Reaction Time in Rationally Redundant Referring Expressions

Response to Engelhardt (2011)

Engelhardt 2011

• Experimental setup
  • visual displays with two stimuli
  • referential expressions as auditory cue
  • time starts with modifier onset
  • stimuli were not color-diagnostic
  • reaction time was counted, when button was pressed, indicating which of the two objects was the target
• Result
  • reaction time higher when modifier is used overinformatively than informatively
• Potential problems
  • didn't use color-diagnostic stimuli (the more atypical an object, the more people use a modifier overinformatively -- maybe to correct the listener's visual search; a listener doesn't have a high expectation on what color a circle might have which could cause looking for a contrast set)
  • very low scene variation

Our experiment

• have pilots for 3 and 6 stimuli
• utterance choice probabilistically, inspired by typicality study
• only visually presented utterances so far

To Do

• Improve stimuli (e.g., improve orange pear, get rid of avocado)
• Have written and auditory cues (in separate experiments)
• Open questions
  • how to encode selection of an item (which keys to press)
  • when to identify time onset?
  • idea: take utterances from bda to get "human-like" refExp distribution (maybe also say that the refExps come from a previous experiment to ensure they expect human-like rational utterances)