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A noisy-channel approach to depth-charge illusions.
Yuhan Zhang1, Rachel Ryskin2, Edward Gibson3
1Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Boylston Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Cognition
|December 13, 2022
Summary
The common phrase "no head injury is too trivial to be ignored" is often misunderstood. Research suggests this semantic illusion arises from how we process language, influenced by plausible meanings and potential errors.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
Background:
- The phrase 'no head injury is too trivial to be ignored' is frequently misinterpreted, with its intended meaning reversed.
- Decades of research have not fully explained this persistent semantic illusion.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the source of the misinterpretation of
- depth-charge
- sentences
- using
- the
- noisy-channel
- framework
- for
- language
- comprehension
- .
Main Methods:
- Four experiments were conducted to test the noisy-channel hypothesis.
- Comprehension of 'depth-charge' sentences was analyzed based on the plausibility of intended meanings and the likelihood of linguistic errors.
Main Results:
- Misinterpretation frequency increased with the plausibility of the sentence's intended meaning.
- Higher likelihood of hypothesized 'noise operations' correlated with increased misinterpretation of 'depth-charge' sentences.
Conclusions:
- Misinterpretation of 'depth-charge' sentences is influenced by both real-world knowledge and the linguistic distance to plausible alternatives.
- The findings support the noisy-channel framework as an explanation for this semantic illusion.
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