The pressure to communicate efficiently continues to shape language use later in life

Abstract

Language use is shaped by a pressure to communicate efficiently, yet the tendency towards redundancy is said to increase in older age. The longstanding assumption is that saying more than is necessary is inefficient and may be driven by age-related decline in inhibition (i.e. the ability to filter out irrelevant information). However, recent work proposes an alternative account of efficiency: In certain contexts, redundancy facilitates communication (e.g., when the colour or size of an object is perceptually salient and its mention aids the listener’s search). A critical question follows: Are older adults indiscriminately redundant, or do they modulate their use of redundant information to facilitate communication? We tested efficiency and cognitive capacities in 200 adults aged 19-82. Irrespective of age, adults with better attention switching skills were redundant in efficient ways, demonstrating that the pressure to communicate efficiently continues to shape language use in later life.

The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct reference based on listeners' expected visual search.

“…b) Proportion of objects of the same color in a scene with nine objects (x axis) against model probability of producing redundant color words (y axis). Consistent with(Long et al, 2020; Rubio-Fernandez, under review), our model decreases its propensity to use color words as a function of monochromaticity. c) Number of objects in a visual scene (x axis) against model probability of producing redundant color words (y axis) based on adjective positioning.…”

“…A growing body of recent empirical work has discovered patterns of linguistic preference that are difficult to explain through a brevity-interpretation of the Gricean Maxim of Quantity (and we review these effects in detail below). These studies support the idea that reference production is shaped by a goal to facilitate processing for the listener, rather than minimize production costs for the speaker (Rubio-Fernandez, 2019;Rubio-Fernández, 2016;Long et al, 2020;Rehrig et al, 2020;Sonnenschein & Whitehurst, 1982;Mangold & Pobel, 1988;Paraboni et al, 2007;Paraboni & Van Deemter, 2014;Arts et al, 2011;Tourtouri et al, 2019). However, no work to date has formalized this idea in precise computational terms.…”

“…To evaluate the Incremental Communicative Efficiency (ICE) model's capacity to explain reference production, we began by testing whether it could reproduce known qualitative phenomena in referential over-specification. Specifically, previous work has found that (i) speakers are more likely to use redundant color words in visual displays with more objects (Rubio-Fernandez, 2019; Koolen et al, 2016;Gatt et al, 2017;Paraboni et al, 2007); (ii) this propensity, however, decreases as a function of the number of objects that share the same color as the target referent (Long et al, 2020;Rubio-Fernández, 2016;Rubio-Fernandez, 2019;Koolen et al, 2013); and (iii) in identical visual displays with the same target, English speakers (who position adjectives before nouns) are more likely to use redundant color words relative to Spanish speakers (who position adjectives after nouns; Rubio-Fernández 2016; Rubio-Fernandez 2019; Rubio-Fernandez et al 2020). These phenomena show that people do not have a simple bias towards producing color words, but that this preference is nuanced, The four objects in the sample display have been enlarged for illustrative purposes.…”

“…The first dataset consists of polychrome displays of increasing density (2, 4, and 8 shapes) from Rubio-Fernandez (2019) showing that speakers increase redundant color use in denser displays. The second dataset consists of two types of 4-shape displays, one monochrome (all objects of the same color) and one polychrome (all objects of different colors), used to show a reduced used of redundant color words in monochrome displays, from Long et al (2020).…”

Color interpretation is guided by informativity expectations, not by world knowledge about colors

“…In that condition, color overspecification had a marginal e ect in favor of the non-prototypically yellow object (Sedivy, 2003, Footnote 5, p.17), suggesting that comprehenders are potentially sensitive to the di erent production likelihoods of prototypical and non-prototypical colors. Fernandez, 2020). However, the tendency to mention the color of clothes seems so strong as to override e ciency considerations: When presented with a monochrome display of clothes, speakers produced expressions like 'the yellow shirt' around 40% of the time (despite color being a useless visual cue; Rubio-Fernandez, 2016), whereas they never produced 'the yellow triangle' in a monochrome display of shapes, and did so 40% of the time in polychrome displays (where color was an e cient visual cue, despite being formally redundant; Rubio-Fernandez, 2019).…”