28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

carrying out in our lab in Lyon with the express goal of better understanding pragmatic
inference-making.
1007.2 Undetected conceptual misalignment in survey interviews, M. Schober, New School for
Social Research, New York, NY, USA
The collaboration that leads speakers to believe that they have understood each other can mask far
greater conceptual misalignment than one might suspect. In a series of laboratory and field studies
of standardized telephone survey interviews, my colleagues and I have shown that although
respondents answering pretested questions about facts and behaviors are confident they have
understood the questions as intended, they do not interpret seemingly straightforward concepts
like work and smoking uniformly. In fact, the range of interpretations can lead to substantial errors
in the data that are collected. Linguistic coordination is not the same as conceptual coordination.
1007.3 Why is conversation so easy? The interactive alignment account, S.C. Garrod 1 , M.J.
Pickering 2 , 1 University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK; 2 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
The range and complexity of the information that is required in monologue – preparing and
listening to speeches – is much less than is required in dialogue – holding a conversation. Yet most
of us find holding a conversation easier than preparing or listening to speeches. We will argue that
dialogue is easy because of an interactive processing mechanism that leads to the alignment of
linguistic representations between conversationalists. Interactive alignment occurs via automatic
alignment channels which are functionally similar to the automatic perception-behavior links
proposed in recent accounts of social interaction. We conclude that humans are ‘designed’ for
dialogue.
1007.4 Euphemism and Gresham’s law of language, M. McGlone 1 , D. Kobrynowicz 2 ,
1 2
Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA; The College of New Jersey, Trenton, NJ, USA
Lexicographers have suggested that the face-saving career of a euphemism is limited by a
linguistic incarnation of the economic principle known as “Gresham’s Law.” Just as "bad money
drives out the good” in a monetary system, these researchers argue that through frequent usage,
euphemisms become “contaminated” by their associations with distasteful topics, which in turn
eventually drives them out of conversational circulation and leads to the creation of new
euphemisms to replace them (Pinker, 1994). We report experimental data suggesting just the
opposite: Euphemisms’ conventionality actually increases rather than decreases their “face value”
by encouraging inattentive, mindless processing of their distasteful referents.
1007.5 When do speakers make up their minds? H.H. Clark, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
USA
When people speak, they act at many levels. They gesticulate and produce sounds; they create
gestures, words, phrases, and larger constructions; they make statements, ask questions, and tell
stories; they try to get their addressees to join them in certain activities. These actions are
normally considered deliberate or intended. But when do speakers make up their minds to take
those actions, and how? Evidence from spontaneous speech shows that speakers are forever
changing their minds and at many levels. This evidence, I suggest, requires new accounts about
what speakers are doing and about what they mean.
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