The target article says surprisingly little about the possible role of shared circuits in languag... more The target article says surprisingly little about the possible role of shared circuits in language and communication. This commentary considers how they might contribute to linguistic communication, particularly during dialogue. We argue that shared circuits are used to promote alignment between linguistic representations at many levels and to support production-based emulation of linguistic input during comprehension.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Sep 17, 2008
This paper assesses whether human communication systems undergo the same progressive adaptation s... more This paper assesses whether human communication systems undergo the same progressive adaptation seen in animal communication systems and concrete artefacts. Four experiments compared the fitness of ad hoc sign systems created under different conditions when participants play a graphical communication task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that when participants are organized into interacting communities, a series of signs evolve that enhance individual learning and promote efficient decoding. No such benefits are found for signs that result from the local interactions of isolated pairs of interlocutors. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the decoding benefits associated with community evolved signs cannot be attributed to superior sign encoding or detection. Experiment 4 revealed that naive overseers were better able to identify the meaning of community evolved signs when compared with isolated pair developed signs. Hence, the decoding benefits for community evolved signs arise from their greater residual iconicity. We argue that community evolved sign systems undergo a process of communicative selection and adaptation that promotes optimized sign systems. This results from the interplay between sign diversity and a global alignment constraint; pairwise interaction introduces a range of competing signs and the need to globally align on a single sign-meaning mapping for each referent applies selection pressure.
Two experiments are reported which demonstrate the development of co-ordinated description langua... more Two experiments are reported which demonstrate the development of co-ordinated description languages in two groups of communicators playing Garrod and Anderson's (1987) maze game. The experiments contrast language co-ordination between speakers who always interact with the same partner (isolated pairs) as compared with speakers who interact with different partners drawn from the same community. Whereas the isolated pairs show higher degrees of inter-speaker convergence than the community pairs at the start of the experiment, the situation reverses by the time they have all played six or more games. The results are discussed at two levels: (1) in terms of Lewis's formal theory of conventions, and (2) in relation to a language processing model which abides by the "output/input co-ordination" principle proposed in Garrod and Anderson (1987).
Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988) 519534 519 NorthHolland THEMATIC SUBJECTHOOD AND COGNITIVE CONSTR... more Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988) 519534 519 NorthHolland THEMATIC SUBJECTHOOD AND COGNITIVE CONSTRAINTS ON DISCOURSE STRUCTURE i on GARROD and Tony SANFORD* In narratives throughout the world it is possible to distinguish between two ...
Readers immediately slow down when an anaphor (e.g. herself) refers to an antecedent that mismatc... more Readers immediately slow down when an anaphor (e.g. herself) refers to an antecedent that mismatches in stereotypical gender (e.g. minister). The mismatch-cost has been attributed to a clash between the gender of the pronoun and the gender associated with the stereotypical role noun. However, the nature of such stereotypical gender is still controversial; according to the mental models approach it is inferred from world knowledge, while according to a lexical view it is stored as part of the lexical representation. We report two eye-tracking experiments designed to investigate the processing of stereotypical gender. In these experiments stereotypical nouns (e.g. minister) are contrasted with definitional nouns (e.g. king) in which gender information is part of the definition of the word. Experiment 1 shows that in anaphora sentences, where the role noun is presented earlier than the reflexive that conveys gender information, stereotypical and definitional gender nouns lead to a similar mismatch-cost. Experiment 2 shows that in cataphora sentences, where the reflexive precedes the stereotypical noun, a mismatch-cost is exhibited only for definitional gender nouns. These results indicate that stereotypical gender can be overridden when gender is specified by prior discourse, unlike lexically defined gender. We discuss the differences between these noun types and their implications for the representation and processing of stereotypical gender.
This chapter considers the qualities of human interaction and learning that will be most effectiv... more This chapter considers the qualities of human interaction and learning that will be most effective and natural to incorporate into any interactive task learning agent, and focuses specifi cally on the interactions involved in learning from explicit instruction. At the center of this interaction is a process that brings the common ground between a teacher agent and a learner agent into alignment. Errors or misalignments to this common ground drive the interactive learning process. The importance of timing is highlighted as is the dynamics of an interaction, as a communication channel itself, in this alignment process.
The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information fr... more The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information from written text and make sense of it. Keywords: dyslexia; eye movements; immediacy hypothesis; phonological recoding; working memory
Subjects read sentences containing either a syntactically ambiguous prepositional phrase attachme... more Subjects read sentences containing either a syntactically ambiguous prepositional phrase attachment or a syntactically ambiguous reduced relative clause. The sentences were embedded in passages of text that were consistent with either the minimal or non-minimal attachment reading. In addition, a discourse factor (i.e., whether or not the target sentence was in the discourse focus) was varied. Subjects' eye movements were recorded as they read the passages of text. Our primary finding was that subjects were garden-pathed even when there was biasing context. However, when the target sentence was in the discourse focus, subjects were able to recover more readily from their initial erroneous parse of the sentence. The data thus support models of sentence parsing that postulate that the parsing of a sentence is based upon structurally based principles and the influence of semantic or pragmatic information makes itself felt only after the initial parsing decision has been made.
... Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. Post a Com... more ... Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Sanford, AJ. Author: Garrod, SC. PUBLISHER: Wiley (Chichester and New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1981. ...
ABSTRACT Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional rela... more ABSTRACT Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional relationships both between objects themselves and human interaction with those objects. This is the thesis rigorously explicated in Saying, Seeing and Acting. It aims to account not only for our theoretical comprehension of spatial relations but our ability to intercede with efficacy in the world of spatially related objects. Only the phenomenon of functionality can adequately account for what even the simplest of everyday experiences show to be the technically problematic, but still meaningful status of expressions of spatial location in contentious cases. The terms of the debate are established and contextualised in Part One. In the Second Section, systematic experimental evidence is drawn upon to demonstrate specific covariances between spatial world and spatial language. The authors go on to give an original account of the functional and geometric constraints on which comprehension and human action among spatially related objects is based. Part Three looks at the interaction of these constraints to create a truly dynamic functional geometric framework for the meaningful use of spatial prepositions. Fascinating to anyone whose work touches on psycholinguistics, this book represents a thorough and incisive contribution to debates in the cognitive psychology of language.
The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information fr... more The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information from written text and make sense of it. Keywords: dyslexia; eye movements; immediacy hypothesis; phonological recoding; working memory
The target article says surprisingly little about the possible role of shared circuits in languag... more The target article says surprisingly little about the possible role of shared circuits in language and communication. This commentary considers how they might contribute to linguistic communication, particularly during dialogue. We argue that shared circuits are used to promote alignment between linguistic representations at many levels and to support production-based emulation of linguistic input during comprehension.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Sep 17, 2008
This paper assesses whether human communication systems undergo the same progressive adaptation s... more This paper assesses whether human communication systems undergo the same progressive adaptation seen in animal communication systems and concrete artefacts. Four experiments compared the fitness of ad hoc sign systems created under different conditions when participants play a graphical communication task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that when participants are organized into interacting communities, a series of signs evolve that enhance individual learning and promote efficient decoding. No such benefits are found for signs that result from the local interactions of isolated pairs of interlocutors. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the decoding benefits associated with community evolved signs cannot be attributed to superior sign encoding or detection. Experiment 4 revealed that naive overseers were better able to identify the meaning of community evolved signs when compared with isolated pair developed signs. Hence, the decoding benefits for community evolved signs arise from their greater residual iconicity. We argue that community evolved sign systems undergo a process of communicative selection and adaptation that promotes optimized sign systems. This results from the interplay between sign diversity and a global alignment constraint; pairwise interaction introduces a range of competing signs and the need to globally align on a single sign-meaning mapping for each referent applies selection pressure.
Two experiments are reported which demonstrate the development of co-ordinated description langua... more Two experiments are reported which demonstrate the development of co-ordinated description languages in two groups of communicators playing Garrod and Anderson's (1987) maze game. The experiments contrast language co-ordination between speakers who always interact with the same partner (isolated pairs) as compared with speakers who interact with different partners drawn from the same community. Whereas the isolated pairs show higher degrees of inter-speaker convergence than the community pairs at the start of the experiment, the situation reverses by the time they have all played six or more games. The results are discussed at two levels: (1) in terms of Lewis's formal theory of conventions, and (2) in relation to a language processing model which abides by the "output/input co-ordination" principle proposed in Garrod and Anderson (1987).
Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988) 519534 519 NorthHolland THEMATIC SUBJECTHOOD AND COGNITIVE CONSTR... more Journal of Pragmatics 12 (1988) 519534 519 NorthHolland THEMATIC SUBJECTHOOD AND COGNITIVE CONSTRAINTS ON DISCOURSE STRUCTURE i on GARROD and Tony SANFORD* In narratives throughout the world it is possible to distinguish between two ...
Readers immediately slow down when an anaphor (e.g. herself) refers to an antecedent that mismatc... more Readers immediately slow down when an anaphor (e.g. herself) refers to an antecedent that mismatches in stereotypical gender (e.g. minister). The mismatch-cost has been attributed to a clash between the gender of the pronoun and the gender associated with the stereotypical role noun. However, the nature of such stereotypical gender is still controversial; according to the mental models approach it is inferred from world knowledge, while according to a lexical view it is stored as part of the lexical representation. We report two eye-tracking experiments designed to investigate the processing of stereotypical gender. In these experiments stereotypical nouns (e.g. minister) are contrasted with definitional nouns (e.g. king) in which gender information is part of the definition of the word. Experiment 1 shows that in anaphora sentences, where the role noun is presented earlier than the reflexive that conveys gender information, stereotypical and definitional gender nouns lead to a similar mismatch-cost. Experiment 2 shows that in cataphora sentences, where the reflexive precedes the stereotypical noun, a mismatch-cost is exhibited only for definitional gender nouns. These results indicate that stereotypical gender can be overridden when gender is specified by prior discourse, unlike lexically defined gender. We discuss the differences between these noun types and their implications for the representation and processing of stereotypical gender.
This chapter considers the qualities of human interaction and learning that will be most effectiv... more This chapter considers the qualities of human interaction and learning that will be most effective and natural to incorporate into any interactive task learning agent, and focuses specifi cally on the interactions involved in learning from explicit instruction. At the center of this interaction is a process that brings the common ground between a teacher agent and a learner agent into alignment. Errors or misalignments to this common ground drive the interactive learning process. The importance of timing is highlighted as is the dynamics of an interaction, as a communication channel itself, in this alignment process.
The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information fr... more The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information from written text and make sense of it. Keywords: dyslexia; eye movements; immediacy hypothesis; phonological recoding; working memory
Subjects read sentences containing either a syntactically ambiguous prepositional phrase attachme... more Subjects read sentences containing either a syntactically ambiguous prepositional phrase attachment or a syntactically ambiguous reduced relative clause. The sentences were embedded in passages of text that were consistent with either the minimal or non-minimal attachment reading. In addition, a discourse factor (i.e., whether or not the target sentence was in the discourse focus) was varied. Subjects' eye movements were recorded as they read the passages of text. Our primary finding was that subjects were garden-pathed even when there was biasing context. However, when the target sentence was in the discourse focus, subjects were able to recover more readily from their initial erroneous parse of the sentence. The data thus support models of sentence parsing that postulate that the parsing of a sentence is based upon structurally based principles and the influence of semantic or pragmatic information makes itself felt only after the initial parsing decision has been made.
... Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. Post a Com... more ... Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Sanford, AJ. Author: Garrod, SC. PUBLISHER: Wiley (Chichester and New York). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1981. ...
ABSTRACT Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional rela... more ABSTRACT Our use of spatial prepositions carries an implicit understanding of the functional relationships both between objects themselves and human interaction with those objects. This is the thesis rigorously explicated in Saying, Seeing and Acting. It aims to account not only for our theoretical comprehension of spatial relations but our ability to intercede with efficacy in the world of spatially related objects. Only the phenomenon of functionality can adequately account for what even the simplest of everyday experiences show to be the technically problematic, but still meaningful status of expressions of spatial location in contentious cases. The terms of the debate are established and contextualised in Part One. In the Second Section, systematic experimental evidence is drawn upon to demonstrate specific covariances between spatial world and spatial language. The authors go on to give an original account of the functional and geometric constraints on which comprehension and human action among spatially related objects is based. Part Three looks at the interaction of these constraints to create a truly dynamic functional geometric framework for the meaningful use of spatial prepositions. Fascinating to anyone whose work touches on psycholinguistics, this book represents a thorough and incisive contribution to debates in the cognitive psychology of language.
The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information fr... more The psychology of reading investigates the process by which readers extract visual information from written text and make sense of it. Keywords: dyslexia; eye movements; immediacy hypothesis; phonological recoding; working memory
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