Good-Enough Production: Selecting Easier Words Instead of More Accurate Ones
通过设计人工词汇实验，发现说话者在沟通中会倾向于使用高频但不够准确的词，而非低频但更准确的词，表明词汇的可及性影响词汇选择。
Dominant theories of language production suggest that word choice—lexical selection—is driven by alignment with the intended message: To talk about a young feline, we choose the most aligned word, kitten. Another factor that could shape lexical selection is word accessibility, or how easy it is to produce a given word (e.g., cat is more accessible than kitten). To test whether producers are also influenced by word accessibility, we designed an artificial lexicon containing high- and low-frequency words whose meanings correspond to compass directions. Participants in a communication game (total N = 181 adults) earned points by producing compass directions, which often required an implicit decision between a high- and low-frequency word. A trade-off was observed across four experiments; specifically, high-frequency words were produced even when less aligned with messages. These results suggest that implicit decisions between words are impacted by accessibility. Of all the times that people have produced cat, sometimes they likely meant kitten.