Tracking Colisteners' Knowledge States During Language Comprehension

When we receive information in the presence of other people, are we sensitive to what they do or do not understand? In two event-related-potential experiments, participants read implausible sentences (e.g., "The girl had a little beak") in contexts that rendered them plausible (e.g., "The girl dressed up as a canary for Halloween"). No semantic-processing difficulty (no N400 effect) ensued when they read the sentences while alone in the room. However, when a confederate was present who did not receive the contexts so that the critical sentences were implausible for him or her, participants exhibited processing difficulty: the social-N400 effect. This effect was obtained when participants were instructed to adopt the confederate's perspective-and critically, even without such instructions-but not when performing a demanding comprehension task. Thus, unless mental resources are limited, comprehenders engage in modeling the minds not only of those individuals with whom they directly interact but also of those individuals who are merely present during the linguistic exchange.

当我们在他人在场的情况下接收信息时，我们是否对他们理解或不理解的内容敏感呢？在两个事件相关电位实验中，参与者阅读不合理的句子（例如，“女孩有一个小喙”），这些句子在特定语境下是合理的（例如，“女孩在万圣节装扮成金丝雀”）。当他们独自在房间里阅读这些句子时，没有出现语义处理困难（没有N400效应）。然而，当有一名同伙在场，且该同伙没有接收到相关语境信息，以至于这些关键句子对他或她来说是不合理的时，参与者就表现出了处理困难：社交N400效应。当参与者被要求从同伙的角度去理解时会产生这种效应——关键的是，即使没有这样的指令也会产生——但在执行一项要求较高的理解任务时则不会。因此，除非心智资源有限，否则理解者不仅会对与其直接互动的人的思维进行建模，还会对在语言交流过程中仅仅在场的人的思维进行建模。