG partners. When addressing multiple parties at once, speakers tailored descriptions for the least knowledgeable person. These findings shed light on the mechanisms that support audience design in multiparty conversation: Audience design begins with access to distinct representations of common ground held with the intended addressee or addressees. These distinct representations support an audience design process in which utterances are tailored to accommodate the least knowledgeable addressee in a group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The common ground that conversational partners share is thought to form the basic context for language use. According to the classic view, inferences about common ground, or mutual knowledge, are guided by beliefs about the physical, cognitive, and attentional states of one's communicative partners. Here, we provide a first test of the attention assumption for common ground, the proposal that common ground for a co‐present entity—such as an object or an utterance—can only be formed if a person has evidence that his or her partner has also attended to it. In three experiments, a participant speaker and two partners learned names for novel monster pictures as a group. The speaker was then asked to describe the monsters to each partner separately in a referential communication task. The critical manipulation was the (in)attentiveness of one partner at different points in the study. Analysis of the speaker's referring expressions revealed that speakers assumed their partner shared common ground for the monster names only when that partner exhibited engaged attention as the names were learned. These findings provide key and novel support for the classic proposal that formation of common ground critically depends on assumptions about the attentional state of one's conversational partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Converging evidence points to a role for the hippocampus in statistical learning, but open questions about its necessity remain. Evidence for necessity comes from Schapiro and colleagues who report that a single patient with damage to hippocampus and broader medial temporal lobe cortex was unable to discriminate new from old sequences in several statistical learning tasks. The aim of the current study was to replicate these methods in a larger group of patients who have either damage localized to hippocampus or broader medial temporal lobe damage, to ascertain the necessity of the hippocampus in statistical learning. Patients with hippocampal damage consistently showed less learning overall compared with healthy comparison participants, consistent with an emerging consensus for hippocampal contributions to statistical learning. Interestingly, lesion size did not reliably predict performance. However, patients with hippocampal damage were not uniformly at chance and demonstrated above-chance performance in some task variants. These results suggest that hippocampus is necessary for statistical learning levels achieved by most healthy comparison participants but significant hippocampal pathology alone does not abolish such learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers typically design definite referring expressions to uniquely identify the intended referent with respect to the alternatives in the referential context, and addressees interpret these expressions with respect to the contextual alternatives. Although it is clear that the relevant context includes entities in the immediate context, less clear is how the historical discourse context affects language interpretation in the moment. This article presents the results of two experiments that examine interpretation of definite referring expressions in cases where the local context has recently changed. In Experiment 1 eye-tracked participants followed an experimenter's instructions to click on objects multiple times each. When expressions were over-modified for the immediate context (e.g., the striped shirt, when the shirt would suffice), referential interpretation was significantly facilitated when that expression had been previously used in a supporting context. By contrast, interpretation of nonmodified expressions that were appropriate for the local context (e.g., the shirt) was somewhat impaired when a modified term had been used previously. Experiment 2 replicated these findings with a more sensitive, cohort-competitor design. These findings demonstrate that both the local and the historical context influence the online interpretation of referring expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three experiments examined the influence of gradient acoustic information on referential interpretation during spoken language processing and how this influence persists over time. Acoustic continua varying between the pronouns “he” and “she” were created and validated in two offline experiments. A third experiment examined whether these acoustic differences influence online pronoun interpretation, and whether this influence persists across words in a discourse. Measures of eye gaze showed immediate sensitivity to graded acoustic information. Moreover, acoustically induced uncertainty persisted across a five-word delay: When listeners encountered a word that disambiguated the referent of the pronoun differently than it had originally been interpreted, the amount of time they took to recover from an initial misinterpretation was directly related to distance along the acoustic continuum between the pronoun and the endpoint corresponding to the correct referent. These findings show that fine-grained acoustic detail induces referential uncertainty that is maintained over extended periods of time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Efficient conversation is guided by the mutual knowledge, or common ground, that interlocutors form as a conversation progresses. Characterized from the perspective of commonly used measures of memory, efficient conversation should be closely associated with item memory-what was said-and context memory-who said what to whom. However, few studies have explicitly probed memory to evaluate what type of information is maintained following a communicative exchange. The current study examined how item and context memory relate to the development of common ground over the course of a conversation, and how these forms of memory vary as a function of one's role in a conversation as speaker or listener. The process of developing common ground was positively related to both item and context memory. In addition, content that was spoken was remembered better than content that was heard. Our findings illustrate how memory assessments can complement language measures by revealing the impact that basic conversational processes have on memory for what has been discussed. By taking this approach, we show that not only does the process of forming common ground facilitate communication in the present, but it also promotes an enduring record of that event, facilitating conversation into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During communication, we form assumptions about what our communication partners know and believe. Information that is mutually known between the discourse partners-their common ground-serves as a backdrop for successful communication. Here we present an introduction to the focus of this topic, which is the role of memory in common ground and language use. Two types of questions emerge as central to understanding the relationship between memory and common ground, specifically questions having to do with the representation of common ground in memory, and the use of common ground during language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine processes by which dialogue partners form and use representations of joint knowledge, or common ground , during on-line language processing. Eye-tracked participants interpreted wh-questions that inquired about task-relevant objects during interactive conversation. Some objects were known to both speaker and listener, and thus in common ground , whereas others were only known to the listener, and thus in privileged ground . Questions were produced with a typical, falling intonation (Experiment 1) or with either falling or rising intonation (Experiments 2–3). Unlike the falling contour, the rising contour can indicate a request for clarification about previously mentioned information. Participants interpreted falling-contour questions as asking about privileged-ground objects. By contrast, rising questions elicited more consideration of common-ground objects. Directly comparing questions that were produced during live conversation vs. questions that were pre-recorded revealed that this sensitivity to common vs. privileged ground emerged only during live conversation. Finally, individual difference analyses in all three experiments did not support the claim that individuals fail to take perspective when executive function is limited. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the on-line integration of perspective and intonation during conversational language processing. The lack of perspective effects in non-interactive settings speaks to the inherently interactive nature of conversational processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speaking begins with the formulation of an intended preverbal message and linguistic encoding of this information. The transition from thought to speech occurs incrementally, with cascading planning at subsequent levels of production. In this article, we aim to specify the mechanisms that support incremental message preparation. We contrast two hypotheses about the mechanisms responsible for incorporating message-level information into a linguistic plan. According to the Initial Preparation view, messages can be encoded as fluent utterances if all information is ready before speaking begins. By contrast, on the Continuous Incrementality view, messages can be continually prepared and updated throughout the production process, allowing for fluent production even if new information is added to the message while speaking is underway. Testing these hypotheses, eye-tracked speakers in two experiments produced unscripted, conjoined noun phrases with modifiers. Both experiments showed that new message elements can be incrementally incorporated into the utterance even after articulation begins, consistent with a Continuous Incrementality view of message planning, in which messages percolate to linguistic encoding immediately as that information becomes available in the mind of the speaker. We conclude by discussing the functional role of incremental message planning in conversational speech and the situations in which this continuous incremental planning would be most likely to be observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of two experiments by Horton (2007) show that speakers name a pictured object faster when in the presence of another person with whom the speaker has previously associated that object name. The first of those two experiments (Horton, 2007, Experiment 1) is the focus of the present research. This paper presents the results of three experiments designed to replicate and extend Horton's (2007) Experiment 1. The original findings were not replicated. These findings do not support the hypothesis that partner-specific memory associations facilitate object naming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Listeners use spatial perspective to guide interpretation of utterances on-line. [•] Eye-tracking indicates that bilinguals are slower to interpret spatial language. [•] Switching perspectives incurs costs, even if the switched-to perspective is your own. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During conversation, partners develop representations of joindy known information--the common ground-- and use this knowledge to guide subsequent linguistic exchanges. Extensive research on 2-party conversation has offered key insights into this process, in particular, its partner-specificity: Common ground that is shared with 1 partner is not always assumed to be shared with other partners. Conversation often involves multiple pairs of individuals who differ in common ground. Yet, little is known about common ground processes in multi-party conversation. Here, we take a 1st step toward understanding this problem by examining situations in which simple dyadic representations of common ground might cause difficulty--situations in which dialogue partners develop shared labels (entrained terms), and Üren a 3rd (naive) party joins the conversation. Experiment 1 examined unscripted, task-based conversation in which 2 partners entrained on terms. At test, speakers referenced game-pieces in a dialogue with their partner, or in a 3-party conversation including a new, naive listener. Speakers were sensitive to the 3rd party, using longer, disfiuent expressions when additionally addressing the new partner. By contrast, analysis of listener eye-fixations did not suggest sensitivity. Experiment 2 provided a stronger test of sensitivity and revealed that listeners do cancel expectations for terms that had been entrained before when a 3rd, naive party joins the conversation. