William S Horton | Northwestern University (original) (raw)

Papers by William S Horton

Cognition, 2018

Studies exploring the influence of executive functions (EF) on perspective--taking have focused o... more Studies exploring the influence of executive functions (EF) on perspective--taking have focused on inhibition and working memory in young adults or clinical populations. Less consideration has been given to more complex capacities that also involve switching attention between perspectives, or to changes in EF and concomitant effects on perspective--taking across the lifespan. To address this, we assessed whether individual differences in inhibition and attentional switching in healthy adults (ages 17--84) predict performance on a task in which speakers identified targets for a listener with size-contrasting competitors in common or privileged ground. Modification differences across conditions decreased with age. Further, perspective taking interacted with EF measures: youngest adults' sensitivity to perspective was best captured by their inhibitory performance; oldest adults' sensitivity was best captured by switching performance. Perspective--taking likely involves multiple aspects of EF, as revealed by considering a wider range of EF tasks and individual capacities across the lifespan.

Language and Cognitive Processes, Nov 1, 2007

In typical interactions, speakers frequently produce utterances that appear to reflect beliefs ab... more In typical interactions, speakers frequently produce utterances that appear to reflect beliefs about the common ground shared with particular addressees. Horton and Gerrig (2005a) proposed that one important basis for audience design is the manner in which conversational partners serve as cues for the automatic retrieval of associated information from memory. This paper reports the results of two experiments demonstrating the influence of partner-specific memory associations on language production. Following an initial task designed to establish associations between specific words (Experiment 1) or object categories (Experiment 2) and each of two partners, participants named a series of pictures in the context of the same two individuals. Naming latencies were shortest for responses associated with the current partner, and were not significantly correlated with explicit recall of partner-item associations. Such partner-driven memory retrieval may constrain the information accessible to speakers as they produce utterances for particular addressees. During conversational interactions, the form and content of speakers' utterances are potentially shaped in a variety of ways by the intended audience. Speakers not only adjust global characteristics of their speech, such as overall complexity, in response to the perceived needs of particular types of addressees (e.g., non-native speakers; Bortfeld & Brennan, 1997), but can also make relatively fine-grained adjustments to referential (e.g., , syntactic (e.g., Haywood, Pickering, & Branigan, 2005) and even gestural (e.g., Özyürek, 2002) aspects of their behaviors based on interactions with specific individuals. Taken together, these partner-related adjustments are known as audience design and appear to be a ubiquitous feature of conversational speech. Although utterances routinely show evidence of having been tailored for certain addressees, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie audience design are not well understood. A primary issue concerns the extent to which instances of audience design necessarily emerge on the basis of considerations of the knowledge taken as shared between interlocutors-their common ground. Although individuals are presumed to coordinate interactions on the basis of beliefs about common ground , evidence is mixed regarding when and how this actually occurs (for a discussion, see . For example, speakers sometimes fail to consider addressees as much as they "should," producing utterances that are ambiguous or that show little evidence of addressee-specific adjustments . Conversely, some aspects of utterances that could be potentially helpful for addresses-e.g., articulatory reduction or heavy NP shift -may emerge instead on the basis of speaker-internal constraints.

Discourse Processes, Jul 1, 2005

Speakers in conversation routinely engage in audience design. That is, they construct their utter... more Speakers in conversation routinely engage in audience design. That is, they construct their utterances to be understood by particular addressees. Standard accounts of audience design have frequently appealed to the notion of common ground. On this view, speakers produce well-designed utterances by expressly considering the knowledge they take as shared with addressees. This article suggests that conversational common ground, rather than being a category of specialized mental representations, is more usefully conceptualized as an emergent property of ordinary memory processes. This article examines 2 separate but equally important processes: commonality assessment and message formation. Commonality assessment involves the retrieval of memory traces concerning what information is shared with an addressee, whereas message formation involves deciding how to use that information in conversation. Evidence from the CallHome English corpus of telephone conversations shows how each of these processes is rooted in basic aspects of human memory. The overall goal of this article is to demonstrate the need for a more cognitive psychological account of conversational common ground. Consider this excerpt from a conversation between two friends who have not spoken with each other for some time: (1) A: Oh first of all I have Shana's shower coming up that I have to do. B: Ah, that's right. A: That's going to be like a huge like three day effort with all the cooking and cleaning and like actually party [sic] that I have to do. B: Is there anyone you can get to help you? A: Um Jessica's going to help and Beth might because you see, Diane is here now.

