About me

About me

I'm a third year PhD student in the 'Computational Cognition' Research Training Group at Osnabrück University.

Publications

Superordinate referring expressions in abstraction: Introducing the concept-level reference game

Published in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2024, 2024

We study referential communication about concepts at different levels of abstraction in an interactive concept-level reference game. To better understand processes of abstraction, we investigate superordinate referring expressions (animal). Previous work identified two main factors that influence speakers’ choice of referring expressions for concepts: the immediate context and the basic-level effect, i.e. a preference for basic-level terms such as dog. Here we introduce a new concept-level reference game that allows us to study differences in the basic-level effect between comprehension and production and to elicit superordinate referring expressions experimentally. We find that superordinate referring expressions become relevant for groups of objects. Further, we reproduce the basic-level effect in production but not in comprehension. In conclusion, even though basic-level terms are most readily accessible, speakers tailor their expressions to the context, allowing the listener to identify the target concept.

Recommended citation: Kobrock, Kristina, Uhlemann, Charlotte & Gotzner, Nicole (2024). “Superordinate referring expressions in abstraction: Introducing the concept-level reference game.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2024. https://osf.io/cv74u

Context Shapes Emergent Communication about Concepts at Different Levels of Abstraction

Published in Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), 2024

We study the communication of concepts at different levels of abstraction and in different contexts in an agent-based, interactive reference game. While playing a concept-level reference game, the neural network agents develop a communication system from scratch. We use a novel symbolic dataset that disentangles concept type (ranging from specific to generic) and context (ranging from fine to coarse) to study the influence of these factors on the emerging language. We compare two game scenarios: one in which speaker agents have access to context information (context-aware) and one in which the speaker agents do not have access to context information (context-unaware). First, we find that the agents learn higher-level concepts from the object inputs alone. Second, an analysis of the emergent communication system shows that only context-aware agents learn to communicate efficiently by adapting their messages to the context conditions and relying on context for unambiguous reference. Crucially, this behavior is not explicitly incentivized by the game, but efficient communication emerges and is driven by the availability of context alone. The emerging language we observe is reminiscent of evolutionary pressures on human languages and highlights the pivotal role of context in a communication system.

Recommended citation: Kobrock, Kristina, Ohmer, Xenia, Bruni, Elia & Gotzner, Nicole (2024). “Context Shapes Emergent Communication about Concepts at Different Levels of Abstraction.” Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.339.pdf

Assessing the replication landscape in experimental linguistics

Published in Glossa Psycholinguistics, 2023

Replications are an integral part of cumulative experimental science. Yet many scientific disciplines do not replicate much because novel confirmatory findings are valued over direct replications. To provide a systematic assessment of the replication landscape in experimental linguistics, the present study estimated replication rates for over 50,000 articles across 98 journals. We used automatic string matching using the Web of Science combined with in-depth manual inspections of 274 papers. The median rate of mentioning the search string “replicat*” was as low as 1.7%. Subsequent manual analyses of articles containing the search string revealed that only 4% of these contained a direct replication, i.e., a study that aims to arrive at the same scientific conclusions as an initial study by using exactly the same methodology. Less than half of these direct replications were performed by independent researchers. Thus our data suggest that only 1 in 1250 experimental linguistic articles contains an independent direct replication. We conclude that, similar to neighboring disciplines, experimental linguistics replicates very little, a state of affairs that should be reflected upon.

Recommended citation: Kobrock, Kristina & Roettger, Timo B. (2023). “Assessing the replication landscape in experimental linguistics." Glossa Psycholinguistics. 2(1). https://doi.org/10.5070/G6011135