Event

A talk by Prof. Sarah Brown-Schmidt from Vanderbilt University titled: Remembering Conversation. (See below for the abstract!)

The discourse history, including what was discussed and how it was discussed shapes language use in the moment, including basic processes such as establishing co-reference. From a cognitive perspective, the discourse history is a type of memory representation which is subject to various cognitive constraints that shape the encoding and retrieval of the contents and contexts of language use. While it is widely known that we store representations of the
discourse history, the veracity and similarity of these representations among interlocutors has
not been widely explored. Focusing on free recall of unscripted conversation, I show that
interlocutors are likely to walk away from conversation with distinct yet highly accurate
memories for what was said. Active participation seems to promote the completeness of
conversational memory, with better memory for speakers than listeners, listeners than
overhearers, and note-takers over non-note-takers. Analyses of the organization of
conversational memory reveal evidence of a topic-based hierarchical structure superimposed
on a fine-grained temporal structure. These findings regarding the organization, completeness,
and accuracy of conversational memory challenge the centrality that common ground or shared
representations have played in prior accounts of language use and instead highlight the fact
that the discourse history is a cognitive representation unique to each conversational
participant. More generally, the findings have relevance to policy and law in situations where
complete and accurate recollection of past linguistic utterances is of importance.