Frontiers in Psychology, Jul 27, 2016

In this paper we consider the potential role of metarepresentation-the representation of another ... more In this paper we consider the potential role of metarepresentation-the representation of another representation, or as commonly considered within cognitive science, the mental representation of another individual's knowledge and beliefs-in mediating definite reference and common ground in conversation. Using dialogues from a referential communication study in which speakers conversed in succession with two different addressees, we highlight ways in which interlocutors work together to successfully refer to objects, and achieve shared conceptualizations. We briefly review accounts of how such shared conceptualizations could be represented in memory, from simple associations between label and referent, to "triple co-presence" representations that track interlocutors in an episode of referring, to more elaborate metarepresentations that invoke theory of mind, mutual knowledge, or a model of a conversational partner. We consider how some forms of metarepresentation, once created and activated, could account for definite reference in conversation by appealing to ordinary processes in memory. We conclude that any representations that capture information about others' perspectives are likely to be relatively simple and subject to the same kinds of constraints on attention and memory that influence other kinds of cognitive representations.

Cognition, Dec 1, 2014

Previous research provides evidence for expectation-driven processing within sentences at phonolo... more Previous research provides evidence for expectation-driven processing within sentences at phonological, lexical, and syntactic levels of linguistic structure. Less well-established is whether comprehenders also anticipate pragmatic relationships between sentences. To address this, we evaluate a unit of discourse structure that comprehenders must infer to hold between sentences in order for a discourse to make sense-the intersentential coherence relation. In a novel eyetracking paradigm, we trained participants to associate particular spatial locations with particular coherence relations. Experiment 1 shows that the subset of listeners who successfully acquired the location~relation mappings during training subsequently looked to these locations during testing in response to a coherence-signaling intersentential connective. Experiment 2 finds that listeners' looks during sentences containing coherence-biasing verbs reveal expectations about upcoming sentence types. This work extends existing research on prediction beyond sentence-internal structure and provides a new methodology for examining the cues that comprehenders use to establish relationships at the discourse level.

Memory & Cognition, 2007

Language use is inherently social. That is, utterances typically do more than simply convey speci... more Language use is inherently social. That is, utterances typically do more than simply convey specific meanings-they also imply a great deal about the speaker's feelings and attitudes toward the interpersonal context. The words chosen by a speaker may suggest whether or not the speaker likes or dislikes his or her interlocutor, is comfortable talking about the current topic, or is trying to argue with or insult or flatter the addressee. While individuals can make their feelings known directly (e.g., "I really like you"), similar effects may also be achieved in a more indirect fashion, particularly through the use of nonliteral language. Indeed, a wide range of social psychological research has shown how indirect speech acts and other forms of nonliteral language can have implications about particular aspects of social interaction, such as the relative status of conversational participants, their need to be polite, and their desire to manage particular social impressions (for a review, see Holtgraves, 2002). Most psycholinguistic research, however, has focused more on the cognitive aspects of how figurative expressions are understood than on the interpersonal consequences of such expressions (although see the chapters in Colston & Katz, 2005). In daily experience, though, figures of speech are typically embedded in highly specific interpersonal contexts, being produced by speakers for particular addressees in order to achieve specific communicative goals (Gibbs & Colston, 2002). While many of these goals may be cognitive in nature (e.g., concisely describing a novel or vague concept; Ortony, 1975), figurative expressions also enable speakers to achieve other, more socially oriented objectives (Gerrig & Gibbs, 1988; Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989). For example, when asked to provide reasons why one might use various types of figurative language, people frequently generate discourse goals like "to be humorous," "to be polite," "to show emotion," and "to add interest" (Roberts & Kreuz, 1994). Nonliteral Language and Intimacy An especially important goal that may be fulfilled through the use of nonliteral language is the creation and recognition of interpersonal bonds (Gibbs & Colston, 2002; Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989). Cohen (1979) stated this idea most clearly in an essay entitled Metaphor and the cultivation of intimacy, in which he argued that a critical function of metaphor is the "achievement of intimacy. .. in which the maker and the appreciator of a metaphor are drawn closer to one another" (p. 6). The basic claim is that feelings of intimacy between speakers and addressees are created through their mutual understanding of particular figurative expressions. Although Cohen acknowledged that literal discourse also involves the recognition of commonalities between speakers and listeners, his view was that metaphor has the particular capacity to bring this shared sense of intimacy "into relief." Although Cohen's (1979) claims centered on the creation of intimacy, existing research on this point has generally focused on how nonliteral language use can reflect preexisting degrees of interpersonal closeness. For example, Kreuz (1996) showed that participants' self-reports of the likelihood of using sarcasm with people in different types of relationships (parents, siblings, coworkers) was positively correlated with self-reports of the degree of closeness with those same classes of individuals (see also Jorgensen, 1996). Similarly, in an analysis of spontaneous conversations, Gibbs (2000) identified jocularity, or humorous banter, as an important feature of particular uses of ironic language between close friends. Speakers may also modulate their use of nonliteral language, depending on the extent of their prior acquaintance with specific addressees. Fussell and Krauss (1989) found that speakers were more likely to describe abstract figures 87

Analogical comparison has been found to promote learning across many conceptual domains. Here, we... more Analogical comparison has been found to promote learning across many conceptual domains. Here, we ask whether this mechanism can facilitate children’s understanding of others’ mental states. In Experiment 1, children carried out comparisons between characters’ thoughts and reality and between characters with true beliefs vs. those with false beliefs. Children given this training improved from preto post-test. In Experiment 2, we used a more minimal comparison technique. Children saw a series of three stories involving true or false beliefs. There were two betweensubjects conditions that either facilitated (High Alignability) or impeded (Low Alignability) comparison across stories. We found that children made more gains from preto post-test in the High Alignability condition than in the Low Alignability condition. We also found effects of production of mental state verbs, as assessed in an Elicitation Task. These results provide evidence for the role of analogical comparison in theor...

