BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Looking at Language Acquisition XII - Why some (but not all) adult
 s compute scalar implicatures - Kyriakos Antoniou\, RCEAL\, University of 
 Cambridge
DTSTART:20110510T150000Z
DTEND:20110510T154000Z
UID:TALK31261@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:In the experimental pragmatics literature\, it is consistently
  reported that the majority of adult listeners reject under-informative ut
 terances\, for example\, statements like ‘some of the cards have a star
 ’ used as a description of a situation where all of the cards have a sta
 r. This is taken as evidence that they have interpreted the critical utter
 ance with a scalar implicature\, to the effect that ‘some but not all of
  the cards have a star’. However\, acceptance rates of under-informative
  utterances exceed 35% in many cases (Noveck\, 2001\; Noveck and Posada\, 
 2003\; Bott and Noveck\, 2004\; Pouscoulous et al\, 2007\; i.a.).  Partici
 pants are typically bimodally distributed\, either consistently rejecting 
 or consistently accepting the critical items (Bott and Noveck\, 2004). Thi
 s suggests that a sizeable part of the adult population systematically fai
 ls to generate SIs in response to these stimuli.\n\nWe ask the following q
 uestion: what is the individual profile of participants who reject under-i
 nformative utterances? Currently\, there is no satisfactory explanation fo
 r this question.  \nWe presented participants with a classical binary judg
 ment task\, where they were asked to provide a truth-value to statements t
 hat were true and fully informative\, true but under-informative\, or fals
 e\, for a given visual display.   Participants were also given a battery o
 f cognitive and personality tasks that may be relevant to scalar implicatu
 re generation. For example\, Bott & Noveck (2004)\, and De Neys & Schaeken
  (2007) report that fewer implicature responses are obtained under time-re
 striction and processing load respectively\, suggesting that an individual
 ’s working memory is implicated. Nieuwland et al. (2009) report that N40
 0 amplitude to under-informative utterances is modulated by score on the A
 utism-Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen et al.\, 2001). Katsos & Bishop (fort
 hcoming) suggest that the decision how to respond to under-informative utt
 erances is a metalinguistic process distinct from the linguistic competenc
 e required for detecting under-informativeness and may be modulated by per
 sonality traits. To date however\, there has been no investigation in indi
 vidual differences that may predict rejection of under-informative utteran
 ces.  Correlational and logistic regression analyses reveal that age and w
 orking memory are significant predictors of the rate of rejection of under
 -informative utterances.  \n
LOCATION:GR-03\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR