Non-plural interpretations of some: Mouse-tracking evidence for quick social reasoning in real-time

In support of an account in which disfluency can cue social reasoning in real time, Loy et al. (2019) showed that listeners are more likely to make an early commitment to a socially undesirable meaning of some as all, if it follows disfluent uh in a context where larger values are associated with greed (“I ate, [uh], some biscuits”). However, their finding is also compatible with an account in which disfluency simply heightens attention to the core semantic meaning of some, namely, some and possibly all. The current study differentiates these two accounts, using contexts in which smaller values are the socially undesirable interpretations of some. In two experiments, we recorded participants’ mouse movements as they heard fluent and disfluent utterances in a job interview context (“I have, [uh], some qualifications”) and clicked on one of four images corresponding to specific interpretations of some. Here, in keeping with an account in which the effects of disfluency reflect social reasoning, and contrary to one in which such effects depend on heightened attention, disfluency reduces the value participants associate with some. We found that participants were more likely to select images corresponding to one, or zero, qualifications following disfluent utterances. However, their mouse movements show that they are quick to commit to one qualification (Experiment 1) and slow to commit to zero (Experiment 2), suggesting that social context and manner of speech can combine to affect the interpretation of some as an utterance unfolds. Assigning its meaning to one is relatively easy, but imposing a meaning of zero – in effect, deciding that a speaker is lying – is more demanding.