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying common ground, showing that rather than a unitary construct, common ground is flexibly adapted to the needs of a naive 3rd party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seven experiments use large sample sizes to robustly estimate the effect size of a previous finding that adults are more likely to commit egocentric errors in a false-belief task when the egocentric response is plausible in light of their prior knowledge. We estimate the true effect size to be less than half of that reported in the original findings. Even though we found effects in the same direction as the original, they were substantively smaller; the original study would have had less than 33% power to detect an effect of this magnitude. The influence of plausibility on the curse of knowledge in adults appears to be small enough that its impact on real-life perspective-taking may need to be reevaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this discussion note, we reply to Bezuidenhout's (2013) claim that the narrow-temporal scale of language processing examined using the Visual World Paradigm makes this methodology unsuitable for studying perspective-taking in conversation. We counter that this paradigm has, and will continue to make, valuable contributions to our understanding of the representation and use of perspective information, as well as to the larger questions about the architecture of the language system. In doing so, we elaborate on the breadth of evidence from the sentence processing literature that supports the claim that perspective information is integrated into the processes of language comprehension and production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] The structure of lexical planning was examined using a picture description task. [•] Speech onset times and word durations were measured. [•] The data show evidence of hierarchical planning for structurally dependent lexical items. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A growing body of work suggests the hippocampus contributes to a variety of cognitive domains beyond its traditional role in memory. We propose that the hippocampus, in its capacity for relational binding, representational flexibility, and online maintenance and integration of multimodal relational representations, is a key contributor to language processing. Here we test the hypothesis that the online interpretation of pronouns is hippocampus-dependent. We combined eye tracking with neuropsychological methods, where participants (4 patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe declarative memory impairment, 4 patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex [vmPFC] damage, and healthy comparison participants) viewed a scene while listening to short dialogues introducing 2 characters; for example, Melissa is playing violin for Debbie/Danny as the sun is shining overhead. She is wearing a blue/purple dress. Consistent with previous work, analysis of eye gaze showed that younger and older healthy comparison participants and the vmPFC patients rapidly identified the intended referent of the pronoun when gender uniquely identified the referent, and when it did not, they showed a preference to interpret the pronoun as referring to the first-mentioned character. By contrast, hippocampal patients, while exhibiting a similar gender effect, exhibited significant disruptions in their ability to use information about which character had been mentioned first to interpret the pronoun. This finding suggests that the hippocampus plays a role in maintaining and integrating information even over a very short discourse history. These observed disruptions in referential processing demonstrate how promiscuously the hallmark processing features of the hippocampus are used in service of a variety of cognitive domains including language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We examine lexical differentiation in language production and comprehension. [•] Speakers differentiate new discourse referents from similar referents discussed in past contexts. [•] We find no evidence of an expectation for differentiation from addressees. [•] The breadth of relevant discourse context differs across language production and comprehension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Despite the ubiquity of between-talker differences in accent and dialect, little is known about how listeners adjust to this source of variability as language is perceived in real time. In three experiments, we examined whether, and when, listeners can use specific knowledge of a particular talker's accent during on-line speech processing. Listeners were exposed to the speech of two talkers, a male who had an unfamiliar regional dialect of American English, in which the /æ/ vowel is raised to /ei/ only before /g/ (e.g., bag is pronounced /beig/), and a female talker without the dialect. In order to examine how knowledge of a particular talker's accent influenced language processing, we examined listeners' interpretation of unaccented words such as back and bake in contexts that included a competitor like bag. If interpretation processes are talker-specific, the pattern of competition from bag should vary depending on how that talker pronounces the competitor word. In all three experiments, listeners rapidly used their knowledge of how the talker would have pronounced bag to either rule out or include bag as a temporary competitor. Providing a cue to talker identity prior to the critical word strengthened these effects. These results are consistent with views of language processing in which multiple sources of information, including previous experience with the current talker and contextual cues, are rapidly integrated during lexical