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Mar 1, 2003

De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 20, 2021

To construct a coherent mental model of a text, readers generate inferences. This chapter draws o... more To construct a coherent mental model of a text, readers generate inferences. This chapter draws on cognitive theories of text and discourse to examine how and under what conditions readers construct interpretive inferences about nonliteral aspects of literary works. We examine what role these inferences play in literary sense-making and how they influence readers' comprehension of and experience with the text. We describe the variety of measures used to examine the interactive effects of task (e. g., reading goals), text (e. g., genre, complexity, foregrounding), and reader (e. g., expectations, prior knowledge, epistemology). We also review the types of questions that allow examination of when and how interpretive inferences are constructed. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these findings and explore potential future directions in this area of research.

The present study used eyetracking methodology to assess whether individuals high in external mot... more The present study used eyetracking methodology to assess whether individuals high in external motivation (EM) to appear nonprejudiced exhibit an early bias in visual attention toward Black faces indicative of social threat perception. Drawing on previous work examining visual attention to socially threatening stimuli, the authors predicted that high-EM participants, but not lower-EM participants, would initially look toward Black faces and then subsequently direct their attention away from these faces. Participants viewed pairs of images, some of which consisted of one White and one Black male face, while a desk-mounted eyetracking camera recorded their eye movements. Results showed that, as predicted, high-EM, but not lower-EM, individuals exhibited patterns of visual attention indicative of social threat perception.

Mouton Series in Pragmatics, 2008

... In the domain of language production, the manner in which speakers tailor utterances to refle... more ... In the domain of language production, the manner in which speakers tailor utterances to reflect considerations of shared knowledge is known as audience design (Clark and Murphy 1982; for reviews, see Schober and Brennan 2003; Barr and Keysar 2006). ... 1998; Keysar et al. ...

Cognitive Science, 2020

This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has... more This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as

Cognitive Science, 2020

Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies, 2021

The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Processes

Journal of Memory and Language

Over the course of development, we acquire the ability to conceptualize others’ thoughts and feel... more Over the course of development, we acquire the ability to conceptualize others’ thoughts and feelings as distinct from our own. This ‘theory of mind’ allows us to engage in meaningful social interactions, in which our understanding of another’s perspective directly shapes our use of language. During discourse, we often make judgements about what knowledge is shared with a specific partner (common ground) and what must be introduced (privileged ground), requiring the integration of information during both listening and speaking. This complex process by which we tailor our speech to our partner is essential to communication, yet questions remain regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying this process.

Schizophrenia Research

Schizophrenia and at-risk populations are suggested to exhibit referential cohesion deficits in l... more Schizophrenia and at-risk populations are suggested to exhibit referential cohesion deficits in language production (e.g., producing fewer pronouns or nouns that clearly link to concepts from previous sentences). Much of this work has focused on transcribed speech samples, while no work to our knowledge has examined referential cohesion in written narratives among ultra high risk (UHR) youth using Coh-Metrix, an automated analysis tool. In the present study, written narratives from 84 individuals (UHR=41, control=43) were examined. Referential cohesion variables and relationships with symptoms and relevant cognitive variables were also investigated. Findings reveal less word &amp;amp;amp;quot;stem&amp;amp;amp;quot; overlap in narratives produced by UHR youth compared to controls, and correlations with symptom domains and verbal learning. The present study highlights the potential usefulness of automated analysis of written narratives in identifying at-risk youth and these data provide critical information in better understanding the etiology of psychosis. As writing production is commonly elicited in educational contexts, markers of aberrant cohesion in writing represent significant potential for identifying youth who could benefit from further screening, and utilizing software that is easily accessible and free may provide utility in academic and clinical settings.

Cognition, 2018

Language and Cognitive Processes, Nov 1, 2007

Discourse Processes, Jul 1, 2005

Frontiers in Psychology, Jul 27, 2016

Cognition, Dec 1, 2014

Memory & Cognition, 2007

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Mar 1, 2003

De Gruyter eBooks, Sep 20, 2021

Mouton Series in Pragmatics, 2008

Cognitive Science, 2020

Handbook of Empirical Literary Studies, 2021

The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Processes

Journal of Memory and Language

Schizophrenia Research