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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 12, 2025

The Spatial Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition

The Spatial Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition

Published on: February 19, 2018

Reevaluating pragmatic reasoning in language games.

Les Sikos¹, Noortje J Venhuizen¹, Heiner Drenhaus¹

¹Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.

|March 17, 2021

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Listeners rarely use pragmatic reasoning in web-based language games, contrary to the Rational Speech Act (RSA) model. Even when speakers are informative, listeners often ignore this, suggesting RSA doesn't fully capture pragmatic behavior.

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Last Updated: Nov 12, 2025

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Science
Linguistics
Computational Social Science

Background:

The Rational Speech Act (RSA) model predicts pragmatic reasoning in language comprehension.
Previous studies suggested listeners use pragmatic reasoning in one-shot referential communication games.

Purpose of the Study:

To reevaluate the contribution of pragmatic reasoning, as formalized by RSA, in explaining listener behavior.
To compare RSA's predictions against a baseline literal listener model.

Main Methods:

Three experiments using one-shot web-based referential communication games.
Comparison of listener behavior against RSA and a literal listener model.

Main Results:

Modest evidence of pragmatic behavior was observed, only under limited circumstances.
RSA provided a strong fit to listener responses but did not outperform the baseline literal model.
Listeners rarely accounted for speaker informativeness, and RSA often predicted non-pragmatic behavior.

Conclusions:

RSA's strong correlation with human behavior in these games may not reflect genuine pragmatic reasoning.
Listener behavior in one-shot web-based language games is not fully explained by RSA's pragmatic component.
Non-pragmatic factors significantly influence RSA's fit to listener responses.