Introducing objects in spoken dialogue: the influence of conversational setting and cognitive load on the articulation and use of referring expressions

Barbara Howarth, Anne Anderson

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    In this paper we report the results of a study to investigate the influence of conversational setting and cognitive load (as implemented by time pressure) on the introduction of new information in two-party spontaneous dialogues. We show that for a collaborative problem-solving task, The Map Task, cognitive load and conversational setting influenced the way interlocutors collaborated with one another when introducing objects into a discourse. Interlocutors used fewer question-form introductions followed by an informative response in a video-mediated conversational setting (compared with a face-to-face setting), and under time pressure (compared with no pressure of time). In contrast, speakers tended to articulate words referring to the same object more quickly on repetition irrespective of the conversational setting or the cognitive load associated with the task. The findings of this study are interpreted in terms of a dual-process account of speech production (Bard et al., 2000).
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)272-296
    Number of pages25
    JournalLanguage and Cognitive Processes
    Volume22
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2007

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