Four speech production experiments were conducted to examine how adults produce preverbal messages involving comparisons. It was argued that the generation of any message involving a comparison involves three decisions. First, a dimension for the comparison must be selected. Second, a contrasting object for this dimension must be selected. Third, a referent must be selected for the contrasting object. Participants were shown three objects on a computer screen and were asked to compare two objects along the dimensions of size (Experiments 1 and 2) or hue (Experiments 3 and 4). For example, a participant might be asked to compare the size of a medium-sized snake to either a small fish or a large bird. With each comparison, participants produced a noun (fish, bird) and an adjective (bigger, smaller) that could be repeated or switched from one trial to another.
Experiment 1 showed a large tendency to repeat nouns, suggesting that speakers were repeating referents. Experiment 2, however, showed a large tendency to repeat comparisons to objects of the same size, suggesting that speakers were repeating contrasting objects not referents. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the repetition effect disappeared after one filler trial. This suggested that decisions were made in short-term working memory.
It was concluded that these three decisions are both necessary and sufficient for the generation of a preverbal message involving any comparison.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/1105 |
| Date | 06 1900 |
| Creators | Mullins, Blaine |
| Contributors | Dixon, Peter (Psychology), Spalding, Tom (Psychology), Nicoladis, Elena (Psychology), Tucker, Benjamin (Linguistics), Griffin, Zenzi (Psychology, University of Texas at Austin) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 3209059 bytes, application/pdf |
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