Tell Me Everything You Know: A Conversation Update System for the Rational Speech Acts Framework

Anderson, Carolyn J.

doi:10.7275/j6z3-9k74

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Such mechanisms are integral parts of real-world communication (see, e.g., Arkel et al, 2020; H. H. Clark & Brennan, 1991) and it will be important for future modeling work to account for them. A promising step in this direction is the work by Anderson (2021) who proposed a system for conversational updating within the RSA framework. To increase ecological validity, our model of information integration could be used to model real-world interactions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting pragmatic cue integration in adults’ and children’s inferences about novel word meanings.

Bohn¹,

Tessler²,

Merrick³

et al. 2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Language is learned in complex social settings where listeners must reconstruct speakers' intended meanings from context. To navigate this challenge, children can use pragmatic reasoning to learn the meaning of unfamiliar words. A critical challenge for pragmatic reasoning is that it requires integrating multiple information sources, which have typically been studied separately. Here we study this integration process. First, we experimentally isolate two sources of pragmatic information: expectations about informative communication and common ground. Next, we use a probabilistic model of conversational reasoning to formalize how these information sources should be combined and how this process might develop. We use this model to generate quantitative predictions, which we test against new experimental data from 3-to 5-year-old children (N = 243) and adults (N = 694). Results show close alignment between model predictions and data. Furthermore, the model provided a better explanation of the data compared with simpler alternative models assuming that participants selectively ignore one information source. This work integrates distinct sets of findings regarding information sources for early language learning and suggests that pragmatic reasoning models can provide a quantitative framework for understanding developmental changes in language learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%