Testing pragmatic inferences: The impact of language and culture

Abstract

Pragmatic inferences are one way to study false memories in real-world situations. We aimed to investigate variances in responses to pragmatic implication sentences between Portuguese and American data, presenting, for the first time, normative data of cued recall and recognition for pragmatic implication sentences in Portuguese. In Study 1 we analyzed cued-recall data for Portuguese pragmatic sentences. The proportions of cued- recall for correct and inference responses of each sentence did not significantly correlate with the values of American normative data. In Studies 2a and 2b we analysed forced-recognition data for pragmatic sentences, one with American participants and English sentences (Study 2a) and the other with Portuguese participants and Portuguese sentences (Study 2b). Moreover, two conditions of sentences presentations were applied to eventually detect an influence of the sentences’ format, which was not find in both studies. The levels of recognition for correct and inferences were very similar between those two studies but the correlation, sentence by sentence, was low. Together, these results suggest an important recommendation for further studies - normed material for a specific language/culture is a crucial factor to be considered when conducting research on pragmatic inferences.

Imagination Reduces False Memories for Everyday Action Sentences: Evidence From Pragmatic Inferences

“…A total of 120 participants (87 females; M age =25.63±7.76) voluntarily agreed to participate in a laboratory experiment and were rewarded with 10€ gift vouchers for their time. For both experiments, the sample size was determined based on the number of participants used in previous studies with similar designs ( Carneiro et al, 2017 , 2020 ; Soro et al, 2017 ) and depending on the availability of resources. Participants were randomly assigned to one out of three conditions based on the encoding instructions: imagine, memorize, or pay attention.…”

“…Sixty pragmatic implication sentences in Portuguese adapted by Carneiro et al (2020) were used in the current experiment. Participants performed their task individually in a laboratory computer and the experiment was programmed and ran in the online platform Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT).…”

“…Due to COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent national lockdown, data collection moved to online for the remaining 150 participants. For online data collection and following previous work ( Carneiro et al, 2020 ), several attention checks were introduced across the experiment (see procedure below) to guarantee that participants completed the task successfully and attentively. Sixteen participants failed one or more attention checks during cued recall, and their responses were excluded from further analysis.…”

“…A strategy to test if a sentence implies a pragmatic inference is whether it can be joined by a “but not” conjunction and result in a consistent sentence. That is, “ the karate champion hit the cinder block, but did not break it .” The effectiveness of pragmatic inferences in eliciting false memories is well documented, since it has been repeatedly demonstrated that participants tend to falsely recall pragmatic implications of sentences ( Brewer, 1977 ; Chan and McDermott, 2006 ; Carneiro et al, 2020 ). Moreover, they represent a sensitive and robust measure for the study of false memories since they allow for the dissociation between the semantic and episodic memory levels.…”

“…For that purpose, sixty pragmatic inference sentences were used. These sentences were presented in Portuguese since pragmatic inferences have been shown to be culture and language specific ( Carneiro et al, 2020 ). Responses were coded following the standard criteria proposed by Brewer (1977) , as detailed in the methods’ section.…”