Simon Garrod

Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue

Traditional mechanistic accounts of language processing derive almost entirely from the study of monologue. Yet, the most natural and basic form of language use is dialogue. As a result, these accounts may only offer limited theories of the mechanisms that underlie language processing in general. We propose a mechanistic account of dialogue, the interactive alignment account, and use it to derive a number of predictions about basic language processes. The account assumes that, in dialogue, the linguistic representations employed by the interlocutors become aligned at many levels, as a result of a largely automatic process. This process greatly simplifies production and comprehension in dialogue. After considering the evidence for the interactive alignment model, we concentrate on three aspects of processing that follow from it. It makes use of a simple interactive inference mechanism, enables the development of local dialogue routines that greatly simplify language processing, and explains the origins of self-monitoring in production. We consider the need for a grammatical framework that is designed to deal with language in dialogue rather than monologue, and discuss a range of implications of the account.

Saying What You Mean in Dialogue : A Study in Conceptual and Semantic Co-Ordination

Abstract This paper explores how conversants co-ordinate their use and interpretation of language in a restricted context. It revolves around the analysis of the spatial descriptions which emerge during the course of 56 dialogues, elicited in the laboratory using a specially designed computer maze game. Two types of analysis are reported. The first is a semantic analysis of the various types of description, which indicates how pairs of speakers develop different language schemes associated with different mental models of the maze configuration. The second analysis concerns how the communicants co-ordinate in developing their description schemes. The results from this study would suggest that language processing in dialogue may be governed by local principles of interaction which have received little attention in the psychological and linguistic literature to date.

Brain-to-brain coupling: a mechanism for creating and sharing a social world.

Cognition materializes in an interpersonal space. The emergence of complex behaviors requires the coordination of actions among individuals according to a shared set of rules. Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping ones mind, most cognitive studies focus on processes that occur within a single individual. We call for a shift from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of reference. We argue that in many cases the neural processes in one brain are coupled to the neural processes in another brain via the transmission of a signal through the environment. Brain-to-brain coupling constrains and shapes the actions of each individual in a social network, leading to complex joint behaviors that could not have emerged in isolation.

The accessibility of pronominal antecedents as a function of episode shifts in narrative text

One of the characteristics of connected discourse is that entities introduced are often referred to again at a later point. Such anaphoric reference clearly necessitates a memory representation of the prior text, so that the new reference can be established as coreferential with the old. In this paper, a distinction is made between people introduced in a narrative who depend upon a particular setting in order to be interpreted (scenario-dependent entities), and those who do not (main characters). It is argued that the availability of representations of these two types of character in working memory will depend upon whether the text indicates a change in setting to have occurred. Two experiments are described which show that dependent entities become less available if a change has occurred, while main characters are not so affected. The first study uses incidence of mention in a passage continuation procedure as an index of availability, while the second uses reading time and question-answering latencies. The experiments rule out any simple view that availability depends only upon how far back in the text a character was mentioned, and illustrate how passage of time in a narrative serves as a cue for recognizing the end of an episode.

Face-to-face and video-mediated communication: A comparison of dialogue structure and task performance

This article examined communication and task performance in face-to-face, copresent, and video-mediated communication (VMC). Study 1 showed that when participants in a collaborative problem-solving task could both see and hear each other, the structure of their dialogues differed compared with dialogues obtained when they only heard each other. The audio-only conversations had more words, and these extra utterances often provided and elicited verbal feedback functions, which visual signals can deliver when available. Study 2, however, showed that high-quality VMC did not appear to deliver the same benefits as face-to-face, copresent interaction. It appears that novelty, attenuation, and remoteness all may have contributed to the effects found factors that should be considered by designers of remote video-conferencing systems.

Interpreting Anaphoric Relations: The Integration of Semantic Information while Reading.

To understand fully the pair of sentences “A bus came roaring round the corner; The vehicle narrowly missed a pedestrian,” the reader has to deduce that the vehicle in question is a bus which came roaring round the corner. In Experiment 1 we show that the reading time for the second sentence in such a pair is in part determined by the semantic distance between the two items to be integrated (vehicle and bus in this case). This result suggests that the information from the two sentences is integrated at the time of reading. Experiment 2 replicates the semantic distance effect in a situation where the two sentences are separated in the text. In Experiment-3 and 4 it is shown that the effect can be abolished under conditions where the two items appear in unrelated phrases. On the basis of these results a model of textual comprehension is proposed.

Speech rhythms and multiplexed oscillatory sensory coding in the human brain.

A neuroimaging study reveals how coupled brain oscillations at different frequencies align with quasi-rhythmic features of continuous speech such as prosody, syllables, and phonemes.

The role of scenario mapping in text comprehension

We argue that different theories of text comprehension give the use of world knowledge different degrees of importance. Although all acknowledge it as a major feature of comprehension, just when and how it is utilized appears to split theories into those that are based on propositions as building blocks and those that are not. We argue for an account that does not rely on the proposition as an early building block, the scenario‐mapping and focus account, based on Sanford and Garrods (1981) earlier work. We argue that interpretation at a pre‐ and subpropositional level is both an empirical fact and a theoretical necessity and that the primary task of the language processor is to map language input at a (largely) subpropositional level onto background knowledge. We illustrate the utility of the approach with a discussion of the representation of plurals and quantified statements. Although some of our claims are consistent with both the construction‐integration account and minimalism, we argue that the core...

Group Discussion as Interactive Dialogue or as Serial Monologue: The Influence of Group Size

Current models draw a broad distinction between communication as dialogue and communication as monologue. The two kinds of models have different implications for who influences whom in a group discussion. If the discussion is like interactive dialogue, group members should be influenced most by those with whom they interact in the discussion; if it is like serial monologue, they should be influenced most by the dominant speaker. The experiments reported here show that in small, 5-person groups, the communication is like dialogue and members are influenced most by those with whom they interact in the discussion. However, in large, 10-person groups, the communication is like monologue and members are influenced most by the dominant speaker. The difference in mode of communication is explained in terms of how speakers in the two sizes of groups design their utterances for different audiences.

What, when, and how?: Questions of immediacy in anaphoric reference resolution

Abstract This paper considers the question of the immediacy of interpretation of anaphors. Two aspects of immediacy are considered: (1) immediacy in terms of the initiation of processes that might be considered as supporting resolution, and (2) immediacy in terms of achieving resolution as an outcome. The functional justification, and the logic of these aspects are considered. The bulk of the paper is a review of pertinent experimental evidence. On the basis of studies both on speech and reading comprehension, we argue that the evidence favours immediate initiation. However, it is argued that immediacy of outcome must take into account the variety of different forms of definite anaphora: proper names, full definite descriptions, and pronouns. Whereas there is good evidence for early resolution in the case of the first two, it does not hold for all cases of pronominal anaphora. Furthermore, evidence from a variety of stylistic phenomena indicate the need to disentangle carefully the semantic constraints in...