Search Efficiency Drives Reference Production Across Modalities, But Colour Is Special

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Classical linguistic theories suggest overinformativeness is inefficient.
• Speakers frequently provide more information than necessary when referring to objects.
• This study explores the communicative function of overinformativeness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether overinformativeness serves as an efficient strategy for listener comprehension.
• To examine the role of perceptual information and search efficiency in speaker overinformativeness.
• To understand the disproportionate use of color information in referential communication.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted with human participants (N=72 and N=97).
• Methods from psychophysics were used to manipulate perceptual discriminability of object attributes (color, material).
• Auditory and visual sensory modalities were employed to assess information processing across senses.

Main Results:

• Speakers increased overinformativeness when redundant information improved perceptual discrimination, aiding listener search.
• Contrary to expectations, color information was disproportionately used compared to material information.
• Further experiments confirmed that perceptual salience and linguistic complexity do not fully explain the preference for color.

Conclusions:

• Overinformativeness is an efficient communicative strategy that facilitates listener comprehension through search-efficient perceptual information.
• Color is a privileged attribute in referential communication, used more often than other attributes like material.
• The findings challenge existing linguistic theories by highlighting the functional role of redundancy in language use.