Perspective Taking Reflects Beliefs About Partner Sophistication: Modern Computer Partners Versus Basic Computer and Human Partners.

We investigate partner effects on spatial perspective taking behavior in listeners, comparing behavior with a human versus a computer partner (Experiments 1 and 2), and with computer partners of different perceived capabilities (Experiment 3). Participants responded to spoken instructions from their partner which could be interpreted egocentrically (from their own perspective) or othercentrically (from their partner's perspective). In contrast to earlier work, we found that participants were more egocentric with a computer than a human partner.

Individual Differences in Spatial Orientation Modulate Perspective Taking in Listeners.

Previous research suggests that individuals exhibit consistent tendencies towards taking their own (an egocentric) or their partner's (an othercentric) spatial perspective. In addition, several factors such as spatial orientation ability, inhibitory control, and social preferences, have been found to mediate these perspective taking tendencies. However, these factors have not been studied together in the context of a single task.

A systematic evaluation of factors affecting referring expression choice in passage completion tasks.

There is a long-standing controversy around the question of whether referent predictability affects pronominalization: while there are good theoretical reasons for this prediction (e.g., Arnold, 2008), the experimental evidence has been rather mixed.

Speakers Align With Their Partner's Overspecification During Interaction.

Speakers often overspecify by encoding more information than is necessary when referring to an object (e.g., "the blue mug" for the only mug in a group of objects).

Interpreting nonverbal cues to deception in real time.

When questioning the veracity of an utterance, we perceive certain non-linguistic behaviours to indicate that a speaker is being deceptive. Recent work has highlighted that listeners' associations between speech disfluency and dishonesty are detectable at the earliest stages of reference comprehension, suggesting that the manner of spoken delivery influences pragmatic judgements concurrently with the processing of lexical information. Here, we investigate the integration of a speaker's gestures into judgements of deception, and ask if and when associations between nonverbal cues and deception emerge.

Cues to Lying May be Deceptive: Speaker and Listener Behaviour in an Interactive Game of Deception.

Are the cues that speakers produce when lying the same cues that listeners attend to when attempting to detect deceit? We used a two-person interactive game to explore the production and perception of speech and nonverbal cues to lying. In each game turn, participants viewed pairs of images, with the location of some treasure indicated to the speaker but not to the listener. The speaker described the location of the treasure, with the objective of misleading the listener about its true location; the listener attempted to locate the treasure, based on their judgement of the speaker's veracity.

Effects of Disfluency in Online Interpretation of Deception.

A speaker's manner of delivery of an utterance can affect a listener's pragmatic interpretation of the message. Disfluencies (such as filled pauses) influence a listener's off-line assessment of whether the speaker is truthful or deceptive. Do listeners also form this assessment during the moment-by-moment processing of the linguistic message? Here we present two experiments that examined listeners' judgments of whether a speaker was indicating the true location of the prize in a game during fluent and disfluent utterances.