Contrast perception as a visual heuristic in the formulation of referential expressions

Madeleine Long,Isabelle Moore,Francis Mollica,Paula Rubio-Fernandez

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104879

Madeleine Long, Isabelle Moore + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104879

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Abstract

We hypothesize that contrast perception works as a visual heuristic, such that when speakers perceive a significant degree of contrast in a visual context, they tend to produce the corresponding adjective to describe a referent. The contrast perception heuristic supports efficient audience design, allowing speakers to produce referential expressions with minimum expenditure of cognitive resources, while facilitating the listener's visual search for the referent. We tested the perceptual contrast hypothesis in three language-production experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that speakers overspecify color adjectives in polychrome displays, whereas in monochrome displays they overspecified other properties that were contrastive. Further support for the contrast perception hypothesis comes from a re-analysis of previous work, which confirmed that color contrast elicits color overspecification when detected in a given display, but not when detected across monochrome trials. Experiment 2 revealed that even atypical colors (which are often overspecified) are only mentioned if there is color contrast. In Experiment 3, participants named a target color faster in monochrome than in polychrome displays, suggesting that the effect of color contrast is not analogous to ease of production. We conclude that the tendency to overspecify color in polychrome displays is not a bottom-up effect driven by the visual salience of color as a property, but possibly a learned communicative strategy. We discuss the implications of our account for pragmatic theories of referential communication and models of audience design, challenging the view that overspecification is a form of egocentric behavior.

Highlights

When we refer to the world around us, perception guides the formulation of our message
We argue that contrast perception is an efficient visual heuristic because identifying distinctive properties of a referent requires con trasting it with its competitors in the visual context
The main pragmatics debate in reference production has revolved around two theoretical positions (Arnold, 2008; Davies & Arnold, 2019): some researchers see reference production as determined by speakerinternal processes (e.g., Pechmann, 1989), while others construe it as a collaborative process that involves audience design (e.g., Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986)

Summary

Introduction

When we refer to the world around us, perception guides the formulation of our message. When there are no competitors in the visual context, no extra information is needed to pre-empt an ambiguity (e.g., ‘The sugar is on the counter’) This way of tailoring our referential expressions for our listeners is known as audience design. The aim of this study is to investigate the hypothesis that audience design can rely on perceptual heuristics, such as the detection of color contrast In this view, perceptual heuristics would favor referential expressions that are efficient for both speakers and listeners; that is, descriptions that are easy to produce, and facilitate the visual search for a referent

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