Mental representations of partner task cause interference in picture naming.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Picture naming is disrupted by a partner's communicative preparations.
• Previous research suggests interference arises from representing a partner's task.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the origins of interference in joint picture naming.
• To determine if interference stems from overt attention or broader task representations.
• To test the 'language as joint action' framework.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a non-communicative joint naming task with response latencies and eye-tracking.
• Experiment 1: Compared partner-present and partner-absent conditions.
• Experiment 2: Examined interference from a non-verbal partner task.

Main Results:

• Response latencies showed interference from partner's task and speech content.
• Interference was amplified in the partner-present condition.
• Eye-tracking revealed interference was not linked to overt attention but to task expectations.

Conclusions:

• Individuals co-represent a partner's task during speech production.
• Overt attention to partner stimuli is not necessary for this interference.
• Findings support the view of language as a joint action.