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The current study investigates how speakers are affected by thesize of the visual domain during reference production. Previousresearch found that speech onset times increase along with thenumber of distractors that are visible, at least when speakersrefer to non-salient target objects in simplified visual domains.This suggests that in the case of more distractors, speakers needmore time to perform an object-by-object scan of all distractorsthat are visible. We present the results of a reference productionexperiment, to study if this pattern for speech onset times holdsfor photo-realistic scenes, and to test if the suggested viewingstrategy is reflected directly in speakers’ eye movements. Ourresults show that this is indeed the case: we find (1) that speechonset times increase linearly as more distractors are present; (2)that speakers fixate the target relatively less often in larger do-mains; and (3) that larger domains elicit more fixation switchesback and forth between the target and its distractors.

When referring to a target object in a visual scene, speakers areassumed to consider certain distractor objects that are visible tobe more relevant than others. However, previous research thathas tested this assumption has mainly applied offline measuresof visual attention, such as the occurrence of overspecificationin speakers’ target descriptions. Therefore, in the current study,we take both online (eye-tracking) and offline (overspecifica-tion) measures of attention, to study how perceptual groupingaffects scene perception, and reference production. We manip-ulated three grouping principles: region of space, type similar-ity, and color similarity. For all three factors, we found effects,either on eye movements (region of space), overspecification(color similarity), or both (type similarity). The results for typesimilarity provide direct evidence for the close link betweenscene perception and reference production.

Experiments on visually grounded, definite reference production often manipulate simple visual scenes in the form of grids filled with objects, for example, to test how speakers are affected by the number of objects that are visible. Regarding the latter, it was found that speech onset times increase along with domain size, at least when speakers refer to nonsalient target objects that do not pop out of the visual domain. This finding suggests that even in the case of many distractors, speakers perform object‐by‐object scans of the visual scene. The current study investigates whether this systematic processing strategy can be explained by the simplified nature of the scenes that were used, and if different strategies can be identified for photo‐realistic visual scenes. In doing so, we conducted a preregistered experiment that manipulated domain size and saturation; replicated the measures of speech onset times; and recorded eye movements to measure speakers' viewing strategies more directly. Using controlled photo‐realistic scenes, we find (1) that speech onset times increase linearly as more distractors are present; (2) that larger domains elicit relatively fewer fixation switches back and forth between the target and its distractors, mainly before speech onset; and (3) that speakers fixate the target relatively less often in larger domains, mainly after speech onset. We conclude that careful object‐by‐object scans remain the dominant strategy in our photo‐realistic scenes, to a limited extent combined with low‐level saliency mechanisms. A relevant direction for future research would be to employ less controlled photo‐realistic stimuli that do allow for interpretation based on context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speakers often produce definite referring expressions that areoverspecified: they tend to include more attributes than neces-sary to distinguish the target referent. The current paper inves-tigates how the occurrence of overspecification is affected byviewing time. We conducted an experiment in which speakerswere asked to refer to target objects in visual domains. Half ofthe speakers had unlimited time to inspect the domains, whileviewing time was limited (1000 ms) for the other half. The re-sults reveal that limited viewing time induces the occurrenceof overspecification. We conjecture that limited viewing timecaused speakers to rely heavily on quick heuristics during at-tribute selection, which urge them to select attributes that areperceptually salient. In the case of unlimited inspection time,speakers seem to rely on a combination of heuristic and moredeliberate selection strategies.

In a recent article published in this journal (van Deemter, Gatt, van der Sluis, & Power, 2012), the authors criticize the Incremental Algorithm (a well-known algorithm for the generation of referring expressions due to Dale & Reiter, 1995, also in this journal) because of its strong reliance on a pre-determined, domain-dependent Preference Order. The authors argue that there are potentially many different Preference Orders that could be considered, while often no evidence is available to determine which is a good one. In this brief note, however, we suggest (based on a learning curve experiment) that finding a Preference Order for a new domain may not be so difficult after all, as long as one has access to a handful of human-produced descriptions collected in a semantically transparent way. We argue that this is due to the fact that it is both more important and less difficult to get a good ordering of the head than of the tail of a Preference Order.

This study investigates the impact of locality framing in infographics about sea level rise as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Our experiment sampled solely inhabitants of Hoek van Holland (HvH), a coastal town in the Netherlands for which future sea level rise is a pertinent issue. We analyzed the participants' attitudes towards ACC mitigating behaviors, and found that an infographic with a local, HvH oriented frame had a higher positive impact on attitudinal change than an infographic with a more general, global frame. To account for demographic variation between participant samples in previous studies on locality framing, whose findings were inconsistent, we also tested if the observed effect of locality framing was moderated by gender, age, education level, income, political background, and religiosity. This was not the case. Our findings advocate for the application of local frames in ACC communication, irrespective of the target population's demographic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]