activation and selection processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research tested the hypothesis that on-line language processing is guided by gradient representations of linguistic common ground that reflect details of how common ground was established, including the discourse context and partner feedback. This hypothesis was contrasted with a simpler hypothesis that interpretation processes are only sensitive to simple binary representations of whether a potential discourse referent is or is not common ground. In order to evaluate these hypotheses, participants engaged in a task-based conversation with an experimenter in which some of the participant's game-pieces were hidden from the experimenter. On critical trials, the participant revealed the identity of the hidden game-pieces. Critical utterances contained referring expressions temporarily ambiguous between a visually shared game-piece, and a hidden game-piece. Analysis of participant eye movements during interpretation of these utterances revealed that participants were more likely to consider the hidden game-piece a potential referent if the experimenter had initially asked about its identity; whether the experimenter provided clear feedback that s/he understood its identity modulated this effect somewhat. These results provide key evidence for the richness of common ground representations, and are discussed in terms of the implications for models of the underlying representations of common ground. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Communication is aided greatly when speakers and listeners take advantage of mutually shared knowledge (i.e., common ground). How such information is represented in memory is not well known. Using a neuropsychological-psycholinguistic approach to real-time language understanding, we investigated the ability to form and use common ground during conversation in memory-impaired participants with hippocampal amnesia. Analyses of amnesics’ eye fixations as they interpreted their partner’s utterances about a set of objects demonstrated successful use of common ground when the amnesics had immediate access to common-ground information, but dramatic failures when they did not. These findings indicate a clear role for declarative memory in maintenance of common-ground representations. Even when amnesics were successful, however, the eye movement record revealed subtle deficits in resolving potential ambiguity among competing intended referents; this finding suggests that declarative memory may be critical to more basic aspects of the on-line resolution of linguistic ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During conversation, interlocutors build on the set of shared beliefs known as common ground. Although there is general agreement that interlocutors maintain representations of common ground, there is no consensus regarding whether common-ground representations constrain initial language interpretation processes. Here, I propose that executive functioning-specifically, failures in inhibition control-can account for some occasional insensitivities to common-ground information. The present article presents the results of an experiment that demonstrates that individual differences in inhibition control determine the degree to which addressees successfully inhibit perspective-inappropriate interpretations of temporary referential ambiguities in their partner's speech. Whether mentioned information was grounded or not also played a role, suggesting that addressees may show sensitivity to common ground only when it is established collaboratively. The results suggest that, in conversation, perspective information routinely guides online language processing and that occasional insensitivities to perspective can be attributed partly to difficulties in inhibiting perspective-inappropriate interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In dialog settings, conversational partners converge on similar names for referents. These lexically entrained terms [Garrod, S., & Anderson, A. (1987). Saying what you mean in dialog: A study in conceptual and semantic co-ordination. Cognition, 27, 181–218] are part of the common ground between the particular individuals who established the entrained term [Brennan, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22, 1482–1493], and are thought to be encoded in memory with a partner-specific cue. Thus far, analyses of the time-course of interpretation suggest that partner-specific information may not constrain the initial interpretation of referring expressions [Barr, D. J., & Keysar, B. (2002). Anchoring comprehension in linguistic precedents. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 391–418; Kronmüller, E., & Barr, D. J. (2007). Perspective-free pragmatics: Broken precedents and the recovery-from-preemption hypothesis. Journal of Memory and Language, 56, 436–455]. However, these studies used non-interactive paradigms, which may limit the use of partner-specific representations. This article presents the results of three eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1a used an interactive conversation methodology in which the experimenter and participant jointly established entrained terms for various images. On critical trials, the same experimenter, or a new experimenter described a critical image using an entrained term, or a new term. The results demonstrated an early, on-line partner-specific effect for interpretation of entrained terms, as well as preliminary evidence for an early, partner-specific effect for new terms. Experiment 1b used a non-interactive paradigm in which participants completed the same task by listening to image descriptions recorded during Experiment 1a; the results showed that partner-specific effects were eliminated. Experiment 2 replicated the partner-specific findings of Experiment 1a with an interactive paradigm and scenes that contained previously unmentioned images. The results suggest that partner-specific interpretation is most likely to occur in interactive dialog settings; the number of critical trials and stimulus characteristics may also play a role. The results are consistent with a large body of work demonstrating that the language processing system uses a rich source of contextual and pragmatic representations to guide on-line processing