When conceptual pacts are broken: Partner-specific effects on the comprehension of referring expressions

When two people in conversation refer repeatedly to objects, they typically converge on the same (or similar) referring expressions. The repeated use of expressions by people in the same conversation has been called lexical entrainment. Lexical entrainment may emerge from the precedent of associating objects with expressions (and the perspectives they encode), or else from achieving conceptual pacts, or temporary, flexible agreements to view an object in a particular way (in which case the precedent is encoded as specific to a particular partner). We had people interact with a confederate speaker, entraining on shared perspectives (e.g., “the shiny cylinder”) during repeated references to objects. Then either the original speaker or a new speaker used either the original expression or a new one (“the silver pipe”) to refer to the previously discussed object. Upon hearing the original expressions, addressees looked at and then touched the target objects equally quickly regardless of speaker. However, with new expressions, there was partner-specific interference: addressees were slower to look at the object when the new expression was uttered by the original speaker than when the new expression was uttered by the new speaker. This suggests that the representations in memory from which entrainment emerges do encode a partner-specific cue, leading addressees to expect that a speaker should continue to use an entrained-upon expression unless a contrast in meaning is implicated. There appears to be no such interference when a new partner uses a new expression.