Testing if Listeners Adapt to Speakers’ Pragmatic Competence in a Reference Game

In this study, we investigate if listeners adjust the confidence about their interpretations based on what they learn about the speakers' pragmatic competence during repeated interaction. We use the Rational Speech Act framework to formalise how listeners perform pragmatic reasoning about alternative messages in order to resolve ambiguous messages in a reference game. Such reasoning on the listener's side is the right strategy if the speaker also engaged in pragmatic reasoning during production. On the other hand, the listener's pragmatic effort to resolve ambiguities may lead to the wrong interpretation if the speaker did not produce her utterance in a pragmatically optimal way. We pair participants with speakers following literal (S_0) or pragmatic (S_1) production strategies and expect them to shift from confident pragmatic interpretation to less confident guessing when paired with literal partners.