Processing Conversational Utterances

对话是语言使用的最基本场所；它是语言习得的主要场所，最有可能是语言产生的环境。尽管会话话语理解的认知过程具有重要的基础意义，但对其的研究仍然相对较少。相反，过去的实证研究主要集中在读者如何理解和记忆叙事或说明性文本。然而，对话与文本在基本方面是不同的，理解人们如何处理对话贡献需要注意这些差异。本研究项目旨在帮助我们理解与会话理解相关的社会认知过程。这将通过关注会话话语作为基于意图的、人际的、协作的行为，并研究这些行为是如何产生和理解的来实现。将进行一系列实验，采用各种测量方法（阅读时间、解释速度、记忆力）来检验人们如何以及以何种方式理解和记住说话者在谈话中所做的动作。这项研究的一个重要方面将是开发一种方法来检查参与者（而不是观察者）对他们的对话的在线处理。这将通过开发一种可以模拟人类语言使用的人工对话代理来实现。

Conversation is the most basic site for language use; it is the primary site for language acquisition and most likely the context within which language emerged. Despite its fundamental importance, research on the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of conversational utterances has remained relatively rare. Instead, past empirical research has focused primarily on how readers comprehend and remember narrative or expository text. However, conversations differ from texts in fundamental ways, and understanding how people process conversational contributions will require attention to these differences. This research program is an attempt to contribute to our understanding of the social-cognitive processes involved in conversation comprehension. This will be accomplished by focusing on conversational utterances as intention-based, interpersonal, collaborative acts and examining how these acts are produced and understood. A series of experiments employing a variety of measures (reading times, interpretation speed, memory) will be conducted to examine how, and in what way, people comprehend and remember the actions that speakers perform with their conversation turns. An important aspect of this research will be the development of a method for examining participants' (rather than observers') on-line processing of their conversations. This will be accomplished with the development of an artificial conversation agent that can simulate human language use.