The historical context in conversation: Lexical differentiation and memory for the discourse history

Abstract

When designing a definite referring expression, speakers take into account both the local context and certain aspects of the historical context, including whether similar referents have been mentioned in the past. When a similar item has been mentioned previously, speakers tend to elaborate their referring expression in order to differentiate the two items, a phenomenon called lexical differentiation. The present research examines the locus of the lexical differentiation effect and its relationship with memory for the discourse. In three experiments, we demonstrate that speakers differentiate to distinguish current from past referents; there was no evidence that speakers differentiate in order to avoid giving two items the same label. Post-task memory tests also revealed a high level of memory for the discourse history, a finding that is inconsistent with the view that failures of memory underlie low differentiation rates. Instead, memory for the discourse history, while necessary, is not sufficient for speakers to design language with respect to the historical context. Speakers must additionally view the discourse history as relevant to design language with respect to this broader context. Finally, measures of memory for past referents point to asymmetries between speakers and listeners in their memory for the discourse, with speakers typically remembering the discourse history better.

#foodie: Implications of interacting with social media for memory

“…The aims of Experiment 1 were twofold. First, we tested whether previously observed benefits of generating picture descriptions (McKinley et al, 2017;Yoon et al, 2016;Zormpa et al, 2019) would generalize to the ubiquitous practice of commenting on social media images. Second, we evaluated whether there were stable individual differences in memory for these images, particularly those related to food.…”

“…Our research question was inspired by recent findings from the study of conversation that the act of describing an image for another person boosts memory for that image (McKinley, Brown-Schmidt, & Benjamin, 2017;Yoon, Benjamin, & Brown-Schmidt, 2016;). For example, Yoon et al (2016) examined situations in which pairs of participants viewed four images at a time (on separate computer screens) and took turns describing the images to each other in a task in which the listener had to locate that image and click on it. Despite the fact that the image descriptions were fairly simple (e.g., "the argyle sock," "the bunny,") over a series of experiments, speakers consistently exhibited better recognition memory than listeners for these referenced images.…”

Contextual predictability shapes signal autonomy

“…What enters into a context is also contingent on information extracted from prior events, i.e., the historical discourse context (Brennan & Clark, 1996;Van Der Wege, 2009;Yoon et al, 2016). A key insight is that speakers continue to 9 use pre-established, conventional referring expressions even when there is the option to use a more or less autonomous form (Brennan & Clark, 1996).…”

“…As such, historical precedent can override novelty when these conventions are generalisable (to new contexts) and functional (in that an expression is capable of identifying the intended meaning). Figure 3 shows how generalisability is to some extent a function of the historical relationship between contexts (Van Der Wege, 2009;Winters et al, 2015;Yoon et al, 2016). If contexts are predictable, then a solution at an earlier context is generalisable to all subsequent contexts.…”

“…in their semantic category. Speakers will overwhelmingly use t-shirt to convey the target as it is generalisable from t1 to t3 (overspecification in these cases tends to be low; see Yoon et al, 2016). In sequence two (bottom), target-distractor pairings sometimes differ in their semantic category (as in t1) and sometimes they share the same semantic category (as in t2).…”