Testing probability-based theories of pronoun comprehension

为了有效地使用语言，人们需要在语境中做出正确的推断，因为语言本身总是留下一些未明确说明的东西。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之前的研究表明，人们利用语境来推断说话人的意思。例如，语言环境很重要：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，人们会遵循诸如指指和凝视这样的社交线索，并倾向于认为代词指的是被指或被凝视的人。这就提出了一个问题，即当语境复杂，语言和社会线索可能发生冲突时，人们如何理解语言。该研究小组最近的研究表明，人们在更多地关注语言环境还是社会线索方面存在差异，阅读越多的人往往也更关注语言环境。目前的项目测试了许多当前语言理论中出现的一个观点，即人们根据对说话人最可能指的是谁的判断，理解指代词等指代词。也就是说，人们可能会对说话者的意思做出快速、潜意识的预测。这个项目的目标是测试这个概念在多大程度上解释了语境限制代词解释的不同方式。在一系列实验中，我们使用一个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上下文和两种类型的社交线索(凝视和指向)。我们还测试了人们的阅读量(称为印刷品曝光量)是否能预测他们对代词的理解。另一系列实验使用猜谜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。这项研究有力地检验了这样一种观点，即语境的多个方面有助于人们预测说话者将指的是谁(或什么)，这是使我们能够理解指称的原因。它还测试了为什么人们在理解代词方面存在差异的问题。这个项目的发现可能会帮助我们理解如何更好地与不同背景的人交流，以及阅读经验和教育如何影响口语理解。该项目将为众多的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.