title: How do I remember that I know you know that I know?
abstract: Communication is aided greatly when speakers and listeners take advantage of mutually shared knowledge (i.e., common ground). How such information is represented in memory is not well known. Using a neuropsychological-psycholinguistic approach to real-time language understanding, we investigated the ability to form and use common ground during conversation in memory-impaired participants with hippocampal amnesia. Analyses of amnesics' eye fixations as they interpreted their partner's utterances about a set of objects demonstrated successful use of common ground when the amnesics had immediate access to common-ground information, but dramatic failures when they did not. These findings indicate a clear role for declarative memory in maintenance of common-ground representations. Even when amnesics were successful, however, the eye movement record revealed subtle deficits in resolving potential ambiguity among competing intended referents; this finding suggests that declarative memory may be critical to more basic aspects of the on-line resolution of linguistic ambiguity.
authors: Department of Psychology and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. rrubin2@illinois.edu
authors: Rachael D
authors: RD
authors: Rubin
authors: Sarah
authors: S
authors: Brown-Schmidt
authors: Melissa C
authors: MC
authors: Duff
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Tranel
authors: Neal J
authors: NJ
authors: Cohen
mesh_terms: D000647:Amnesia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003142:Communication; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged