Good-Enough Production: Selecting Easier Words Instead of More Accurate Ones.

ABSTRACT: Dominant theories of language production suggest that word choice-lexical selection-is driven by alignment with the intended message: To talk about a young feline, we choose the most aligned word, kitten. Another factor that could shape lexical selection is word accessibility, or how easy it is to produce a given word (e.g., cat is more accessible than kitten). To test whether producers are also influenced by word accessibility, we designed an artificial lexicon containing high- and low-frequency words whose meanings correspond to compass directions. Participants in a communication game (total N = 181 adults) earned points by producing compass directions, which often required an implicit decision between a high- and low-frequency word. A trade-off was observed a

SUBMITTER: Koranda MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9630725 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature