Selection of reference objects for locative expressions: the importance of knowledge and perception
Michael Barclay, Antony Galton · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2013
This chapter is concerned with the process of reference object selection in locative expressions. A reference object is, for instance, the ‘table’ in the phrase ‘The flowers are on the table’. In particular the focus is on the use of machine models to attempt to mimic human behaviour. Several statistically significant results concerning the necessary complexity of the models and the nature of the variables within them are established. A near real-world environment for the machine models to operate on has been developed. It consists of a series of three-dimensional scenes containing multiple objects that are recognizable to humans and ‘readable’ by the machine models. The rationale for this approach is discussed. The performance of human subjects in describing this environment is evaluated, and measures by which the human performance can be compared to the performance of the machine models are discussed. The models used to combine the influences of up to four variables, related to reference object size and geometry as well as the distance between the target and reference objects, on the reference choice task. The best model found matches the choice of reference of the group of humans some 73\% of the time, compared with 90\% for the median individual human subject. Problems that remain with the representation of the near real-world environment, and with the Bayesian models and variables used within them, are discussed.