Although previous findings in the experimental psycholinguistics literature suggest that working memory span can shape text processing, no research examines how working memory span shapes spoken language processing. The goal of this project is to determine what effect individual differences in working memory span have on referential communication--in particular, how people with high and low working memory spans use language to coordinate disparate, pre-existing perspectives on objects in order to reach a joint perspective in conversation. It is believed that a high working memory span allows people to maintain more information in working memory and perform more cognitive operations on this information. I will use a two-phase method where the first phase will measure 200-250 participants' working memory span using the Operation-Word Span task (Engle, 1999). I will also use the Interpersonal Reactivity Index questionnaire (Davis, 1983) to control for people's willingness to take another's perspective. In Phase II, 40 high and 40 low-span people will interact in pairs (either matched for high span or low span, or mismatched with a partner having a different span) to perform a referential communication task in which they repeatedly match identical sets of ambiguous pictures for which they have previously learned the same perspective, a different perspective, or no perspective. Measures will include efficiency, errors, and the point at which pairs entrain (converge) on the same referring expressions. I predict high-span individuals will display more flexibility in taking perspectives.
