Kumiko Fukumura - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Kumiko Fukumura
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more simi... more Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more similar and hence compete more strongly. Here we examined the locus of such an effect, investigating whether pronoun use is affected by the referents’ competition at a non-linguistic level only (non-linguistic competition account) or whether it is also affected by competition arising from the antecedents’ similarities (linguistic competition account) and the extent to which this depends on the type of pronoun. Speakers used Italian null pronouns and English pronouns less often (relative to full nouns) when the referential candidates compete more strongly situationally, whilst the antecedents’ semantic, grammatical or phonological similarity did not affect the rates of either pronouns, providing support for the non-linguistic competition account. However, unlike English pronouns, Italian null pronouns were unaffected by gender congruence between human referents, running counter to the gender ...
Journal of Memory and Language
We contrasted two hypotheses concerning how speakers determine adjective order during referential... more We contrasted two hypotheses concerning how speakers determine adjective order during referential communication. The discriminatory efficiency hypotheses claims that speakers place the most discriminating adjective early to facilitate referent identification. By contrast, the availability-based ordering hypothesis assumes that speakers produce most available adjectives early to ease production. Experiment 1 showed that speakers use more pattern-before-color modifier orders (than the reversed) when pattern, not color, distinguished the referent from alternatives, providing support for the discriminatory efficiency hypothesis. Participants also overspecified color more often than pattern, and they generally favored color-before-pattern orders, in support of the availability-based ordering hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated both effects in a dialogue setting, where speakers' adjective ordering was also primed by their partner's ordering, using conjoined and nonconjoined constructions. We propose a novel model (PASS) that explains how discriminability and availability simultaneously influence adjective selection and ordering via competition in the speaker's message representation.
Journal of Memory and Language
Four eye-tracking experiments examined how violations of the Gricean maxim of quantity affect rea... more Four eye-tracking experiments examined how violations of the Gricean maxim of quantity affect reading. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that first-pass reading times for size-modified definite nouns (the small towel) were longer when the modifier was redundant, as the context contained one rather than two possible referents, whereas first-pass times for bare nouns (the towel) were unaffected by whether the context contained multiple referents that resulted in ambiguity. Experiment 3 showed that unlike redundant size modifiers, redundant color modifiers did not increase first-pass times. Experiment 4 confirmed this finding, demonstrating that the effect of redundancy was dependent on the meaning of the modifier. We propose that initial referential processing is led by the lexico-semantic representation of the referring expression rather than Gricean expectations about optimal informativeness: Redundancy of a size-modifier immediately disrupts comprehension because the processor fails to activate the referential contrast implied by the meaning of the modifier, whereas referential ambiguity has no immediate effect, as it allows the activation of at least one semantically-compatible referent.
Developmental psychology, Jan 2, 2015
We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of audience design by contrasting children wi... more We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of audience design by contrasting children with and without autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in referential communication. The 2-stage hypothesis predicts that the ability to use contrastive size adjectives for ambiguity avoidance develops separately from and faster than the ability to avoid perspective-inappropriate descriptions for their addressee. The single-stage hypothesis assumes that both abilities reflect speakers' perspective-taking, and they should develop in tandem with each other. Experiment 1 found that 6- to 10-year-olds with and without ASD produced disambiguating size adjectives ("small door") equally often when the size-contrasting competitor (large door) was in the visual context shared with their addressee. When the competitor was hidden from their addressee, that is, it was part of children's privileged context, children with ASD produced more perspective-inappropriate size adjectives than thos...
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 2015
A controversial issue in anaphoric processing has been whether processing preferences of anaphori... more A controversial issue in anaphoric processing has been whether processing preferences of anaphoric expressions are affected by the antecedent's grammatical role or surface position. Using eye tracking, Experiment 1 examined the comprehension of pronouns during reading, which revealed shorter reading times in the pronoun region and later regions when the antecedent was the subject than when it was the prepositional object. There was no effect of antecedent position. Experiment 2 showed that the choice between pronouns and repeated names during language production is also primarily affected by the antecedent's grammatical role. Experiment 3 examined the comprehension of repeated names, showing a clear effect of antecedent position. Reading times in the name region and in later regions were longer when the antecedent was 1st mentioned than 2nd mentioned, whereas the antecedent's grammatical role only affected regression measures in the name region, showing more processing d...
