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Abstract:
Recent psycholinguistic research has
investigated how listeners use mutual perspective to resolve
ambiguity in referential communication (e.g., Keysar, Barr,
Balin, & Brauner, 2000). Although listeners
eventually constrain comprehension to shared referents,
potential referents that are not shared ("privileged") strongly
interfere with comprehension. Currently, there is
substantial debate regarding the time-course of mutual
perspective. The Perspective Adjustment model of Keysar
and Barr assumes that it is used for late-stage error
monitoring and correction, whereas cue-based models assume that
it exerts a partial constraint from the earliest moments of
processing (Hanna, Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Novick, 1997;
Nadig & Sedivy, 2000). It has been difficult to
evaluate these competing claims because of (1) vagueness about
what counts as the "initial moments" of comprehension; and (2)
studies that use a critical baseline condition containing
competing shared referents create a global ambiguity that
listeners cannot resolve without the speaker's help.
Building on a paradigm established by Allopenna,
Magnuson, & Tanenhaus (1998), I conducted an eyetracking
experiment that examined the resolution of temporary ambiguity
during lexical access. This temporary ambiguity was due
to the presence of a lexical competitor (e.g., "parakeet") that
shared initial phonemes with a target word (e.g.,
"parachute"). The experiment was designed to assess three
components of lexical access: (1) the pre-activation of targets
and competitors before the target word (baseline activation);
(2) the boost in activation due to the onset of the target word
(lexical activation); (3) the ultimate selection of the target
(lexical selection). In the experiment, listeners
followed instructions from a confederate to "Click on the
_______" from among a set of four pictures on a computer
screen. I independently manipulated the presence /
absence of a competitor and whether the corresponding picture
was visible to the speaker or visible to both the speaker and
listener.
Listeners were observed to strategically inhibit
hidden pictures prior to the onset of critical word, as
reflected in a decreased baseline activation. In spite of
these efforts, when this hidden picture was a competitor the
likelihood of fixation increased multifold during lexical
activation. Lexical selection of the target was delayed
when the hidden picture depicted a competitor relative to when
it depicted a control object. The pattern of results
suggest that mutual perspective has its strongest effects on
baseline activation and lexical selection; however, its effects
on initial activation may be limited. Implications for
models of mutual perspective and theories of lexical access
will be discussed.
References
Allopenna, P. D., Magnuson, J. S., &
Tanenhaus, M. K. (1998). Tracking the time course of
spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for
continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and
Language, 38(4), 419-439.
Hanna, J. E., Trueswell, J. C., Tanenhaus, M.
K., & Novick, J. M. (1997). Consulting common ground
during referential interpretation. Paper presented at the
38th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Philadelphia,
PA.
Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., &
Brauner, J. S. (2000). Taking perspective in
conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in
comprehension. Psychological Science, 11(1),
32-38.
Nadig, A., & Sedivy, J. C. (2000).
Children's use of referential pragmatic constraints in
production and processing. Paper presented at the 13th
CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, La Jolla,
CA.
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