Speakers use their own discourse model to determine referents' accessibility during the production of referring expressions.

We report two experiments that investigated the widely-held assumption that speakers use the addressee's discourse model when choosing referring expressions, by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (relative to definite NPs) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, but whether their addressee heard that the referent was mentioned had no effect, indicating that speakers use their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced fewer pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned a referential competitor than when it mentioned the referent, but this effect did not differ depending on whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent's accessibility in the speaker’s own discourse model rather than the addressee's

Development of audience design in children with and without ASD

We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of audience design by contrasting children with and without autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in referential communication. The 2-stage hypothesis predicts that the ability to use contrastive size adjectives for ambiguity avoidance develops separately from and faster than the ability to avoid perspective-inappropriate descriptions for their addressee. The single-stage hypothesis assumes that both abilities reflect speakers' perspective-taking, and they should develop in tandem with each other. Experiment 1 found that 6-to 10-year-olds with and without ASD produced disambiguating size adjectives ("small door") equally often when the size-contrasting competitor (large door) was in the visual context shared with their addressee. When the competitor was hidden from their addressee, that is, it was part of children's privileged context, children with ASD produced more perspective-inappropriate size adjectives than those without ASD, providing support for the 2-stage model. Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of results with 11-to 16-year-old adolescents. Compared with adults, 6-to 10-year-olds without ASD produced more perspective-inappropriate size adjectives in the privileged context, while producing fewer disambiguating size adjectives in the shared context, demonstrating more "egocentric" behaviors than adults. Importantly, whereas 11-to 16-yearolds without ASD produced disambiguating adjectives nearly as often as adults in the shared context, they produced perspective-inappropriate adjectives more than adults in the privileged context. This indicated that even in non-ASD, the ability to avoid perspective-inappropriate descriptions develops more slowly than the ability to avoid ambiguous descriptions, delaying the onset of adult-like audience design, consistent with the 2-stage hypothesis

Ordering adjectives in referential communication

We contrasted two hypotheses concerning how speakers determine adjective order during referential communication. The discriminatory efficiency hypotheses claims that speakers place the most discriminating adjective early to facilitate referent identification. By contrast, the availability-based ordering hypothesis assumes that speakers produce most available adjectives early to ease production. Experiment 1 showed that speakers use more pattern-before-color modifier orders (than the reversed) when pattern, not color, distinguished the referent from alternatives, providing support for the discriminatory efficiency hypothesis. Participants also overspecified color more often than pattern, and they generally favored color-before-pattern orders, in support of the availability-based ordering hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated both effects in a dialogue setting, where speakers’ adjective ordering was also primed by their partner’s ordering, using conjoined and non-conjoined constructions. We propose a novel model (PASS) that explains how discriminability and availability simultaneously influence adjective selection and ordering via competition in the speaker’s message representation

The interplay between syntactic and non-syntactic structure in language production

Speakers frequently reuse earlier encountered structures. A long-standing view in language production research is that this structural priming is driven by the persistence of abstract syntax, independent from unordered, conceptual representations. However, evidence has been building that non-syntactic information can also influence structural choice. Here we examined whether and how the syntactic priming of relative clause structures might interact with the priming of the conceptual category order of adjectives in noun phrase production. Study 1 found that speakers are more likely to produce relative clause structures (spotted bow that’s green) after having heard relative clause structures (striped lock that’s blue) as opposed to an alternative structure (striped blue lock), and they also tended to repeat the conceptual order of the prime, with more pattern-first orders after pattern-first primes than after color-first primes. Critically, we found larger syntactic priming when the conceptual order of the prime persisted more in the target and larger conceptual order priming when the syntactic structure of the prime persisted more in the target. Studies 2 and 3 found that conceptual category order priming can be enhanced by adjective overlap as well as noun overlap between prime and target, whereas syntactic priming can only be enhanced by noun overlap. These results supported the interactive priming account: Although the syntactic structure and the conceptual order are represented at different levels and hence can be activated independently, the link between them is also primed, which enhances priming at both levels