decisions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: During unscripted speech, speakers coordinate the formulation of pre-linguistic messages with the linguistic processes that implement those messages into speech. We examine the process of constructing a contextually appropriate message and interfacing that message with utterance planning in English (the small butterfly) and Spanish (la mariposa pequeña) during an unscripted, interactive task. The coordination of gaze and speech during formulation of these messages is used to evaluate two hypotheses regarding the lower-limit on the size of message planning units, namely whether messages are planned in units isomorphous to entire phrases or units isomorphous to single lexical items. Comparing the planning of fluent pre-nominal adjectives in English and post-nominal adjectives in Spanish showed that size information is added to the message later in Spanish than English, suggesting that speakers can prepare pre-linguistic messages in lexically-sized units. The results also suggest that speakers can use disfluency to coordinate the transition from thought to speech. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Two experiments examined the role of common ground in the production and on-line interpretation of wh-questions such as What’s above the cow with shoes? Experiment 1 examined unscripted conversation, and found that speakers consistently use wh-questions to inquire about information known only to the addressee. Addressees were sensitive to this tendency, and quickly directed attention toward private entities when interpreting these questions. A second experiment replicated the interpretation findings in a more constrained setting. These results add to previous evidence that the common ground influences initial language processes, and suggests that the strength and polarity of common ground effects may depend on contributions of sentence type as well as the interactivity of the situation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Two experiments examined the restriction of referential domains during unscripted conversation by analyzing the modification and online interpretation of referring expressions. Experiment 1 demonstrated that from the earliest moments of processing, addressees interpreted referring expressions with respect to referential domains constrained by the conversation. Analysis of eye movements during the conversation showed elimination of standard competition effects seen with scripted language. Results from Experiment 2 pinpointed two pragmatic factors responsible for restriction of the referential domains used by speakers to design referential expressions and demonstrated that the same factors predict whether addressees consider local competitors to be potential referents during online interpretation of the same expressions. These experiments demonstrate, for the first time, that online interpretation of referring expressions in conversation is facilitated by referential domains constrained by pragmatic factors that predict when addressees are likely to encounter temporary ambiguity in language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments were conducted to examine the on-line processing mechanisms used by young children to comprehend pronouns. The work focuses on their use of two highly relevant sources of information: (1) the gender and number features carried by English pronouns, and (2) the differing accessibility of discourse entities, as influenced by order-of-mention in a clause. Adults use both evidential sources, as early as 200 ms after the offset of the pronoun (Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, & Trueswell, 2000). We find that like adults, 3-5-year-old children use a pronoun's gender to guide their choice of a referent, and that they use it rapidly on-line. But unlike adults, they show little or no signs of a first-mentioned bias, either off-line or on-line. This is consistent with a tendency for children to initially recruit reliable sources of constraint for language comprehension- in this case, the gender of the pronoun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In two experiments, naïve participants took turns telling each other to click on a target picture while gaze was monitored. Critical trials included a contrast picture that differed from the target only in size. In both experiments, the timing of speakers’ fixations on the contrast predicted whether the contrast was encoded in a phrase with a pre-nominal adjective (the small triangle) or a post-noun repair (the triangle…small one). In Experiment 1, fixations to the contrast were delayed for adjectives in post-nominal phrases (the square with small triangles). In Experiment 2, which used a more complex display, delayed gaze at the contrast was correlated with use of a pre-nominal modifier in disfluent productions (thee uh small horse). The results provide insight into the interface between message formulation and utterance planning. They also support the hypothesis that one role of disfluency is to provide speakers with time to reformulate messages and utterances. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Three experiments examined the hypothesis that it preferentially refers to the most salient entity in a discourse, whereas that preferentially refers to a conceptual composite. In Experiment 1, eye movements were monitored as participants followed spoken instructions such as, Put the cup on the saucer. Now put it/that. ... The preferred referent was the theme (cup) for it and the composite for that (cup on the saucer) with the goal (saucer) rarely chosen, Experiment 2 demonstrated that stressing it reduces the number of theme interpretations. Experiment 3 replicated the main findings from Experiment 1, regardless of whether or not the theme was the backward-looking center. The authors conclude that entities without linguistic antecedents are sometimes preferred over entities with linguistic antecedents and a single construct such as salience is insufficient to account for differences among referential forms. Candidate reference-specific constructs include the availability of conceptual composites and syntactic role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers design communication for their audience, providing more information in both speech and gesture when their listener is naïve to the topic. We test whether the hippocampal declarative memory system contributes to multimodal audience design. The hippocampus, while traditionally linked to episodic and relational memory, has also been linked to the ability to imagine the mental states of others and use language flexibly. We examined the speech and gesture use of four patients with hippocampal amnesia when describing how to complete everyday tasks (e.g., how to tie a shoe) to an imagined child listener and an adult listener. Although patients with amnesia did not increase their total number of words and instructional steps for the child listener, they did produce representational gestures at significantly higher rates for the imagined child compared to the adult listener. They also gestured at similar frequencies to neurotypical peers, suggesting that hand gesture can be a meaningful communicative resource, even in the case of severe declarative memory impairment. We discuss the contributions of multiple memory systems to multimodal audience design and the potential of gesture to act as a window into the social cognitive processes of individuals with neurologic disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the impact of brain injury on memory processes often focus on the quantity and episodic richness of those recollections. Here, we argue that the organization of one's recollections offers critical insights into the impact of brain injury on functional memory. It is well‐established in studies of word list memory that free recall of unrelated words exhibits a clear temporal organization. This temporal contiguity effect refers to the fact that the order in which word lists are recalled reflects the original presentation order. Little is known, however, about the organization of recall for semantically rich materials, nor how recall organization is impacted by hippocampal damage and memory impairment. The present research is the first study, to our knowledge, of temporal organization in semantically rich narratives in three groups: (1) Adults with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe declarative memory impairment, (2) adults with bilateral ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) damage and no memory impairment, and (3) demographically matched non‐brain‐injured comparison participants. We find that although the narrative recall of adults with bilateral hippocampal damage reflected the temporal order in which those narratives were experienced above chance levels, their temporal contiguity effect was significantly attenuated relative to comparison groups. In contrast, individuals with vmPFC damage did not differ from non‐brain‐injured comparison participants in temporal contiguity. This pattern of group differences yields insights into the cognitive and neural systems that support the use of temporal organization in recall. These data provide evidence that the retrieval of temporal context in narrative recall is hippocampal‐dependent, whereas damage to the vmPFC does not impair the temporal organization of narrative recall. This evidence of limited but demonstrable organization of memory in participants with hippocampal damage and amnesia speaks to the power of narrative structures in supporting meaningfully organized recall despite memory impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent findings point to a role for hippocampus in the moment-by-moment processing of language, including the use and generation of semantic features in certain contexts. What role the hippocampus might play in the processing of semantic relations in spoken language comprehension, however, is unknown. Here we test patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and dense amnesia in order to examine the necessity of hippocampus for lexico-semantic mapping processes in spoken language understanding. In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we monitor eye movements to images that are semantically related to spoken words and sentences. We find no impairment in amnesia, relative to matched healthy comparison participants. These findings suggest, at least for close semantic links and simple language comprehension tasks, a lack of necessity for hippocampus in lexico-semantic mapping between spoken words and simple pictures. • Tested patients with bilateral hippocampal damage and dense amnesia. • Tested necessity of hippocampus for lexico-semantic mapping in language processing. • 2 eye-tracking experiments examined lexico-semantic mapping for words and pictures. • No impairment in amnesia, relative to matched healthy comparison participants. • A lack of necessity for hippocampus for close semantic links in comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language use has long been understood to be tailored to the intended addressee, a process termed audience design. Audience design is reflected in multiple aspects of language use, including adjustments based on the addressee's knowledge about the topic at hand. In group settings, audience design depends on representations of multiple individuals, each of whom may have different knowledge about the conversational topic. A central question, then, concerns how these representations are encoded and retrieved in multiparty conversation where successful conversation requires keeping track of who knows what. In the present research, we probe the biological memory systems that are involved in this process of multiparty audience design. We present the results of two experiments that compare language use in persons with bilateral hippocampal damage and severe declarative memory impairment (amnesia), and demographically matched neurotypical comparison participants. Participants played a game in which they discussed abstract images with one partner in conversation, and then discussed the images again with the same partner or with a new partner in a three-party conversation. Neurotypical participants' language use reflected newly formed representations of which partner was familiar with which images. Participants with amnesia showed evidence of partner-specific audience design in multiparty conversation but it was attenuated, especially when success required rapid alternations between representations of common ground. The findings suggest partial independence of the formation and use of partner-specific representations from the hippocampal-dependent declarative memory system and highlight the unique contributions of the declarative memory system to flexible and dynamic language use. • Individuals with amnesia produce partner-specific language in multiparty settings. • Dynamic and flexible partner-specific language use with limited success in amnesia. • Using partner-specific knowledge is partially independent from declarative memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Listeners integrate sub-categorical acoustic information with discourse information. • This information drives gradient referential activation. • Gradient effects persist over 35 syllables (~8 s) of intervening speech. • These effects appear in both online fixations and latencies to fixate the target. • Results suggest gradient uncertainty is maintained at high levels of representation. During speech processing, listeners must map a fundamentally continuous acoustic signal onto discrete symbols, such as words. A current debate concerns the time-course over which sub-phonemic (i.e., gradient) acoustic information continues to influence symbolic (i.e., linguistic) interpretation, which can provide evidence regarding the level of representation at which gradient information is maintained. In a visual-world paradigm experiment, participants indicated whether a spoken sentence matched a display while eye-gaze was monitored. Participants heard an acoustically ambiguous stimulus (a pronoun referring to either a male or female referent in the display), which was not disambiguated until later in the discourse. The acoustic properties of the pronouns and length of the ambiguous period were varied while responses and eye-movements to the discourse-relevant items were recorded, providing a measure of whether gradient referential uncertainty is maintained over time. Fixation patterns during the ambiguous period and latencies to fixate the target at the end of the trial varied linearly with the acoustics of the earlier pronoun, indicating that gradient information can be maintained over intervening periods of 35 syllables. These results provide strong evidence that gradient uncertainty is maintained at the level of referent representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicating with multiple addressees poses a problem for speakers: Each addressee necessarily comes to the conversation with a different perspective—different knowledge, different beliefs, and a distinct physical context. Despite the ubiquity of multiparty conversation in everyday life, little is known about the processes by which speakers design language in multiparty conversation. While prior evidence demonstrates that speakers design utterances to accommodate addressee knowledge in multiparty conversation, it is unknown if and how speakers encode and combine different types of perspective information. Here we test whether speakers encode the perspective of multiple addressees, and then simultaneously consider their knowledge and physical context during referential design in a three‐party conversation. Analyses of referential form—expression length, disfluency, and elaboration rate—in an interactive multiparty conversation demonstrate that speakers do take into consideration both addressee knowledge and physical context when designing utterances, consistent with a knowledge‐scene integration view. These findings point to an audience design process that takes as input multiple types of representations about the perspectives of multiple addressees, and that bases the informational content of the to‐be‐designed utterance on a combination of the perspectives of the intended addressees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way we refer to things in the world is shaped by the immediate physical context as well as the discourse history. But what part of the discourse history is relevant to language use in the present? In four experiments, we combine the study of task‐based conversation with measures of recognition memory to examine the role of physical contextual cues that shape what speakers perceive to be a part of the relevant discourse history. Our studies leverage the differentiation effect, a phenomenon in which speakers are more likely to use a modified expression to refer to an object (e.g., dotted sock) if they had previously described a similar object (e.g., striped sock) than when they had not described a similar object. Two physical cues—the background that framed the to‐be‐described pictures and the position of the pictures in the display—were manipulated to alter perceptions about the relevant discourse context. We measured the rate with which speakers modify referring expressions to differentiate current from past referents. Recognition memory measures following the conversation probed what was and was not remembered about past discourse referents and contexts. Analysis of modification rates indicated that these contextual grouping cues shaped perceptions about the relevant discourse context. The contextual cues did not affect memory for the referents, but the memory for past referents was better for speakers than for listeners. Our findings show that perceptions about the relevant discourse history are a key determinant of how language is used in the moment but also that conversational partners form asymmetric representations of the discourse history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon hearing a scalar adjective in a definite referring expression such as “the big. . .,” listeners typically make anticipatory eye movements to an item in a contrast set, such as a big glass in the context of a smaller glass. Recent studies have suggested that this rapid, contrastive interpretation of scalar adjectives is malleable and calibrated to the speaker’s pragmatic competence. In a series of eye-tracking experiments, we explore the nature of the evidence necessary for the modulation of pragmatic inferences in language comprehension, focusing on the complementary roles of top–down information - (knowledge about the particular speaker’s pragmatic competence) and bottom-up cues (distributional information about the use of scalar adjectives in the environment). We find that bottom-up evidence alone (e.g., the speaker says “the big dog” in a context with one dog), in large quantities, can be sufficient to trigger modulation of the listener’s contrastive inferences, with or without top-down cues to support this adaptation. Further, these findings suggest that listeners track and flexibly combine multiple sources of information in service of efficient pragmatic communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging body of research examines the role of computer-mediated communication in supporting social connection in persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI). We examine the cognitive impacts of engaging with images posted to social media for persons with moderate-severe TBI. Prior work shows that after viewing social media posts, adults have better memory for posts when they generate a comment about the post. We examined if persons with TBI experience a memory benefit for commented-upon social media images similar to non-injured comparison participants. 