Testing probability-based theories of pronoun comprehension

为了有效地使用语言，人们需要在上下文中做出正确的推断，因为语言本身总是留下一些不明确的东西。 这方面的一个常见例子来自代词。如果你听到“她走了”，你怎么知道“她”是谁？这个研究小组和其他人以前的工作表明，人们利用上下文来推断说话者的意思。例如，语言语境很重要：人们倾向于认为“她”指的是最近提到的人，或者对话语很重要的人。此外，人们遵循社会线索，如指向和凝视，并倾向于认为代词指的是被指向或凝视的人。这就提出了一个问题，即当语境复杂时，人们如何理解语言，语言和社会线索可能会冲突。该研究小组最近的研究表明，人们在是否更关注语言背景或社会线索方面存在差异，阅读更多的人也倾向于更关注语言背景。目前的项目测试了一个想法，该想法出现在许多当前的语言理论中，即人们理解指称词，如代词，根据他们对说话者最有可能指的是谁的判断。 也就是说，人们可能会对说话者的意思做出快速的、潜意识的预测。这个项目的目标是测试这个想法在多大程度上解释了语境对代词解释的不同约束。在一系列实验中，我们使用卡通视频任务来测试人们如何理解代词，这取决于四种不同类型的语言背景和两种类型的社交线索（凝视和指向）。我们还测试了人们阅读的数量（称为“印刷品”）是否能预测他们如何理解代词。另一系列的实验使用猜测游戏来测试这些相同的条件是否会影响人们对说话者可能指的是谁的判断。这项研究提供了一个强有力的测试的想法，上下文的多个方面帮助人们预测谁（或什么）的发言者将参考，这是什么让我们理解参考。它还测试了为什么人们对代词的理解不同的问题。这个项目的发现可以帮助我们了解如何更好地与来自不同背景的人交流，以及阅读经验和教育如何影响口语理解。该项目将为众多研究生和本科生提供STEM培训。

To use language effectively, people need to make the right inferences in context, because language itself always leaves something underspecified. A common example of this comes from pronouns. If you hear "she left", how do you know who "she" is? Previous work by this research group and others has shown that people use the context to infer the speaker's meaning. For example, linguistic context matters: people tend to assume that "she" refers to someone recently mentioned, or someone important to the discourse. In addition, people follow social cues like pointing and gazing, and tend to think the pronoun refers to someone who is being pointed at or gazed at. This raises questions about how people understand language when the context is complex, and linguistic and social cues might conflict. Recent research by this research team suggests that people differ in terms of whether they pay more attention ot the linguistic context or social cues, where people who read more also tend to pay more attention to the linguistic context.The current project tests an idea that surfaces in many current theories about language, which is that people understand referential words, like pronouns, based on their judgements about who the speaker is most likely to refer to. That is, people might make fast, subconscious predictions about what the speaker's meaning will be. The goal of this project is to test how broadly this idea accounts for different ways in which the context constrains pronoun interpretation. In a series of experiments, we use a cartoon video task to test how people understand pronouns, depending on four different types of linguistic context, and two types of social cues (gaze and pointing). We also test whether the amount people read (termed 'print exposure') predicts how they understand pronouns. Another series of experiments uses a guessing game to test whether these same conditions affect people's judgments about who the speaker is likely to refer to. This study provides a strong test of the idea that multiple aspects of the context help people make predictions about who (or what) the speaker will refer to, and that this is what allows us to understand reference. It also tests questions about why people are different in how they understand pronouns. Findings from this project may help us understand how to communicate better with people from different backgrounds, and how reading experience and education affects spoken language comprehension. This project will provide STEM training to numerous graduate and undergraduate students.