Cognitive Science, 2014
Evidence suggests that speakers can take account of the addressee's needs when referring. However... more Evidence suggests that speakers can take account of the addressee's needs when referring. However, what representations drive the speaker's audience design has been less clear. The current study thus aims to go beyond previous studies by investigating the interplay between the visual and linguistic context during audience design. Speakers repeated subordinate descriptions (e.g. firefighter) given in the prior linguistic context less and used basic-level descriptions (e.g., man) more when the addressee did not hear the linguistic context than s/he did. But crucially, this effect happened only when the referent lacked the visual attributes associated with the expressions (e.g., the referent was in plain clothes rather than in a firefighter uniform), so there was no other contextual cue available for the identification of the referent. This suggested that speakers flexibly use different contextual cues to help their addressee map the referring expression onto the intended referent. Additionally, speakers used fewer pronouns when the addressee did not hear the linguistic antecedent than s/he did. This suggests that although speakers may be egocentric when taking the referent's accessibility into account during anaphoric reference (Fukumura & Van Gompel, 2012), they can avoid pronouns when the linguistic antecedents were not shared with their addressee during initial reference.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
Most theories of reference assume that a referent's saliency in the linguistic context determ... more Most theories of reference assume that a referent's saliency in the linguistic context determines the choice of referring expression. However, it is less clear whether cognitive factors relating to the nonlinguistic context also have an effect. We investigated whether visual context influences the choice of a pronoun over a repeated noun phrase when speakers refer back to a referent in a preceding sentence. In Experiment 1, linguistic mention as well as visual presence of a competitor with the same gender as the referent resulted in fewer pronouns for the referent, suggesting that both linguistic and visual context determined the choice of referring expression. Experiment 2 showed that even when the competitor had a different gender from the referent, its visual presence reduced pronoun use, indicating that visual context plays a role even if the use of a pronoun is unambiguous. Thus, both linguistic and nonlinguistic information affect the choice of referring expression.
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2011
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf ... more Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2010
Research has shown that following a sentence fragment such as John impressed Mary because.. ., pe... more Research has shown that following a sentence fragment such as John impressed Mary because.. ., people are most likely to refer to John, whereas following John admired Mary because.. ., Mary is the preferred referent. Two written completion experiments investigated whether such semantic biases affect the choice of anaphor (pronouns vs. names). Experiment 1 investigated biases due to verb semantics, and Experiment 2 contrasted biases due to different connectives (because vs. so). Frequency-based accounts such as proposed by Arnold (2001) and functional linguists (e.g., Givón, 1988, 1989) suggest that the likelihood of reference to a particular discourse entity should affect the choice of anaphor: more pronouns (relative to names) for the bias-consistent entity than the bias-inconsistent entity. Although the semantics of the verb and connective had strong effects on the choice of referent, neither experiment showed any effect of semantic bias on the choice of anaphoric form. In contrast, structural factors did affect anaphoric choice.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2011
We tested a cue-based retrieval model that predicts how similarity between discourse entities inf... more We tested a cue-based retrieval model that predicts how similarity between discourse entities influences the speaker's choice of referring expressions. In Experiment 1, speakers produced fewer pronouns (relative to repeated noun phrases) when the competitor was in ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013
English speakers tend to produce fewer pronouns when a referential competitor has the same gender... more English speakers tend to produce fewer pronouns when a referential competitor has the same gender as the referent than otherwise. Traditionally, this gender congruence effect has been explained in terms of ambiguity avoidance (e.g., Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, & Trueswell, 2000; Fukumura, Van Gompel, & Pickering, 2010). However, an alternative hypothesis is that the competitor's gender congruence affects semantic competition, making the referent less accessible relative to when the competitor has a different gender (Arnold & Griffin, 2007). Experiment 1 found that even in Finnish, which is a nongendered language, the competitor's gender congruence results in fewer pronouns, supporting the semantic competition account. In Experiment 2, Finnish native speakers took part in an English version of the same experiment. The effect of gender congruence was larger in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, suggesting that the presence of a same-gender competitor resulted in a larger reduction in pronoun use in English than in Finnish. In contrast, other nonlinguistic similarity had similar effects in both experiments. This indicates that the effect of gender congruence in English is not entirely driven by semantic competition: Speakers also avoid gender-ambiguous pronouns.
Cognitive Science, 2012
We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addr... more We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addressee's discourse model when choosing referring expressions (e.g., Ariel, 1990; Chafe, 1994; Givón, 1983; Prince, 1985), by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (and decreased noun phrase use) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, even though the addressee did not hear the preceding sentence, indicating that speakers used their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced more pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned the referent than when it mentioned a referential competitor, regardless of whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent's accessibility in the speaker's own discourse model rather than the addressee's.
Memory & cognition, 2014
The length of a noun phrase has been shown to influence choices such as syntactic role assignment... more The length of a noun phrase has been shown to influence choices such as syntactic role assignment (e.g., whether the noun phrase is realized as the subject or the object). But does length also affect the choice between different forms of referring expressions? Three experiments investigated the effect of antecedent length on the choice between pronouns (e.g., he) and repeated nouns (e.g., the actor) using a sentence-continuation paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 found an effect of antecedent length on written continuations: Participants used more pronouns (relative to repeated nouns) when the antecedent was longer than when it was shorter. Experiment 3 used a spoken continuation task and replicated the effect of antecedent length on the choice of referring expressions. Taken together, the results suggest that longer antecedents increase the likelihood of pronominal reference. The results support theories arguing that length enhances the accessibility of the associated entity through ric...
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more simi... more Research has shown that speakers use fewer pronouns when the referential candidates are more similar and hence compete more strongly. Here we examined the locus of such an effect, investigating whether pronoun use is affected by the referents’ competition at a non-linguistic level only (non-linguistic competition account) or whether it is also affected by competition arising from the antecedents’ similarities (linguistic competition account) and the extent to which this depends on the type of pronoun. Speakers used Italian null pronouns and English pronouns less often (relative to full nouns) when the referential candidates compete more strongly situationally, whilst the antecedents’ semantic, grammatical or phonological similarity did not affect the rates of either pronouns, providing support for the non-linguistic competition account. However, unlike English pronouns, Italian null pronouns were unaffected by gender congruence between human referents, running counter to the gender ...
Journal of Memory and Language
We contrasted two hypotheses concerning how speakers determine adjective order during referential... more We contrasted two hypotheses concerning how speakers determine adjective order during referential communication. The discriminatory efficiency hypotheses claims that speakers place the most discriminating adjective early to facilitate referent identification. By contrast, the availability-based ordering hypothesis assumes that speakers produce most available adjectives early to ease production. Experiment 1 showed that speakers use more pattern-before-color modifier orders (than the reversed) when pattern, not color, distinguished the referent from alternatives, providing support for the discriminatory efficiency hypothesis. Participants also overspecified color more often than pattern, and they generally favored color-before-pattern orders, in support of the availability-based ordering hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated both effects in a dialogue setting, where speakers' adjective ordering was also primed by their partner's ordering, using conjoined and nonconjoined constructions. We propose a novel model (PASS) that explains how discriminability and availability simultaneously influence adjective selection and ordering via competition in the speaker's message representation.
Journal of Memory and Language
Four eye-tracking experiments examined how violations of the Gricean maxim of quantity affect rea... more Four eye-tracking experiments examined how violations of the Gricean maxim of quantity affect reading. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that first-pass reading times for size-modified definite nouns (the small towel) were longer when the modifier was redundant, as the context contained one rather than two possible referents, whereas first-pass times for bare nouns (the towel) were unaffected by whether the context contained multiple referents that resulted in ambiguity. Experiment 3 showed that unlike redundant size modifiers, redundant color modifiers did not increase first-pass times. Experiment 4 confirmed this finding, demonstrating that the effect of redundancy was dependent on the meaning of the modifier. We propose that initial referential processing is led by the lexico-semantic representation of the referring expression rather than Gricean expectations about optimal informativeness: Redundancy of a size-modifier immediately disrupts comprehension because the processor fails to activate the referential contrast implied by the meaning of the modifier, whereas referential ambiguity has no immediate effect, as it allows the activation of at least one semantically-compatible referent.
Developmental psychology, Jan 2, 2015
We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of audience design by contrasting children wi... more We examined 2 hypotheses concerning the development of audience design by contrasting children with and without autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in referential communication. The 2-stage hypothesis predicts that the ability to use contrastive size adjectives for ambiguity avoidance develops separately from and faster than the ability to avoid perspective-inappropriate descriptions for their addressee. The single-stage hypothesis assumes that both abilities reflect speakers' perspective-taking, and they should develop in tandem with each other. Experiment 1 found that 6- to 10-year-olds with and without ASD produced disambiguating size adjectives ("small door") equally often when the size-contrasting competitor (large door) was in the visual context shared with their addressee. When the competitor was hidden from their addressee, that is, it was part of children's privileged context, children with ASD produced more perspective-inappropriate size adjectives than thos...
Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 2015
A controversial issue in anaphoric processing has been whether processing preferences of anaphori... more A controversial issue in anaphoric processing has been whether processing preferences of anaphoric expressions are affected by the antecedent's grammatical role or surface position. Using eye tracking, Experiment 1 examined the comprehension of pronouns during reading, which revealed shorter reading times in the pronoun region and later regions when the antecedent was the subject than when it was the prepositional object. There was no effect of antecedent position. Experiment 2 showed that the choice between pronouns and repeated names during language production is also primarily affected by the antecedent's grammatical role. Experiment 3 examined the comprehension of repeated names, showing a clear effect of antecedent position. Reading times in the name region and in later regions were longer when the antecedent was 1st mentioned than 2nd mentioned, whereas the antecedent's grammatical role only affected regression measures in the name region, showing more processing d...
Cognitive Science, 2014
Evidence suggests that speakers can take account of the addressee's needs when referring. However... more Evidence suggests that speakers can take account of the addressee's needs when referring. However, what representations drive the speaker's audience design has been less clear. The current study thus aims to go beyond previous studies by investigating the interplay between the visual and linguistic context during audience design. Speakers repeated subordinate descriptions (e.g. firefighter) given in the prior linguistic context less and used basic-level descriptions (e.g., man) more when the addressee did not hear the linguistic context than s/he did. But crucially, this effect happened only when the referent lacked the visual attributes associated with the expressions (e.g., the referent was in plain clothes rather than in a firefighter uniform), so there was no other contextual cue available for the identification of the referent. This suggested that speakers flexibly use different contextual cues to help their addressee map the referring expression onto the intended referent. Additionally, speakers used fewer pronouns when the addressee did not hear the linguistic antecedent than s/he did. This suggests that although speakers may be egocentric when taking the referent's accessibility into account during anaphoric reference (Fukumura & Van Gompel, 2012), they can avoid pronouns when the linguistic antecedents were not shared with their addressee during initial reference.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
Most theories of reference assume that a referent's saliency in the linguistic context determ... more Most theories of reference assume that a referent's saliency in the linguistic context determines the choice of referring expression. However, it is less clear whether cognitive factors relating to the nonlinguistic context also have an effect. We investigated whether visual context influences the choice of a pronoun over a repeated noun phrase when speakers refer back to a referent in a preceding sentence. In Experiment 1, linguistic mention as well as visual presence of a competitor with the same gender as the referent resulted in fewer pronouns for the referent, suggesting that both linguistic and visual context determined the choice of referring expression. Experiment 2 showed that even when the competitor had a different gender from the referent, its visual presence reduced pronoun use, indicating that visual context plays a role even if the use of a pronoun is unambiguous. Thus, both linguistic and nonlinguistic information affect the choice of referring expression.
