Madeleine Rebecca Anne Long

• Rubio-Fernandez, Paula; Long, Madeleine & Özyürek, Asli (2025). Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference: Experimental evidence from Turkish and Spanish. Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 266. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106289. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  All languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here we aim to provide experimental evidence that demonstrative choice is jointly determined by spatial considerations (e.g., whether the referent is near or far) and socio-cognitive factors (e.g., the listener's attention focus). We also test whether demonstrative choice varies depending on the speaker's use of pointing, to provide evidence for a multimodal account of demonstrative systems. We focus on the Turkish system and compare it with the Spanish one to better understand the cross-linguistic variability of 3-term demonstrative systems. Corpus studies have suggested that the Turkish proximal ‘bu’ and distal ‘o’ mark a spatial contrast between near and far space, whereas the medial ‘şu’ is used to direct the listener's attention to a new referent. Supporting this analysis, an online experiment using a picture-based demonstrative-choice task revealed that the medial form ‘şu’ was preferred when the listener was looking at the wrong object. The results of a second experiment using video stimuli further showed that the medial ‘şu’ was preferred when the speaker pointed to the referent to direct the listener's attention, whereas the proximal demonstrative was used in near space and the distal in far space, mostly in joint attention and without pointing. The results of a third experiment in Spanish showed radically different patterns of demonstrative-pointing use. The medial ‘ese’ was preferred in joint attention, whereas the proximal ‘este’ and distal ‘aquel’ were selected to direct the listener's attention towards the intended referent but without an effect of pointing. Our results confirm that demonstrative choice within a given system is determined by both spatial and socio-cognitive factors, interacting with pointing patterns and varying across languages. Leveraging recent experimental work in several languages, we interpret these findings as further evidence for the weighted parameters framework (e.g., referent position and listener attention), which explains demonstrative choice beyond previous categorical analyses.

• Long, Madeleine & Rubio-Fernandez, Paula (2024). Beyond typicality: Lexical category affects the use and processing of color words. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. ISSN 1069-7977. Full text in Research Archive
• Ronderos, Camilo Rodriguez; Aparicio, Helena; Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne; Shukla, Vishakha; Jara-Ettinger, Julian & Fernandez, Paula Rubio (2024). Perceptual, Semantic, and Pragmatic Factors Affect the Derivation of Contrastive Inferences. Open Mind. doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00165. Full text in Research Archive
• Long, Madeleine; MacPherson, Sarah E. & Fernandez, Paula Rubio (2024). Prosocial Speech Acts: Links to Pragmatics and Aging. Developmental Psychology. ISSN 0012-1649. 60(3), p. 491–504. doi: 10.1037/dev0001725. Full text in Research Archive
• Long, Madeleine; Rohde, Hannah; Ali, Michelle Oraa & Fernandez, Paula Rubio (2023). The Role of Cognitive Control and Referential Complexity on Adults’ Choice of Referring Expressions: Testing and Expanding the Referential Complexity Scale. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition. ISSN 0278-7393. doi: 10.1037/xlm0001273. Full text in Research Archive
• Fernandez, Paula Rubio; Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne; Shukla, Vishakha; Bhatia, Vrinda & Sinha, Pawan (2022). Visual perspective taking is not automatic in a simplified Dot task: Evidence from newly sighted children, primary school children and adults. Neuropsychologia. ISSN 0028-3932. 172. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108256. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the Dot task, children and adults involuntarily compute an avatar's visual perspective, which has been interpreted by some as automatic Theory of Mind. This interpretation has been challenged by other researchers arguing that the task reveals automatic attentional orienting. Here we tested a new interpretation of previous findings: the seemingly automatic processes revealed by the Dot task result from the high Executive Control demands of this verification paradigm, which taxes short-term memory and imposes perspective-switching costs. We tested this hypothesis in three experiments conducted in India with newly sighted children (Experiment 1; N = 5; all girls), neurotypical children (Experiment 2; ages 5–10; N = 90; 38 girls) and adults (Experiment 3; N = 30; 18 women) in a highly simplified version of the Dot task. No evidence of automatic perspective-taking was observed, although all groups revealed perspective-taking costs. A newly sighted child and the youngest children in our sample also showed an egocentric bias, which disappeared by age 10, confirming that visual perspective taking develops during the school years. We conclude that the standard Dot task imposes such methodological demands on both children and adults that the alleged evidence of automatic processes (either mindreading or domain general) may simply reveal limitations in Executive Control.

• Shukla, Vishakha; Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne & Fernandez, Paula Rubio (2022). Children’s acquisition of new/given markers in English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish: Exploring the effect of optionality during grammaticalization. Glossa Psycholinguistics. 1(13), p. 1–42. doi: 10.5070/G6011120. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  We investigated the effect of optionality on the acquisition of new/given markers, with a special focus on grammaticalization as a stage of optional use of the emerging form. To this end, we conducted a narrative-elicitation task with 5-year-old children and adults across four typologically-distinct languages with different new/given markers: English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish. Our starting assumption was that the Hindi numeral ‘ek’ (one) is developing into an indefinite article, which should delay children’s acquisition because of its optional use to introduce discourse referents. Supporting the Optionality Hypothesis, Experiment 1 revealed that obligatory markers are acquired earlier than optional markers. Experiment 2 focused on Hindi and showed that 10-year-old children’s use of ‘ek’ to introduce discourse characters was higher than 5-year-olds’ and comparable to adults’, replicating this pattern of results in two different cities in Northern India. Lastly, a follow-up study showed that Mandinka-speaking children and adults made use of all available discourse markers when tested on a familiar story, rather than with pictorial prompts, highlighting the importance of using culturally-appropriate methods of narrative elicitation in cross-linguistic research. We conclude by discussing the implications of article grammaticalization for common ground management in a speech community.

