When People Are More Logical Under Cognitive Load

Abstract

The present study introduces dual task methodology to test opposing psychological processing predictions concerning the nature of implicatures in pragmatic theories. Implicatures routinely arise in human communication when hearers interpret utterances pragmatically and go beyond the logical meaning of the terms. The neo-Gricean view (e.g., Levinson, 2000) assumes that implicatures are generated automatically whereas relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/1995) assumes that implicatures are effortful and not automatic. Participants were presented a sentence verification task with underinformative sentences that have the potential to produce scalar implicatures like Some oaks are trees. Depending on the nature of the interpretation of Some (logical or pragmatic) the sentence is judged true or false. Executive cognitive resources were experimentally burdened by the concurrent memorization of complex dot patterns during the interpretation process. Results showed that participants made more logical and fewer pragmatic interpretations under load. Findings provide direct support for the relevance theory view.

Some effort for some: Further evidence that scalar implicatures are effortful

“…Pouscoulous et al (2007) argue that a higher number of controls, which typically avoid highlighting the (weak-strong) contrasts that are so critical for scalar inferences, leaves children unprepared to detect such contrasts when implicatures are potentially called for. De Neys and Schaeken (2007) argue that the relatively low number of filler statements in their experiment offered participants more opportunities to come to a pragmatic interpretation, as repetition helps to make a process more intuitive and cognitively less demanding. Vice versa, a larger proportion of filler THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2011, 64 (12) 2361 SOME EFFORT FOR SOME statements interrupts repetition, making it more difficult to develop a response strategy (and thus to generate a consistent answer pattern) for the underinformative statements.…”

“…(For more on the relation between working memory capacity and higher cognitive processes, see Baddeley, 1996;Daneman & Carpenter, 1980;Engle 2002. ) De Neys and Schaeken (2007) show that experimentally limiting the working memory space available results in fewer pragmatic responses, as predicted by contextualism. However, as Feeney et al (2004) have pointed out, these results may be mediated by the interindividual differences in working memory capacity.…”

“…It is possible that only participants with relatively low working memory capacity lack the necessary resources to perform analytic 3 thinking. To gain insight into this matter, a dual-task paradigm (as in De Neys & Schaeken, 2007) combined with an assessment of working memory capacity (as in Feeney et al, 2004) seems promising. Therefore, we have performed an experiment (Experiment 1) to test the combined effects of working memory capacity and cognitive load on the type of underinformative statements given.…”

Moving stimuli guide retrieval and (in)validation of coordination simulations

“…However, if given the time or opportunity to compare disjunction meanings, comprehenders might choose the exclusive meaning instead and construct a situation in which there is a blue circle or a red circle, but not both (i.e., two possibilities, hence lower ambiguity). Indeed, as shown in De Neys and Schaeken (2007), individuals tend to assign less informative meanings to logical expressions when visual stimuli burden their executive cognitive resources needed for understanding logical words. Specifically, their understanding of the quantifier word some in the most unambiguous way as some but not all was prevented when they attempted to concurrently perform an unrelated task (i.e., memorize complex dot patterns).…”

Logical and Pragmatic Meaning in the Interpretation of Connectives: Scalar Implicatures and “Shallow” Processing

“…On (both strong and weak) defaultist approaches, the implicature is expected to be generated even in such cases. Then either the mismatch with the picture, or both that and the generation of the implicature itself (see, e.g., Noveck and Posada 2003;Bott and Noveck 2004;Breheny, Katsos, and Williams 2006;De Neys and Schaeken 2007;Huang and Snedeker 2009) would be predicted to cause a slow-down in the or-mismatch condition (cf. Shetreet et al's forthcoming fMRI study), contrary to fact.…”