Speech act recognition in Spanish speakers

Abstract

Language comprehension involves the recognition of speech acts. The term speech act refers to what a speaker intends to accomplish when saying something. Holtgraves (2008) demonstrated that English speakers can automatically recognize speech acts, and proposes that this allows an efficient (good-enough) processing of conversation turns. Other studies have found that speech act recognition requires cognitive process like executive functions, theory of mind, and empathy. However, there are few studies that have empirically investigated which are the cognitive functions needed for speech act recognition in healthy adults. The aim of this work was to study if Spanish speakers automatically recognize speech acts, and if this recognition is related to intellectual ability and other cognitive functions. We examined this question using the methods described by Holtgraves (2005, 2008). First, we translated and adapted the scenarios, and selected those that were better understood. Then, we designed two experiments to test the automatic recognition of speech acts. Participants underwent a battery of psychometric and cognitive tests. We found significant differences in reaction times between control and experimental scenarios, which indicates that Spanish speakers automatically recognize speech acts. A measure of intellectual ability, as well as the ability to reason about mental states of others, predicted in part the ability to recognize speech acts.