• Shukla, Vishakha; Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne; Bhatia, Vrinda & Fernandez, Paula Rubio (2021). Some Sentences Prime Pragmatic Reasoning in the Verification and Evaluation of Comparisons. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory and Cognition. ISSN 0278-7393. 48(4), p. 569–582. doi: 10.1037/xlm0001082. Full text in Research Archive
• Long, Madeleine; Shukla, Vishakha & Rubio-Fernandez, Paula (2021). The Development of Simile Comprehension: From Similarity to Scalar Implicature. Child Development. ISSN 0009-3920. p. 1–19. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13507. Full text in Research Archive
• Moore, Isabelle; Mollica, Francis; Rubio-Fernandez, Paula & Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne (2021). Contrast perception as a visual heuristic in the formulation of referential expressions. Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 217, p. 1–14. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104879. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  We hypothesize that contrast perception works as a visual heuristic, such that when speakers perceive a significant degree of contrast in a visual context, they tend to produce the corresponding adjective to describe a referent. The contrast perception heuristic supports efficient audience design, allowing speakers to produce referential expressions with minimum expenditure of cognitive resources, while facilitating the listener's visual search for the referent. We tested the perceptual contrast hypothesis in three language-production experiments. Experiment 1 revealed that speakers overspecify color adjectives in polychrome displays, whereas in monochrome displays they overspecified other properties that were contrastive. Further support for the contrast perception hypothesis comes from a re-analysis of previous work, which confirmed that color contrast elicits color overspecification when detected in a given display, but not when detected across monochrome trials. Experiment 2 revealed that even atypical colors (which are often overspecified) are only mentioned if there is color contrast. In Experiment 3, participants named a target color faster in monochrome than in polychrome displays, suggesting that the effect of color contrast is not analogous to ease of production. We conclude that the tendency to overspecify color in polychrome displays is not a bottom-up effect driven by the visual salience of color as a property, but possibly a learned communicative strategy. We discuss the implications of our account for pragmatic theories of referential communication and models of audience design, challenging the view that overspecification is a form of egocentric behavior.

• Long, Madeleine; Rohde, Hannah & Rubio-Fernandez, Paula (2020). The pressure to communicate efficiently continues to shape language use later in life. Scientific Reports. 10(1). doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-64475-6. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Language use is shaped by a pressure to communicate efficiently, yet the tendency towards redundancy is said to increase in older age. The longstanding assumption is that saying more than is necessary is inefficient and may be driven by age-related decline in inhibition (i.e. the ability to filter out irrelevant information). However, recent work proposes an alternative account of efficiency: In certain contexts, redundancy facilitates communication (e.g., when the colour or size of an object is perceptually salient and its mention aids the listener’s search). A critical question follows: Are older adults indiscriminately redundant, or do they modulate their use of redundant information to facilitate communication? We tested efficiency and cognitive capacities in 200 adults aged 19–82. Irrespective of age, adults with better attention switching skills were redundant in efficient ways, demonstrating that the pressure to communicate efficiently continues to shape language use later in life.

• Long, Madeleine; Vega-Mendoza, Mariana; Rohde, Hannah; Sorace, Antonella & Bak, Thomas (2019). Understudied factors contributing to variability in cognitive performance related to language learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. ISSN 1366-7289. p. 1–11. doi: 10.1017/S1366728919000749. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  While much of the literature on bilingualism and cognition focuses on group comparisons (monolinguals vs bilinguals or language learners vs controls), here we examine the potential differential effects of intensive language learning on subjects with distinct language experiences and demographic profiles. Using an individual differences approach, we assessed attentional performance from 105 university-educated Gaelic learners aged 21–85. Participants were tested before and after beginner, elementary, and intermediate courses using tasks measuring i.) sustained attention, ii.) inhibition, and iii.) attention switching. We examined the relationship between attentional performance and Gaelic level, previous language experience, gender, and age. Gaelic level predicted attention switching performance: those in higher levels initially outperformed lower levels, however lower levels improved the most. Age also predicted performance: as age increased attention switching decreased. Nevertheless, age did not interact with session for any attentional measure, thus the impact of language learning on cognition was detectable across the lifespan.

• Long, Madeleine; Horton, William S.; Rohde, Hannah & Sorace, Antonella (2018). individual differences in switching and inhibition predict perspective-taking across the lifespan. Cognition. ISSN 0010-0277. 170, p. 25–30. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.09.004. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

• Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne & MacPherson, Sarah E. (2025). Prosocial speech acts: links to pragmatics and ageing. Full text in Research Archive
• Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne & MacPherson, Sarah E. (2025). Social network features and attention switching predict perspective-taking over the adult lifespan: Implications for future interventions. Full text in Research Archive
• Stenseth, Iris Bjørlo; Semenova, Ksenia; Rubio-Fernandez, Paula; Horton, William S.; Lehtonen, Minna & Long, Madeleine Rebecca Anne (2025). Does language experience (and EF) shape pragmatic competence over the adult lifespan? Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA