The effects of intended audience on message production and comprehension: Reference in a common ground framework

Subjects performed a two-stage referential communication task. First, they created referring expressions for abstract figures either for another student (Social condition) or for themselves (Nonsocial condition). Second, the same subjects tried to identify the intended referents of their own expressions and those of other subjects who encoded in the Social and Nonsocial conditions. Expressions intended for another student were longer, employed less diverse vocabularies, and were less likely to describe the stimuli figuratively than expressions intended for oneself. The intended addressee of a message also affected its comprehensibility to others: while all subjects identified the largest proportion of their own messages, they did significantly better with others' messages when they were intended for another student rather than for the encoder him- or herself. Both sets of findings are discussed within a common ground framework of communication.