Influence of Ostensive Signals on Pragmatic Reasoning: A Preliminary Study

抄録

In this study, the effects of information resources on pragmatic reasoning were examined by controlling the speaker’s pointing gesture and gaze direction as nonlinguistic information, and object figures features such as shape, color, and marks. The experimenter either did or did not point to the monitor displaying three figure illustrations. Moreover, the experimenter’s gaze was either directed toward the participant or the monitor showing the stimulus. The result proved neither pointing nor gaze as effective in this experiment. Two reasons for this might be: 1) The participants could pay attention to the monitor anyway without non-linguistic cues. 2) The gaze cue might be relatively weak. However, it was also found that the participants used pragmatic reasoning better than chance level if the experimenter used pointing, suggesting that pointing is not entirely irrelevant. Further study is needed to explore the effect of non-linguistic information when people use pragmatic reasoning.