Speaker-external versus speaker-internal forces on utterance form: do cognitive demands override threats to referential success?
To what extent do speaker-external communicative pressures versus speaker-internal cognitive pressures affect utterance form? Four experiments measured speakers' references to privately known (i.e., privileged) objects when naming mutually known (i.e., common ground) objects. Although speaker-external communicative pressures demanded that speakers avoid references to privileged objects, 2 experiments showed that speakers often ignored this demand when it coexisted with a speaker-internal pressure to attend to those privileged objects. The authors hypothesize that this was due to increased salience of privileged objects (a speaker-internal pressure). Experiment 3 showed that directly boosting the salience of privileged objects increased the likelihood that speakers will inappropriately refer to those objects. Experiment 4 showed that the salience-sensitive mechanism in Experiments 1 and 2 is likely related to the mechanism causing such references in Experiment 3. Thus, the language production system is especially sensitive to cognitive pressures even when communicative harm results.
Lane
Liane Wardlow
LW
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA.
Ferreira
Victor S
VS
D001288:Attention; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003142:Communication; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007389:Internal-External Control; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011340:Problem Solving; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D012858:Size Perception; D012931:Social Environment; D014705:Verbal Behavior