Effect of cognitive load on the choice of referential form
Jorrig Vogels, Emiel Krahmer, Alfons Maes · Research portal (Tilburg University) · 2013
We report on two experiments investigating the effect of an increased cognitive load for speakers on the choice of referring expressions. Speakers produced story continuations to addressees, in which they referred to characters that were either salient or non-salient in the discourse. In Experiment 1, all discourse information was shared. In Experiment 2, referents that were salient for the speaker were non-salient for the addressee, and vice versa. Cognitive load was manipulated by the presence or absence of a secondary task for the speaker. The results show that speakers under load are more likely to produce pronouns, at least when referring to characters that are less salient in their own discourse model. We take this finding as evidence that speakers under load are less able to determine that less salient characters should be referred to with more elaborate expressions, and hence are more likely to use economical expressions.