On the incrementality of pragmatic processing: An ERP investigation of informativeness and pragmatic abilities

In two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, we determined to what extent Grice’s maxim of informativeness as well as pragmatic ability contributes to the incremental build-up of sentence meaning, by examining the impact of underinformative versus informative scalar statements (e.g. “Some people have lungs/pets, and…”) on the N400 event-related potential (ERP), an electrophysiological index of semantic processing. In Experiment 1, only pragmatically skilled participants (as indexed by the Autism Quotient Communication subscale) showed a larger N400 to underinformative statements. In Experiment 2, this effect disappeared when the critical words were unfocused so that the local underinformativeness went unnoticed (e.g., “Some people have lungs that…”). Our results suggest that, while pragmatic scalar meaning can incrementally contribute to sentence comprehension, this contribution is dependent on contextual factors, whether these are derived from individual pragmatic abilities or the overall experimental context

Gender and autistic personality traits predict perspective-taking ability in typical adults

Adopting another’s visual perspective is exceedingly common and may underlie successful social interaction and empathizing with others. The individual differences responsible for success in perspective-taking, however, remain relatively undiscovered. We assessed whether gender and autistic personality traits in normal college student adults predict the ability to adopt another’s visual perspective. In a task differentially recruiting VPT-1 which involves following another’s line of sight, and VPT-2 which involves determining how another may perceive an object differently given their unique perspective (VPT-2), we found effects of both gender and autistic personality traits. Specifically, we demonstrate slowed VPT-2 but not VPT-1 performance in males and females with relatively high ASD-characteristic personality traits; this effect, however was markedly stronger in males than females. Results contribute to knowledge regarding ASD-related personality traits in the general population and the individual differences modulating perspective-taking abilities

Pronouns and Visual Perspective-Taking: Two Replication Results

In 2007, our laboratory conducted a series of experiments examining whether pronouns embedded in short sentences (e.g., I am/You are/He is peeling the cucumber.) modulate reaction times when participants are tasked to verify whether a picture depicts a described action. Critically, the picture depicted an actor performing the action (e.g., peeling a cucumber) from either the actor’s internal perspective, or the perspective of an external observer. Our results demonstrated that description pronouns do indeed interact with picture perspectives; response times showed faster verifications when the implied perspectives of the pronouns and pictures matched rather than mismatched. As expected the grammatical persons I am and You are promoted faster response times when verifying internal rather than external perspective pictures; in contrast, He is promoted faster response times when verifying external rather than internal perspective pictures. We interpreted these findings as indicating that readers use pronouns to differentiate perspectives, and are more likely to internalize the action when they are directly addressed as the protagonist (You are) or the sentence uses the first-person perspective (I am). These findings were published in Psychological Science in 2009. In this replication attempt, we conducted two experiments to understand the robustness and reliability of our original effects, with an emphasis on individual differences in pronominal perspective-taking