Choosing referring expressions

This thesis focuses on the issue of how language users refer to an entity during discourse production, by investigating representations and processes that underlie the choice between pronouns and repeated noun phrases. Past research has shown that the use of pronouns (relative to more explicit expressions) is affected by the referent’s salience in the prior linguistic context, but much less is known about how non-linguistic context affects the referent’s salience and the choice of expression. Recent research has suggested that the referent’s non-linguistic salience has no effect on the choice of pronouns and names (Arnold ;Griffin, 2007). One of the major findings of the research reported in this thesis is that the referent's salience in the visual context plays an important role in the form of reference: Pronouns were less frequent (relative to repeated noun phrases) when the competitor was present than absent in the visual context. My second major finding is that similarity-based interference affects the choice of referring expressions. Pronouns are less frequent when discourse entities are similar in terms of their inherent conceptual properties as well as extrinsic properties, suggesting that the more similar the competitor to the referent, the stronger the interference, reducing pronoun usage. My third major finding is that contrary to many linguistic theories that assume that speakers choose referring expressions that are optimally helpful for their addressee (Ariel, 1990; Clark ;Marshall, 1981; Givón, 1983), speakers do not choose expressions by adopting the addressee's discourse model: Pronouns are more frequent when the referent is salient to the speaker, not to the addressee. I argue that the explicitness of referring expressions is affected by the degree of conceptual access that is needed to initiate production processes: The more conceptual access is needed, the more elaborate expressions tend to be produced.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Overspecification and incremental referential processing: An eye-tracking study

Using eye-tracking, we examined if over-specification hinders or facilitates referential processes selection, and the extent to which this depends on the properties of the attribute mentioned in the referring expressions and the underpinning processing mode. Following spoken instructions, participants selected the referent in a visual display while their eye movements were monitored. The referring expressions were presented either simultaneously with the displays, so the attributes could be incrementally processed in sequence, or before the display presentation, so the attributes could be processed in parallel from the outset of search. Experiment 1 showed that when the attributes were processed incrementally, how quickly an earlier-mentioned attribute discriminated determined whether a late-mentioned, over-specified attribute contributed to discrimination: When color was mentioned first and fully discriminating, the referent was selected fast regardless of the second-mentioned pattern, whereas when pattern was mentioned first and fully discriminating, the second-mentioned color facilitated discrimination. Experiment 2 found that under incremental processing, color mention after a fully discriminating pattern increased fixations but delayed referent selection relative to a pattern-only description; under parallel processing, however, color mention immediately eliminated alternatives and sped up referent selection. Experiment 3 showed that pattern mention after a fully discriminating color delayed referent selection and tended to reduce fixations relative to a color-only description in both processing modes. Hence, additional attributes can speed up referent selection but only when they can discriminate much faster than alternative attributes mentioned in a more concise description, and critically, when they can be used early for referent search

The Proposal of the System That Recommends e-Learning Courses Matching the Learning Styles of the Learners

In providing e-learning, it is desirable to build an environment that is suitable to the student’s learning style. In this study, using the questionnaire to measure the student’s preferences for asynchronous learning and the use of ICT in learning that has been develoed by authors, the relationship between the learning preferences of a student that have been measured before and after the course and his or her adaptability to the course is explored. The result of multiple regression analyses, excluding the changes in learning preferences that may occur duirng the course, shows that a student’s learning adaptability can be estimated to some extent based on his/her learning preference measured before the course starts. Based on this result, we propose a system to recommend e-learning courses that are suitable to a student before the student takes the courses

Developing a Method of Recommending E-Learning Courses Based on Students’ Learning Preferences

In designing e-learning, it is desirable that individual learner’s learning style is considered. This study proposes a way to present the information about the expected adaptability of the course, in which a student wishes to enroll, based on the student’s responses to the learning preference questionnaire administered at the beginning of the course. As the result of applying the real data to the model derived, it was confirmed that it would be possible to estimate the course adaptability before taking the course and to provide the information for the student to improve his/her course adaptability based on the student’s responses to the learning preference questionnaire.15th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems (KES 2011), September 12-14, 2011, Kaiserslautern, German

Representations underlying pronoun choice in Italian and English

Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more similar and hence compete more strongly. Here we examined the locus of such an effect, investigating whether pronoun use is affected by the referents’ competition at a non-linguistic level only (non-linguistic competition account) or whether it is also affected by competition arising from the antecedents’ similarities (linguistic competition account) and the extent to which this depends on the type of pronoun. Speakers used Italian null pronouns and English pronouns less often (relative to full nouns) when the referential candidates compete more strongly situationally, whilst the antecedents’ semantic, grammatical or phonological similarity did not affect the rates of either pronouns, providing support for the non-linguistic competition account. However, unlike English pronouns, Italian null pronouns were unaffected by gender congruence between human referents, running counter to the gender effect for the use of non-gendered overt pronouns reported earlier. Hence, whilst both null and overt pronouns are sensitive to non-linguistic competition, what similarity affects non-linguistic competition partly depends on the type of pronouns.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin