Interactive contexts increase informativeness in children’s referential communication.

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 951-966 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myrto Grigoroglou ◽  
Anna Papafragou
Keyword(s):  
Referential Communication

Hearing Aid Amplification Reduces Communication Effort of People With Hearing Impairment and Their Conversation Partners

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1299-1311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Beechey ◽  
Jörg M. Buchholz ◽  
Gitte Keidser
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Impairment ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Directional Hearing ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Acoustic Environments ◽  
The Impact

Objectives This study investigates the hypothesis that hearing aid amplification reduces effort within conversation for both hearing aid wearers and their communication partners. Levels of effort, in the form of speech production modifications, required to maintain successful spoken communication in a range of acoustic environments are compared to earlier reported results measured in unaided conversation conditions. Design Fifteen young adult normal-hearing participants and 15 older adult hearing-impaired participants were tested in pairs. Each pair consisted of one young normal-hearing participant and one older hearing-impaired participant. Hearing-impaired participants received directional hearing aid amplification, according to their audiogram, via a master hearing aid with gain provided according to the NAL-NL2 fitting formula. Pairs of participants were required to take part in naturalistic conversations through the use of a referential communication task. Each pair took part in five conversations, each of 5-min duration. During each conversation, participants were exposed to one of five different realistic acoustic environments presented through highly open headphones. The ordering of acoustic environments across experimental blocks was pseudorandomized. Resulting recordings of conversational speech were analyzed to determine the magnitude of speech modifications, in terms of vocal level and spectrum, produced by normal-hearing talkers as a function of both acoustic environment and the degree of high-frequency average hearing impairment of their conversation partner. Results The magnitude of spectral modifications of speech produced by normal-hearing talkers during conversations with aided hearing-impaired interlocutors was smaller than the speech modifications observed during conversations between the same pairs of participants in the absence of hearing aid amplification. Conclusions The provision of hearing aid amplification reduces the effort required to maintain communication in adverse conditions. This reduction in effort provides benefit to hearing-impaired individuals and also to the conversation partners of hearing-impaired individuals. By considering the impact of amplification on both sides of dyadic conversations, this approach contributes to an increased understanding of the likely impact of hearing impairment on everyday communication.

Partner-Specific Communication Deficits in Individuals With Alzheimer's Disease

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Eun Jin Paek ◽  
Si On Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Sorting Task ◽  
Audience Design ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Communication Task ◽  
Design Skills ◽  
Referential Expressions

Purpose Speakers adjust referential expressions to the listeners' knowledge while communicating, a phenomenon called “audience design.” While individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show difficulties in discourse production, it is unclear whether they exhibit preserved partner-specific audience design. The current study examined if individuals with AD demonstrate partner-specific audience design skills. Method Ten adults with mild-to-moderate AD and 12 healthy older adults performed a referential communication task with two experimenters (E1 and E2). At first, E1 and participants completed an image-sorting task, allowing them to establish shared labels. Then, during testing, both experimenters were present in the room, and participants described images to either E1 or E2 (randomly alternating). Analyses focused on the number of words participants used to describe each image and whether they reused shared labels. Results During testing, participants in both groups produced shorter descriptions when describing familiar images versus new images, demonstrating their ability to learn novel knowledge. When they described familiar images, healthy older adults modified their expressions depending on the current partner's knowledge, producing shorter expressions and more established labels for the knowledgeable partner (E1) versus the naïve partner (E2), but individuals with AD were less likely to do so. Conclusions The current study revealed that both individuals with AD and the control participants were able to acquire novel knowledge, but individuals with AD tended not to flexibly adjust expressions depending on the partner's knowledge state. Conversational inefficiency and difficulties observed in AD may, in part, stem from disrupted audience design skills.

Speakers construct reference based on listeners’ expected visual search

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Jara-Ettinger ◽  
Paula Rubio-Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Computational Model ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Quantitative Accuracy ◽  
Utterance Length ◽  
Acceptability Judgments

A foundational assumption of human communication is that speakers ought to say as much as necessary, but no more. How speakers determine what is necessary in a given context, however, is unclear. In studies of referential communication, this expectation is often formalized as the idea that speakers should construct reference by selecting the shortest, sufficiently informative, description. Here we propose that reference production is, instead, a process whereby speakers adopt listeners’ perspectives to facilitate their visual search, without concern for utterance length. We show that a computational model of our proposal predicts graded acceptability judgments with quantitative accuracy, systematically outperforming brevity models. Our model also explains crosslinguistic differences in speakers’ propensity to over-specify in different visual contexts. Our findings suggest that reference production is best understood as driven by a cooperative goal to help the listener understand the intended message, rather than by an egocentric effort to minimize utterance length.

A Manual of Referential Communication Games

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Greenspan ◽  
Aden Burka ◽  
Susan Zlotlow ◽  
Carl Barenboim
Keyword(s):  
Referential Communication ◽  
Communication Games

scholarly journals Referential alarm calling behaviour in New World primates

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 680-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiane Cäsar ◽  
Klaus Zuberbühler
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
New World Monkeys ◽  
Human Language ◽  
New World Primates ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Old World ◽  
Call Type ◽  
Wide Range

Abstract There is relatively good evidence that non-human primates can communicate about objects and events in their environment in ways that allow recipients to draw inferences about the nature of the event experienced by the signaller. In some species, there is also evidence that the basic semantic units are not individual calls, but call sequences and the combinations generated by them. These two findings are relevant to theories pertaining to the origins of human language because of the resemblances of these phenomena with linguistic reference and syntactic organisation. Until recently, however, most research efforts on the primate origins of human language have involved Old World species with comparatively few systematic studies on New World monkeys, which has prevented insights into the deeper phylogenetic roots and evolutionary origins of language-relevant capacities. To address this, we review the older primate literature and very recent evidence for functionally referential communication and call combinations in New World primates. Within the existing literature there is ample evidence in both Callitrichids and Ce-bids for acoustically distinct call variants given to external disturbances that are accompanied by distinct behavioural responses. A general pattern is that one call type is typically produced in response to a wide range of general disturbances, often on the ground but also including inter-group encounters, while another call type is produced in response to a much narrower range of aerial threats. This pattern is already described for Old World monkeys and Prosimians, suggesting an early evolutionary origin. Second, recent work with black-fronted titi monkeys has produced evidence for different alarm call sequences consisting of acoustically distinct call types. These sequences appear to encode several aspects of the predation event simultaneously, notably predator type and location. Since meaningful call sequences have already been described in Old World primates, we suggest that basic combinatorial vocal communication has evolved in the primate lineage long before the advent of language. Moreover, it is possible that some of these communicative abilities have evolved even earlier, or independently, as there is comparable evidence in other taxonomic groups. We discuss these findings in an attempt to shed further light on the primate stock from which human language has arisen.

Referential Communication Abilities of Learning Disabled Children

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret M. Noel
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Communication Competence ◽  
Learning Disabled ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Referential Communication ◽  
Communication Effectiveness ◽  
Language Function ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Communication Ability ◽  
General Communication

Disorders of spoken language have long been associated with learning disabilities. Recent research has focused less on linguistic characteristics and more on general communication effectiveness. This study investigated the referential communication ability of LD and non-LD elementary students. Developmental research has indicated that this language function tends to be well developed by early childhood and is a major precursor of later communication competence. Results of the present study indicated that LD students were less effective in providing descriptive information about objects than non-LD peers. Further analysis of LD communication revealed that such a lack of effectiveness was due to the LD students' limited use of labeling in their verbal descriptions.

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