Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation

Breheny, Richard; Ferguson, Heather J.; Katsos, Napoleon

doi:10.1080/01690965.2011.649040

Cited by 123 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…How this would play out during online processing is not yet well understood. Interestingly, the studies to date do not find any clear indication that there is a qualitative difference between the online processing of scalar implicatures that are based on sets of lexical alternatives and those based on contextual scales (see Breheny, Ferguson & Katsos, 2013; Zevakhina & Geurts, submitted). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neural computation of scalar implicature

Hartshorne

Snedeker

Azar

et al. 2014

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Language comprehension involves not only constructing the literal meaning of a sentence but also going beyond the literal meaning to infer what was meant but not said. One widely-studied test case is scalar implicature: The inference that, e.g., Sally ate some of the cookies implies she did not eat all of them. Research is mixed on whether this is due to a rote, grammaticalized procedure or instead a complex, contextualized inference. We find that in sentences like If Sally ate some of the cookies, then the rest are on the counter, that the rest triggers a late, sustained positivity relative to Sally ate some of the cookies, and the rest are on the counter. This is consistent with behavioral results and linguistic theory suggesting that the former sentence does not trigger a scalar implicature. This motivates a view on which scalar implicature is contextualized but dependent on grammatical structure.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neural computation of scalar implicature

Hartshorne

Snedeker

Azar

et al. 2014

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…patterns, accessories, etc. ; Breheny, Ferguson, & Katsos, 2013;BrownSchmidt et al, 2008;Brown-Schmidt, 2009a, and temporarily ambiguous verbal object descriptors that described this disambiguating property after the noun (e.g. "move the teapot with the spots on…").…”

Section: The Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using perspective to resolve reference: The impact of cognitive load and motivation.

Cane¹,

Ferguson²,

Apperly³

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research has demonstrated a link between perspective taking and working memory. Here we used eye tracking to examine the time course with which working memory load (WML) influences perspective-taking ability in a referential communication task and how motivation to take another’s perspective modulates these effects. In Experiment 1, where there was no reward or time pressure, listeners only showed evidence of incorporating perspective knowledge during integration of the target object but did not anticipate reference to this common ground object during the pretarget-noun period. WML did not affect this perspective use. In Experiment 2, where a reward for speed and accuracy was applied, listeners used perspective cues to disambiguate the target object from the competitor object from the earliest moments of processing (i.e., during the pretarget-noun period), but only under low load. Under high load, responses were comparable with the control condition, where both objects were in common ground. Furthermore, attempts to initiate perspective-relevant responses under high load led to impaired recall on the concurrent WML task, indicating that perspective-relevant responses were drawing on limited cognitive resources. These results show that when there is ambiguity, perspective cues guide rapid referential interpretation when there is sufficient motivation and sufficient cognitive resources.

show abstract

“…The non-default model does not predict the lower-bound interpretation to necessarily come at an additional processing cost, since hearers can access the lower-bound interpretation at Stage 1 before deriving the doubly bounded reading. These predictions have been experimentally tested for the last decade by means of various methodologies, including inter alia response time studies (Bott and Noveck, 2004), self-paced reading (Breheny et al, 2006; Bergen and Grodner, 2012), visual-world (Huang and Snedeker, 2009; Breheny et al, 2013), and “gumball” (Degen and Tanenhaus, 2011) paradigms. Results have been interpreted as providing convincing evidence against the default model of SI processing: in short, the doubly bounded reading is not accessed earlier than the lower-bound reading 3 .…”

Section: The Psycholinguistic Processing Of Sismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These delayed effects have generally been interpreted as showing that lower-bound readings are accessed earlier than doubly bounded readings. Nonetheless, other studies have suggested that such a conclusion might be too strong (Sedivy, 2003; Degen and Tanenhaus, 2011; Grodner and Sedivy, 2011; Breheny et al, 2013): although implicatures may be accessed at a delay, they do not have to be. In particular, Degen and Tanenhaus (2011) have shown that hearers are able to compute implicatures as rapidly as literal content under the right circumstances (i.e., when the set of relevant natural alternatives is reduced).…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Scalar implicatures: working memory and a comparison with only

Marty¹,

Chemla²

2013

Front. Psychol.

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A Scalar Implicature (SI) arises when the use of a relatively weak sentence (e.g., some politicians are corrupt) implies the denial of an alternative, stronger sentence (e.g., not all politicians are corrupt). The cognitive effort associated with the processing of SIs involves central memory resources (De Neys and Schaeken, 2007; Dieussaert et al., 2011; Marty et al., 2013). The goal of this study is to locate this previous result within the current psycholinguistic debate, and to understand at which level of SI processing these resources are specifically involved. Using a dual-task approach, we show that (1) tapping participant's memory resources interferes with the derivation of SIs, whereas (2) it does not affect the interpretation of sentences involving similar competition mechanisms between a sentence and potential alternatives through the use of only (e.g., only some politicians are corrupt). We explain how these findings suggest that the central memory resources are not involved in the core process at the source of SIs, and discuss how this difference between SIs and only bears on recent linguistic debates on the division of labor between grammar and pragmatics.

show abstract

Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation

Cited by 123 publications

References 23 publications

The neural computation of scalar implicature

The neural computation of scalar implicature

Using perspective to resolve reference: The impact of cognitive load and motivation.

Scalar implicatures: working memory and a comparison with only

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About