Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated whether fine-grained coordination in a screen-based puzzle task with a (virtual) partner would influence on-line perspective-taking. Participants played a screen-basedpuzzle game with a computer player. In the high-coordinationcondition, the player presented participants with puzzle piecesthat could be placed near their partner’s last piece. In the low-coordination condition, pieces could only be placed furtheraway from their partner’s last piece. Participant’s eyemovements were then measured in a referential communicationtask, with the partner giving the instructions, and whetherpossible competitor referents were in shared or privilegedground. The results demonstrate clear effects of ground andcoordination. Participants in both coordination groups weresensitive to the perspective of the interlocutor. In addition,participants in the high-level coordination condition were moresensitive to statistical regularities in the input and theircomprehension was more time-locked to the utterance of thespeaker.