53 persons with moderate-to-severe TBI and 52 non-injured comparison participants viewed arrays of real social media images and were prompted to comment on some of them. After a brief delay, a surprise two-alternative forced choice recognition memory test measured memory for these images. Persons with TBI remembered social media images at above-chance levels and experienced a commenting-related memory boost much like non-injured comparison participants. These findings add to a growing literature on the potential benefits of social media use in individuals with TBI and point to the benefits of active engagement for memory in social media contexts in TBI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-world communication is situated in rich multimodal contexts, containing speech and gesture. Speakers often convey unique information in gesture that is not present in the speech signal (e.g., saying "He searched for a new recipe" while making a typing gesture). We examine the narrative retellings of participants with and without moderate-severe traumatic brain injury across three timepoints over two online Zoom sessions to investigate whether people with TBI can integrate information from co-occurring speech and gesture and if information from gesture persists across delays. 60 participants with TBI and 60 non-injured peers watched videos of a narrator telling four short stories. On key details, the narrator produced complementary gestures that conveyed unique information. Participants retold the stories at three timepoints: immediately after, 20-min later, and one-week later. We examined the words participants used when retelling these key details, coding them as a Speech Match (e.g., "He searched for a new recipe"), a Gesture Match (e.g., "He searched for a new recipe online), or Other ("He looked for a new recipe"). We also examined whether participants produced representative gestures themselves when retelling these details. Despite recalling fewer story details, participants with TBI were as likely as non-injured peers to report information from gesture in their narrative retellings. All participants were more likely to report information from gesture and produce representative gestures themselves one-week later compared to immediately after hearing the story. We demonstrated that speech-gesture integration is intact after TBI in narrative retellings. This finding has exciting implications for the utility of gesture to support comprehension and memory after TBI and expands our understanding of naturalistic multimodal language processing in this population. • Real-world communication is multimodal, containing speech and gesture; however, multimodal communication has been understudied in populations with acquired brain injury. • We examine whether people with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) integrate information uniquely presented in the gesture modality in their narrative retellings across delays. • Participants with TBI were as likely to report information from gesture in their retellings as non-injured peers. • Both groups were more likely to report information from gesture in their narrative retellings and produce representative gestures themselves one-week later. • This demonstration of intact speech-gesture integration in TBI has exciting implications for the utility of gesture to support communication and memory in populations with cognitive-communication disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We agree with Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) claim that theories of language processing must address the interconnection of language production and comprehension. However, we have two concerns: First, the central notion of context when predicting what another person will say is underspecified. Second, it is not clear that P&G's dual-mechanism model captures the data better than a single-mechanism model would. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When designing a definite referring expression, speakers take into account both the local context and certain aspects of the historical context, including whether similar referents have been mentioned in the past. When a similar item has been mentioned previously, speakers tend to elaborate their referring expression in order to differentiate the two items, a phenomenon called lexical differentiation. The present research examines the locus of the lexical differentiation effect and its relationship with memory for the discourse. In three experiments, we demonstrate that speakers differentiate to distinguish current from past referents; there was no evidence that speakers differentiate in order to avoid giving two items the same label. Post-task memory tests also revealed a high level of memory for the discourse history, a finding that is inconsistent with the view that failures of memory underlie low differentiation rates. Instead, memory for the discourse history, while necessary, is not sufficient for speakers to design language with respect to the historical context. Speakers must additionally view the discourse history as relevant to design language with respect to this broader context. Finally, measures of memory for past referents point to asymmetries between speakers and listeners in their memory for the discourse, with speakers typically remembering the discourse history better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]