Two steps forward, one step back: Partner-specific effects in a psychology of dialogue

Abstract

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) call to study language processing in dialogue context is an appealing one. Their interactive alignment model is ambitious, aiming to explain the converging behavior of dialogue partners via both intra- and interpersonal priming. However, they ignore the flexible, partner-specific processing demonstrated by some recent dialogue studies. We discuss implications of these data.

You said it before and you'll say it again: Expectations of consistency in communication.

“…Critically, the cooperativeness account suggests that interlocutors’ beliefs about the mutuality of a precedent underlie the speaker-specific effects of the violation of linguistic precedents. A change in expression implicates a change in referent only if the addressee believes that in choosing a different expression the speaker has broken an established mutually known conceptual pact and indeed intends to signal such a change (see Brennan & Metzing, 2004; Grice, 1989). The addressee therefore needs to consider the common ground, specifically the conceptual pacts previously established with the specific speaker.…”

Audience Design and Egocentrism in Reference Production During Human-Computer Dialogue

“…The audience design approach to HHD (Bell, 1984;Clark & Schaefer, 1987) supposes that communication is a joint activity (Clark, 1992;Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986), whereby interlocutors are willing to expend effort in the conversation in order for their addressee to understand the intended message and co-ordinate meaning. This coordination relies on a "model of the other person!s mind" (Keysar et al, 1998 p. 46), taking into account common ground between the interlocutors (Brennan, 1990;Brennan & Metzing, 2004). Common ground is conceptualised as information that is believed to be shared by, and available to, each interlocutor during dialogue (Clark, 1996;Horton & Keysar, 1996;Shintel & Keysar, 2009).…”

“…when interpretation leads to errors) or when cognitive resources allow (known as the monitor and adjust account of perspective taking (Dell & Brown, 1991;Keysar et al, 2008). This is thought to be because incorporating common ground during dialogue can be cognitively demanding (Keysar et al, 2003), although this claim is debated (see Brennan & Metzing, 2004;Rubio-Fernández & Jara-Ettinger, 2018). Accordingly, egocentricity in language production is thought to be driven by the speaker wishing to reduce their own effort and to minimise processing demands (Knutsen & Le Bigot, 2014).…”