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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 14, 2026

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language

Using Eye Movements Recorded in the Visual World Paradigm to Explore the Online Processing of Spoken Language

Published on: October 13, 2018

Pragmatic Language Interpretation as Probabilistic Inference.

Noah D Goodman¹, Michael C Frank¹

¹Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

|October 4, 2016

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Language understanding relies on inferring speaker meaning using context and world knowledge, not just rules. The rational speech act (RSA) framework models these pragmatic inferences, explaining complex language phenomena.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Computational Linguistics
Psycholinguistics

Background:

Traditional linguistic theories focus on decoding meaning from structure.
Human language understanding involves sophisticated contextual inferences.

Purpose of the Study:

To present the rational speech act (RSA) framework for pragmatic reasoning.
To formalize contextual meaning inference using computational models.

Main Methods:

Utilizing game theory and probabilistic modeling.
Developing the rational speech act (RSA) framework.
Applying computational models to predict human behavior.

Main Results:

RSA models provide a principled approach to pragmatic inference.
Successful quantitative predictions of human behavior in various tasks.
Explanation for phenomena like hyperbole and vagueness.

Conclusions:

RSA offers a computational framework integrating linguistic structure, world knowledge, and context.
This framework advances the understanding of pragmatic language comprehension.
RSA models are valuable for explaining complex linguistic behaviors.