Does cognitive control modulate referential ambiguity resolution? A remote visual world study.

Cognitive control facilitates the resolution of representational conflict during language comprehension when incompatible interpretations vie for selection due to linguistic ambiguity. However, it remains unknown if control is required only when conflict arises between multiple, strongly supported interpretations, or even when there is substantial evidence for one interpretation and competition from weak alternatives. We investigated referential ambiguities such as “She will eat the red … ”, in which listeners temporarily consider multiple red objects as potential referents, including those that are partially consistent with the input (e.g. heart satisfies “red” but not “eat”). We introduce a remote visual-world paradigm to track listeners’ interpretive commitments via webcam, combined with a cross-task adaptation manipulation of cognitive-control engagement. We replicated subtle competition effects in referential ambiguity but found that upregulated cognitive control did not modulate competition. This suggests that a competing representation must reach a certain activation threshold before conflict arises, requiring cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]