Conversation and convention: enduring influences on name choice for common objects.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Psychology

Background:

• Object naming is shaped by immediate (speaker-addressee pacts) and historical (language patterns) factors.
• The link between these short-term and long-term influences on naming is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if names adopted via collaboration influence subsequent name use and preference.
• To determine if these influences extend beyond the original participants.

Main Methods:

• Adapted a referential communication task with confederate directors introducing initial names.
• Rotated director roles to naive participants who later rated name preferences and object typicality.
• Assessed the impact of initial name introduction on later name use and preference.

Main Results:

• Introduced names significantly influenced later name use and preference, even for participants not directly exposed.
• Object typicality and similarity ratings were less affected by the initially introduced names.
• Name associations established in one context impact name retrieval and use in others.

Conclusions:

• Stable object naming conventions within a linguistic community can emerge from local interactions.
• Local interactions influence linguistic conventions (naming) more than non-linguistic knowledge (object properties).
• Demonstrates how shared object understanding can coexist with divergent naming patterns across speaker groups.