Abstract Speakers tend to produce disfluencies when naming unexpected or complex items; in turn, when perceiving disfluency, listeners tend to expect upcoming reference to items that are unexpected or complex to name. In two experiments, we examined if these disfluency-based expectations are routine, or instead, if they adapt to the way the speaker uses disfluency […]

Abstract Quantified modal inferences interest logicians, linguists, and computer scientists, but no previous psychological study of them appears to be in the literature. Here is an example of one: All those artists are businessmen. Paulo is possibly one of the artists. What follows? People tend to conclude: Paulo is possibly a businessman (Experiment 1). It […]

Abstract Research shows that high- and low-pitch sounds can be associated with various meanings. For example, high-pitch sounds are associated with small concepts, whereas low-pitch sounds are associated with large concepts. This study presents three experiments revealing that high-pitch sounds are also associated with open concepts and opening hand actions, while low-pitch sounds are associated […]