3 research outputs found
Rational Redundancy in Referring Expressions: Evidence from Eventârelated 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 listenersâ 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 listenersâ uncertainty regarding the target referent
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Specificity and entropy reduction in situated referential processing
In situated communication, reference to an entity in theshared visual context can be established using either anexpression that conveys precise (minimally specified) orredundant (over-specified) information. There is, however, along-lasting debate in psycholinguistics concerning whetherthe latter hinders referential processing. We present evidencefrom an eye tracking experiment recording fixations as wellas the Index of Cognitive Activity â a novel measure ofcognitive workload â supporting the view that over-specifications facilitate processing. We further presentoriginal evidence that, above and beyond the effect ofspecificity, referring expressions that uniformly reducereferential entropy also benefit processing
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ERP indices of situated reference in visual contexts
Violations of the maxims of Quantity occur when utterances
provide more (over-specified) or less (under-specified)
information than strictly required for referent identification.
While behavioural data suggest that under-specified
expressions lead to comprehension difficulty and
communicative failure, there is no consensus as to whether
over-specified expressions are also detrimental to
comprehension. In this study we shed light on this debate,
providing neurophysiological evidence supporting the view
that extra information facilitates comprehension. We further
present novel evidence that referential failure due to underspecification
is qualitatively different from explicit cases of
referential failure, when no matching referential candidate is
available in the context