TY - JOUR
T1 - When language comprehension goes wrong for the right reasons
T2 - Good-enough, underspecified, or shallow language processing
AU - Christianson, Kiel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Experimental Psychology Society.
PY - 2016/5/3
Y1 - 2016/5/3
N2 - This paper contains an overview of language processing that can be described as “good enough”, “underspecified”, or “shallow”. The central idea is that a nontrivial proportion of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and miscommunication can be attributed not to random error, but instead to processing preferences of the human language processing system. In other words, the very architecture of the language processor favours certain types of processing errors because in a majority of instances, this “fast and frugal”, less effortful processing is good enough to support communication. By way of historical background, connections are made between this relatively recent facet of psycholinguistic study, other recent language processing models, and related concepts in other areas of cognitive science. Finally, the nine papers included in this special issue are introduced as representative of novel explorations of good-enough, or underspecified, language processing.
AB - This paper contains an overview of language processing that can be described as “good enough”, “underspecified”, or “shallow”. The central idea is that a nontrivial proportion of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and miscommunication can be attributed not to random error, but instead to processing preferences of the human language processing system. In other words, the very architecture of the language processor favours certain types of processing errors because in a majority of instances, this “fast and frugal”, less effortful processing is good enough to support communication. By way of historical background, connections are made between this relatively recent facet of psycholinguistic study, other recent language processing models, and related concepts in other areas of cognitive science. Finally, the nine papers included in this special issue are introduced as representative of novel explorations of good-enough, or underspecified, language processing.
KW - Good-enough language processing
KW - Language comprehension
KW - Psycholinguistics
KW - Shallow language processing
KW - Underspecified language processing
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U2 - 10.1080/17470218.2015.1134603
DO - 10.1080/17470218.2015.1134603
M3 - Article
C2 - 26785102
AN - SCOPUS:84961202711
SN - 1747-0218
VL - 69
SP - 817
EP - 828
JO - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
JF - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
IS - 5
ER -