Lexical search and social reasoning jointly explain communication in associative reference games

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Computational Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Effective communication integrates multiple cognitive processes.
• Computational models often study these processes in isolation.
• The board game Codenames offers a model for studying lexical retrieval and pragmatic reasoning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the integration of lexical retrieval and pragmatic reasoning in communication.
• To evaluate computational models of these integrated processes.
• To understand how context influences semantic search and clue generation.

Main Methods:

• Evaluating computational models on a corpus of Codenames production data.
• Eliciting clue endorsements to test pragmatic selection.
• Comparing clue generation with and without board context.

Main Results:

• Models incorporating both semantic search and pragmatic reasoning outperformed ablated variants.
• Pragmatic selection components were supported by targeted clue endorsements.
• Context significantly influences semantic search during clue generation.

Conclusions:

• Retrieval and selection processes must work together for effective communication.
• Computational models benefit from integrating semantic search and pragmatic reasoning.
• Contextual information is crucial for successful communicative acts.