Stored object knowledge and the production of referring expressions: the case of color typicality.

Hans Westerbeek,Alfons Maes,Ruud Koolen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00935

Abstract

When speakers describe objects with atypical properties, do they include these properties in their referring expressions, even when that is not strictly required for unique referent identification? Based on previous work, we predict that speakers mention the color of a target object more often when the object is atypically colored, compared to when it is typical. Taking literature from object recognition and visual attention into account, we further hypothesize that this behavior is proportional to the degree to which a color is atypical, and whether color is a highly diagnostic feature in the referred-to object’s identity. We investigate these expectations in two language production experiments, in which participants referred to target objects in visual contexts. In Experiment 1, we find a strong effect of color typicality: less typical colors for target objects predict higher proportions of referring expressions that include color. In Experiment 2 we manipulated objects with more complex shapes, for which color is less diagnostic, and we find that the color typicality effect is moderated by color diagnosticity: it is strongest for high-color-diagnostic objects (i.e., objects with a simple shape). These results suggest that the production of atypical color attributes results from a contrast with stored knowledge, an effect which is stronger when color is more central to object identification. Our findings offer evidence for models of reference production that incorporate general object knowledge, in order to be able to capture these effects of typicality on determining the content of referring expressions.

Highlights

In everyday language use, speakers often refer to objects by describing what they see, in such a way that an addressee can uniquely identify the intended object (e.g., Pechmann, 1989; Brennan and Clark, 1996; Horton and Gerrig, 2005; Arnold, 2008; Van Deemter et al, 2012a)
In Experiment 2 we manipulated objects with more complex shapes, for which color is less diagnostic, and we find that the color typicality effect is moderated by color diagnosticity: it is strongest for high-color-diagnostic objects
To test how atypicality may affect content determination, we focus on atypical colors, and study definite descriptions produced by speakers referring to typically and atypically colored objects

Summary

Introduction

Speakers often refer to objects by describing what they see, in such a way that an addressee can uniquely identify the intended object (e.g., Pechmann, 1989; Brennan and Clark, 1996; Horton and Gerrig, 2005; Arnold, 2008; Van Deemter et al, 2012a). In this visual context this referring expression accommodates unambiguous identification by the addressee, as it describes the target object and rules out the other (distractor) objects. A reason could be that the color of the yellow tomato in Figure 1 draws attention, because it contrasts with one of the features in a stored representation of tomatoes in the speaker’s long-term memory, namely the feature that tomatoes are typically red. This makes the color of the tomato

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