Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In two visual-world eyetracking experiments, we investigated how effectively addressees use information about a speaker's perspective to resolve temporary ambiguities in spoken expressions containing prenominal scalar adjectives (e.g., the small candle). The experiments used a new "Display Change" task to create situations where an addressee's perspective conflicted with that of a speaker, allowing the point of disambiguation (early versus late) to be specified independently from each perspective. Contrary to existing perspective-taking theories, the only situation in which addressees resolved references early was when both perspectives afforded early disambiguation. When perspectives conflicted, addressees exhibited a lower rate of preferential looks to the target and slower response times. This disruption to contrastive inference reflects either the suspension of pragmatic inferencing or cognitive limitations on the simultaneous representation and use of incompatible perspectives.
DOI: 10.1037/xlm0001455
Authors: Dale J. Barr, Hanna Sirniö, Beáta Kovács, Kieran J. O'Shea, Shannon McNee, Alistair Beith, Heather Britain, Qintong Li
Institutions: University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4407505232