Viewing time affects overspecification : evidence for two strategies of attribute selection during reference production

overspecified: they tend to include more attributes than necessary to distinguish the target referent. The current paper investigates how the occurrence of overspecification is affected by viewing time. We conducted an experiment in which speakers were asked to refer to target objects in visual domains. Half of the speakers had unlimited time to inspect the domains, while viewing time was limited (1000 ms) for the other half. The results reveal that limited viewing time induces the occurrence of overspecification. We conjecture that limited viewing time caused speakers to rely heavily on quick heuristics during attribute selection, which urge them to select attributes that are perceptually salient. In the case of unlimited inspection time, speakers seem to rely on a combination of heuristic and more deliberate selection strategies.peer-reviewe

Viewing time affects overspecification:Evidence for two strategies of attribute selection during reference production

Speakers often produce definite referring expressions that are overspecified: they tend to include more attributes than necessary to distinguish the target referent. The current paper investigates how the occurrence of overspecification is affected by viewing time. We conducted an experiment in which speakers were asked to refer to target objects in visual domains. Half of the speakers had unlimited time to inspect the domains, while viewing time was limited (1000 ms) for the other half. The results reveal that limited viewing time induces the occurrence of overspecification. We conjecture that limited viewing time caused speakers to rely heavily on quick heuristics during attribute selection, which urge them to select attributes that are perceptually salient. In the case of unlimited inspection time, speakers seem to rely on a combination of heuristic and more deliberate selection strategies

Modeling cross-linguistic production of referring expressions

We present a novel probabilistic model of referring expression production, synthesizing recent analyses proposed within the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework (Frank and Goodman, 2012). Our model makes incremental utterance choice predictions (Cohn-Gordon et al. 2018a; Cohn-Gordon et al. 2018b) and assumes a non-deterministic semantics for adjectives in referring expressions (Degen et al. 2020). The model captures previously attested production patterns in reference game experiments, including English speakers’ tendency to produce redundant color adjectives more frequently than redundant size adjectives, as well as Spanish speakers’ tendency to employ redundant color adjectives less frequently than English speakers. We report the predictions made by the model under various parameter regimes, motivating future empirical work

Contrast perception as a visual heuristic in the formulation of referential expressions

We hypothesize that contrast perception works as a visual heuristic, such that when speakers perceive a significant degree of contrast in a visual context, they tend to produce the corresponding adjective to describe a referent. The contrast perception heuristic supports efficient audience design, allowing speakers to produce referential expressions with minimum expenditure of cognitive resources, while facilitating the listener's visual search for the referent. We tested the perceptual contrast hypothesis in three language-production experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that speakers overspecify color adjectives in polychrome displays, whereas in monochrome displays they overspecified other properties that were contrastive. Further support for the contrast perception hypothesis comes from a re-analysis of previous work, which confirmed that color contrast elicits color overspecification when detected in a given display, but not when detected across monochrome trials. Experiment 2 revealed that even atypical colors (which are often overspecified) are only mentioned if there is color contrast. In Experiment 3, participants named a target color faster in monochrome than in polychrome displays, suggesting that the effect of color contrast is not analogous to ease of production. We conclude that the tendency to overspecify color in polychrome displays is not a bottom-up effect driven by the visual salience of color as a property, but possibly a learned communicative strategy. We discuss the implications of our account for pragmatic theories of referential communication and models of audience design, challenging the view that overspecification is a form of egocentric behavior

On visually-grounded reference production:testing the effects of perceptual grouping and 2D/3D presentation mode

When referring to a target object in a visual scene, speakers are assumed to consider certain distractor objects to be more relevant than others. The current research predicts that the way in which speakers come to a set of relevant distractors depends on how they perceive the distance between the objects in the scene. It reports on the results of two language production experiments, in which participants referred to target objects in photo-realistic visual scenes. Experiment 1 manipulated three factors that were expected to affect perceived distractor distance: two manipulations of perceptual grouping (region of space and type similarity), and one of presentation mode (2D vs. 3D). In line with most previous research on visually-grounded reference production, an offline measure of visual attention was taken here: the occurrence of overspecification with color. The results showed effects of region of space and type similarity on overspecification, suggesting that distractors that are perceived as being in the same group as the target are more often considered relevant distractors than distractors in a different group. Experiment 2 verified this suggestion with a direct measure of visual attention, eye tracking, and added a third manipulation of grouping: color similarity. For region of space in particular, the eye movements data indeed showed patterns in the expected direction: distractors within the same region as the target were fixated more often, and longer, than distractors in a different region. Color similarity was found to affect overspecification with color, but not gaze duration or the number of distractor fixations. Also the expected effects of presentation mode (2D vs. 3D) were not convincingly borne out by the data. Taken together, these results provide direct evidence for the close link between scene perception and language production, and indicate that perceptual grouping principles can guide speakers in determining the distractor set during reference production

Effects of domain size during reference production in photo-realistic scenes

The current study investigates how speakers are affected by the size of the visual domain during reference production. Previous research found that speech onset times increase along with the number of distractors that are visible, at least when speakers refer to non-salient target objects in simplified visual domains. This suggests that in the case of more distractors, speakers need more time to perform an object-by-object scan of all distractors that are visible. We present the results of a reference production experiment, to study if this pattern for speech onset times holds for photo-realistic scenes, and to test if the suggested viewing strategy is reflected directly in speakers’ eye movements. Our results show that this is indeed the case: we find (1) that speech onset times increase linearly as more distractors are present; (2) that speakers fixate the target relatively less often in larger domains; and (3) that larger domains elicit more fixation switches back and forth between the target and its distractors

A study of data coding technology developments in the 1980-1985 time frame, volume 2

The source parameters of digitized analog data are discussed. Different data compression schemes are outlined and analysis of their implementation are presented. Finally, bandwidth compression techniques are given for video signals

The TRECVID 2007 BBC rushes summarization evaluation pilot

This paper provides an overview of a pilot evaluation of video summaries using rushes from several BBC dramatic series. It was carried out under the auspices of TRECVID. Twenty-two research teams submitted video summaries of up to 4% duration, of 42 individual rushes video files aimed at compressing out redundant and insignificant material. The output of two baseline systems built on straightforward content reduction techniques was contributed by Carnegie Mellon University as a control. Procedures for developing ground truth lists of important segments from each video were developed at Dublin City University and applied to the BBC video. At NIST each summary was judged by three humans with respect to how much of the ground truth was included, how easy the summary was to understand, and how much repeated material the summary contained. Additional objective measures included: how long it took the system to create the summary, how long it took the assessor to judge it against the ground truth, and what the summary's duration was. Assessor agreement on finding desired segments averaged 78% and results indicate that while it is difficult to exceed the performance of baselines, a few systems did

Rational Redundancy in Referring Expressions: Evidence from Event‐related Potentials

In referential communication, Grice's Maxim of Quantity is thought to imply that utterances conveying unnecessary information should incur comprehension difficulties. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers frequently encode redundant information in their referring expressions, raising the question as to whether such overspecifications hinder listeners’ processing. Evidence from previous work is inconclusive, and mostly comes from offline studies. In this article, we present two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, investigating the real-time comprehension of referring expressions that contain redundant adjectives in complex visual contexts. Our findings provide support for both Gricean and bounded-rational accounts. We argue that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if common ground is taken into account. We propose a bounded-rational account of overspecification, according to which even redundant words can be beneficial to comprehension to the extent that they facilitate the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent