Priming, adaptation, & interpretation: Language in a social context

This dissertation evaluated three possible levels of processing that interlocutors engage in during interactive discourse. The first section is a review of literature that attempts to link priming, adaptation and interaction. The second section presents two experiments that have been recently published in Language and Cognitive Processes. This study evaluated the tendency for interlocutors to mimic pragmatic forms of language during a pseudo-interaction. The third section offers three experiments that evaluated the contexts in which communication breakdown drives disambiguation strategies. This paper is currently under preparation and will be submitted to the Journal of Memory and Language. The fourth section of experiments is a production and perception study that evaluated how talker variability influences the interpretation of intent behind affective expressions. Finally, the last section provides a general conclusion of how priming, adaptation and interpretation may be linked during discourse. The five sections together intend to show that priming, adaptation, and interpretation are integrative processes that may be enlisted as cooperative mechanisms. Though these mechanisms may be integrative, the approaches used to study them were independent in order to better assess each mechanisms' unique contribution to language processing.