Sarah Brown-Schmidt
Professor of Psychology & Human Development
Vanderbilt University

Remembering Conversation

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.

Mode: In-person in Annenberg 110 and live-streaming on Zoom

Following Prof. Brown-Schmidt’s talk, we will be having a department lunch from 12:00pm to 1:00pm in the Linguistics Department Library, so please come out then for some good food and great conversation!