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2011
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf ... more Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2010
Research has shown that following a sentence fragment such as John impressed Mary because.. ., pe... more Research has shown that following a sentence fragment such as John impressed Mary because.. ., people are most likely to refer to John, whereas following John admired Mary because.. ., Mary is the preferred referent. Two written completion experiments investigated whether such semantic biases affect the choice of anaphor (pronouns vs. names). Experiment 1 investigated biases due to verb semantics, and Experiment 2 contrasted biases due to different connectives (because vs. so). Frequency-based accounts such as proposed by Arnold (2001) and functional linguists (e.g., Givón, 1988, 1989) suggest that the likelihood of reference to a particular discourse entity should affect the choice of anaphor: more pronouns (relative to names) for the bias-consistent entity than the bias-inconsistent entity. Although the semantics of the verb and connective had strong effects on the choice of referent, neither experiment showed any effect of semantic bias on the choice of anaphoric form. In contrast, structural factors did affect anaphoric choice.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2011
We tested a cue-based retrieval model that predicts how similarity between discourse entities inf... more We tested a cue-based retrieval model that predicts how similarity between discourse entities influences the speaker's choice of referring expressions. In Experiment 1, speakers produced fewer pronouns (relative to repeated noun phrases) when the competitor was in ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2013
English speakers tend to produce fewer pronouns when a referential competitor has the same gender... more English speakers tend to produce fewer pronouns when a referential competitor has the same gender as the referent than otherwise. Traditionally, this gender congruence effect has been explained in terms of ambiguity avoidance (e.g., Arnold, Eisenband, Brown-Schmidt, & Trueswell, 2000; Fukumura, Van Gompel, & Pickering, 2010). However, an alternative hypothesis is that the competitor's gender congruence affects semantic competition, making the referent less accessible relative to when the competitor has a different gender (Arnold & Griffin, 2007). Experiment 1 found that even in Finnish, which is a nongendered language, the competitor's gender congruence results in fewer pronouns, supporting the semantic competition account. In Experiment 2, Finnish native speakers took part in an English version of the same experiment. The effect of gender congruence was larger in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1, suggesting that the presence of a same-gender competitor resulted in a larger reduction in pronoun use in English than in Finnish. In contrast, other nonlinguistic similarity had similar effects in both experiments. This indicates that the effect of gender congruence in English is not entirely driven by semantic competition: Speakers also avoid gender-ambiguous pronouns.
Cognitive Science, 2012
We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addr... more We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addressee's discourse model when choosing referring expressions (e.g., Ariel, 1990; Chafe, 1994; Givón, 1983; Prince, 1985), by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (and decreased noun phrase use) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, even though the addressee did not hear the preceding sentence, indicating that speakers used their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced more pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned the referent than when it mentioned a referential competitor, regardless of whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent's accessibility in the speaker's own discourse model rather than the addressee's.
Memory & cognition, 2014
The length of a noun phrase has been shown to influence choices such as syntactic role assignment... more The length of a noun phrase has been shown to influence choices such as syntactic role assignment (e.g., whether the noun phrase is realized as the subject or the object). But does length also affect the choice between different forms of referring expressions? Three experiments investigated the effect of antecedent length on the choice between pronouns (e.g., he) and repeated nouns (e.g., the actor) using a sentence-continuation paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 found an effect of antecedent length on written continuations: Participants used more pronouns (relative to repeated nouns) when the antecedent was longer than when it was shorter. Experiment 3 used a spoken continuation task and replicated the effect of antecedent length on the choice of referring expressions. Taken together, the results suggest that longer antecedents increase the likelihood of pronominal reference. The results support theories arguing that length enhances the accessibility of the associated entity through ric...
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.